NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS INCREDIBLY OUTDATED. THE REVIEW BELOW DOES NOT REFLECT MY CURRENT THOUGHTS ON THE SEASON, AS I HAVE REWATCHED IT AND NOW HAVE NEW OPINIONS, AS DEMONSTRATED BY THE NEW RANKING. THIS MESSAGE WILL BE REMOVED ONCE THIS SEASON REVIEW HAS BEEN REDONE TO REFLECT MY CURRENT THOUGHTS.
Yeah, I'm actually dividing this review into two parts. I wasn't really going to do this at first, but I figured since 9A and 9B have a big quality difference, reviewing them separately would make much more sense. So anyways, people usually consider this half-season to be an improvement over S6-8 but not as much of an improvement when compared to post-sequel. If you've been keeping up with these reviews, you'll know I like seasons 6-7, so is this season really better than those?
Review[]
My answer is... not really. Now, I'm actually going to format this review and future season reviews a little differently than before. Instead of just paragraph and paragraph, I will be putting each topic into several sections. The sections are: History, Comedy, Writing, Animation, Miscellaneous, and Verdict. I'm mainly doing this so if you want to see my opinion on a specific aspect of the season, you can scroll through and find the heading you want to read, and it takes up less time in your viewing experience. Also, it gives me more organization with these reviews because at times, I don't know when to end a review so these sections can make my review structure more organized. Hope you guys like it!
History[]
I actually don't have much of a history with this season, mainly because I quit the show right before this season even started. I'd obviously be lying if I said that I didn't watch ANY 9A episodes as a kid, because I remember watching episodes such as Extreme Spots/Squirrel Record, Little Yellow Book and Kenny the Cat/Yeti Krabs. If you've read my reviews, you'll know I hate all these episodes except for Extreme Spots, but I even hated THAT episode as a kid. I simply felt it was too similar to Prehibernation Week and the plot was horrendously weak. Heck, when I actually decided to watch 9A in its entirety last year, I hated it a lot more than I do now. I used to consider around half the season bad, and only around 4 episodes good, which is pretty crazy because now I have a bigger appreciation for the season. I think what mainly set me off about the season was how bland and unoriginal it is, but I think the reason I changed my overall opinion on this season was because of season 8. That season had most of the problems this season had, but I only rated that season meh. And I realized a lot of the episodes in this season actually have quite a few good qualities, though of course, there's some EXTREMELY bad episodes as well. So I ultimately promoted this season. I actually just noticed that this is actually the complete opposite of what happened to me with season 11, but I'll save my history with that season for that review.
Comedy[]
One of the major reasons I hated this season as a kid was because of the severe lack of comedy, mainly because I usually rated episodes based on how funny they were. In fact, here are the episodes from this season that actually attempted more than 2 jokes: Extreme Spots, Patrick-Man!, Squid Baby, Eek, an Urchin!, Safe Deposit Krabs, and Don't Look Now (this is to an extent.) If you haven't noticed, most of these episodes aren't even rated GOOD. So obviously, the good episodes are probably good for their plots right? Well I'll get to that later, as this is the comedy section. This season is mainly reliant on slapstick to get the audience to laugh. The problem is that the animation really doesn't work well in order to make the slapstick work better, mainly because of the fact that it is very stiff like season 8's. As a result of that, the slapstick is a lot more sluggish and pale when compared to the previous seasons. I found season 8 to be a much more funny season because yeah, while the season itself actually isn't all that funny either, it at least incorporates a mix of dialogue, visual, and other humor. And the season obviously knows that it has bad animation, so it stays away from slapstick. Here, the season forgets that the animation isn't very fluid and constantly uses slapstick whenever the episodes feel like making jokes, but they don't work as well due to the slower animation. There are instances like in Safe Deposit Krabs or Eek, an Urchin where the slapstick works really well due to the great pacing of the jokes, but otherwise this season doesn't do well with the slapstick.
Also, and I've noticed this as well in later seasons, the humor is a bit more childish than usual. Take Squid Baby, which most revolves around baby jokes and fart humor. I'm not saying these types of humor are bad, but the way this episode and several other episodes execute this kind of humor is lame. As in, the humor isn't cleverly enforced into the episode or the jokes are badly-timed. Squid Baby is a more stronger example of this, but even a good episode such as Patrick-Man! does have a very limited kind of humor that mostly revolves around Patrick being really dumb, and I had a very hard to picking whether I actually liked the humor or didn't, though ultimately I decided the humor was good. Similar episodes to Patrick-Man! where the humor is limited are Extreme Spots, which is just the same sequence of the Drasticals showing SpongeBob and Patrick the extreme way of doing their regular activities over and over, or Don't Look Now where it's mostly just SpongeBob and Patrick screaming. These aren't necessarily bad ways to execute humor, but it does show how limited the style of humor is. With earlier seasons such as season 3 and 4, the episodes varied up the humor. Take The Lost Mattress, for example. There's a lot of physical comedy involving Mr. Krabs and the scene in the Dump, but it also had it's fair share of visual gags and dialogue gags. It seems like this season's writing when it comes to jokes is similar to that as season 2, where the episodes will come up with a joke and stick with it for the entire episode. However, this season fails more than season 2 because that season, for the most part, at least comes up with creative ways to execute gags. Heck, even in episodes such as Sailor Mouth, you can tell the writers are trying to make the gags distinct from one another even if that doesn't work for me. Here, I didn't feel the writers tried hard enough to make all the gags feel different and that makes the entirety of a singular episode's humor kind of blur. Of course, I don't find the humor to be atrocious or disgusting, unlike in seasons 10 or 12. The jokes still have some care in them even if they aren't amazing, and at least the humor isn't executed in an unfunny manner, rather the humor is just really forgettable.
Writing[]
Oh boy the writing of this season. This season's writing actually has a lot of similarities to season 8's writing. As in, a lot of the episodes have a very unoriginal direction or the ideas are generally cliche. Was it really a good idea to start the season off with two Prehibernation Week rip-offs? Yeah, I don't think so. Episodes such as Evil Spatula and SpongeBob You're Fired take previous episode concepts (All That Glitters and Model Sponge respectively) pretty much take the ideas of their predecessors and have the same direction, but they botch the entire execution into a giant mess of an episode. The worst example of this has got to be Yeti Krabs, which is my least favorite episode from this half-season. That episode is the FIFTH rip-off of the same episode and once again, botches the entire execution into something so boring not even me sleeping through it would be enough of a definition to describe it. However, when this season is not completely ripping off another episode, the concepts can be surprisingly... unique! After you go through the first half hour, this season subjects you to two episodes that have really creative concepts. The first one being Patrick-Man!, a really cool episode about Patrick becoming a superhero who's really idiotic and doesn't know how to properly solve crimes. And even if I myself am not a big fan of the execution, Gary's New Toy has a surprisingly creative concept that also has a hint of relatability as it's about Gary getting a new toy that he ends up getting addicted to. Other creative episodes include Eek, an Urchin!, Squid Defense, It Came from Goo Lagoon, and Seance Shmeance. To cap off this paragraph, when an episode is not extremely creative or rips-off an episode and botches it, the episode's cliche, such as Little Yellow Book being another bland diary episode, or Don't Look Now being a bland episode about characters thinking a movie villain is real.
A good chunk of the time during this season, the episodes tend to have a really bad structure. For example, Little Yellow book spends 7 minutes with Squidward and Bikini Bottomites making fun of SpongeBob for the things he listed in his diary, but after that, the episode suddenly changes to everyone hating Squidward for reading the diary. Another example is Kenny the Cat, which spends HALF THE EPISODE developing SpongeBob's overly creepy obsession with said cat. Other examples of these are Squid Baby, which has one plot in the first half but completely changes in the second half, Bumper to Bumper, which has a setup that drags for too long, Jailbreak!, which doesn't even get to the jailbreak itself until 6 minutes in and the jailbreak lasts for a very short period, and Yeti Krabs, which is filled with slow scenes while randomly changing pace at random points. But the obvious culprit to this bad pacing has to be SPONGEBOB YOU'RE FIRED, which moves at such a ridiculously slow pace it feels like I'm watching a snail move for 22 minutes. There's obviously other examples as this is a problem that appears throughout the season. Another thing from this half-season I didn't really like was the amount of filler added to the episodes. This is kind of related to the whole "bad pacing" stuff but there's actually quite a few episodes that have bad pacing so I guess I should mentioned it. SpongeBob You're Fired is the obvious one but then there's episodes such as Plankton's Pet, where the entire beginning is useless and stupid, Kenny the Cat, where the scene in the Krusty Krab kitchen was unneeded, Evil Spatula, where the scene at SpongeBob's house wasn't needed, and much, much more. This is probably the first season (to be fair this is a half season) where filler is used excessively, as even season 8 didn't use filler in 80% of its episodes. I think the problem is that these episodes don't have concepts you can stretch to 11 minutes, so filler is needed to expand the episode. Jailbreak! is an episode that's just about a jailbreak, and since the actual jailbreak is only 2 minutes long, there obviously needs to be filler to stretch this to 11 minutes. Honestly, I don't find that to be a good idea and the episodes would've been much better off adding more substance to the actual useful scenes instead of adding filler to fill in the gaps for the episode. It makes me wish the episode format of this show wouldn't be forced to be 11 or 22 minutes, and perhaps several other running times could be used.
I'll finish the writing section with a final paragraph talking about is the coherency and the plot twists that this half-season tries. Just going to say this right now, the latter never happens. Or at least it happens very rarely. Most of the things that happen in the 20 segments this half-season spans are VERY predictable, or the plot twists don't even make sense at all. For the former, there's Yeti Krabs, SpongeBob You're Fired, Evil Spatula, Jailbreak!, Don't Look now, Kenny the Cat, and Squirrel Record, which all are so predictable I can predict the entire thing by just watching the setup. As for the latter, we have Little Yellow Book, where the plot twist is that SpongeBob doesn't even care that Squidward read his diary and actually PUBLISHED IT, despite having CRIED about it earlier. There's It Came from Goo Lagoon, which has another one of those bland "Mr. Krabs gives Plankton a fake formula" twists, and Plankton's Pet, where Spot somehow was actually in Plankton's eye despite a green blob never actually being seen in his eye. As for coherency, well, that's one of the things this season gets right. No matter how bad the season gets, the episodes at least have a coherent plot, which I guess makes it an improvement over season 8, where the plots sometimes didn't make all that much sense. Even with my least favorite episode, Yeti Krabs, it's easy to tell someone what the plot is, even if the plot is a borefest. This doesn't really add many points to the season because this is something most other seasons can do, but like I just said, season 8 sort of failed to do this, so I guess it's worth mentioning.
Animation[]
If I were to describe this season's animation, it would be season 8's animation, but more vibrant and wide-screen. Yeah, one of the biggest changes this season is that the animation is 16:9. I won't be detailing about this that much because I already talked about it in my Extreme Spots review, so you can go check that out. But if you want a gist of what I like about the wide-screen animation, it simply allows for more cool shots of the show. Extreme Spots in particular is one of the best examples that utilizes the wide-screen potential to show off as many visuals as possible, and the extra space really helps out with that. While there's also a few episodes that don't really utilize the full-screen potential, there are some that do such as Don't Look Now, Seance Shmeance, Eek, an Urchin!, Squid Defense, and more. Simply put it, this new change in animation was definitely beneficial for the most part, and actually helped episodes that weren't that good such as Don't Look Now be a little better due to the good usage of the new animation.
And I gotta say, I'm glad the animation is brighter than in season 8. That season was so boring to watch because the animation was so pale, but here, the season is much more colorful and pleasing to the eyes. However, despite the more vibrant animation, the expressions of the characters still remain restricted and similar to season 8. I talked about one scene in my SpongeBob You're Fired review where SpongeBob is crying, and one of the factors that made me hate that scene was that SpongeBob made the SAME face the entire time he was crying. This is a similar problem with a lot of this season where the expressions of the characters are very restricted so when the writers want to show a character extremely sad or extremely happy, they can't resort to the expressions because they're restricted to just the simple "sad" face or the simple "smile." This is the kind of thing that's been going on in SpongeBob since SEASON 6, and thankfully in the second half of season 9, this problem is fixed, though I won't talk about 9B until that review. Overall, I really like the direction the animation is going in, and is definitely this season's big pro. Of course, there's still small issues I have with it, but it's definitely better than that of seasons 6-8's animation.
Miscellaneous[]
So, for this section, I'll mainly be talking about things about this season that I feel are worth mentioning, but don't really fit into the History, Comedy, Writing, or Animation sections. One thing that I've noticed with not just this season, but season 8 as well, is that it really doesn't go out of its way to really expand from just general concepts. Sure, there are episodes with cool concepts, but unlike some of the earlier seasons or heck, even season 11 of all things, it feels like every episode within this season has something that another episode already did. Yeah, I guess you could say this could go under "rip-offs," but it's not really that the episodes are "ripping-off" each other, because I can tell you Plankton's Pet doesn't majorly rip-off, yet I still am not a big fan of it. I think what I feel with this half-season and season 8 is that the show is starting to lose its touch, or as a lot of other people put it, the show's going downhill. It's easy to tell the writers are struggling to come up with engaging plots. I feel like this is why 9B and seasons afterwards start to feel more creative, as the writers don't want to end up with episodes similar to those like this half-season and season 8.
Anyways, the last thing I'll talk about with this season is characterization. I was originally going to put an entire heading surrounding this but honestly, this is a very minor topic that I don't feel I could fit an entire heading under. So anyways, the characters act pretty similar to how they act in season 8. I've noticed that SpongeBob has become much, much more of a crybaby than usual, and a lot of the time his characterization is similar to that as in A Day Without Tears, where his crying habit is exaggerated immensely. The biggest examples of these are easily SpongeBob You're Fired and Little Yellow Book, but can also apply to episodes such as Gary's New Toy (he doesn't necessarily cry but he gets way too overly emotional from Gary just playing with a ball more than him), Don't Look Now, and Yeti Krabs. Ok, maybe these don't necessarily involve him being a crybaby but they kind of exaggerate his characterization in a way I'm not a big fan of. The only other character who gets kind of a significant change here is Squidward, who becomes a bit more over-confident, though I don't mind it all that much because unlike SpongeBob, he's not that exaggerated with this trait (unlike in SEASON 12.) Last but not least, but starting with this half-season and onwards, I can tell the show is trying to come up with new ways to combine characters in episodes or episodes focused on a character. Episodes such as Squid Defense, Eek, an Urchin!, and to an extent Seance Shmeance are examples of the former, and Patrick-Man!, Safe Deposit Krabs, and Plankton's Pet are examples of the latter. It's pretty good that the show isn't always forcing SpongeBob to be a main character in an episode and I'm glad the show kept doing this for the rest of the show's run (so far), because even in bad seasons such as season 12, it's always cool to see a unique set of characters together in an episode.
Verdict[]
Season 8: Rehydrated. That's... what this is. While this rating is from looking at this season again after calling it bad, that doesn't mean this season is good at all. Like said season, this is still an extremely bland season with many bland and unoriginal plots, a lack of comedy/weak comedy, stiff animation, etc. Plus, when this season has bad episodes, they are REALLY bad. Evil Spatula and Yeti Krabs are BOTH in my bottom ten, with Little Yellow Book and Squirrel Record hanging around in the bottom 30. However, this season does have a lot of similar positives that season 8 has, with some improvements such as the more vibrant and wide-screen animation as well as the better coherency in episodes. But overall, I have to put this season lower than season 8, mainly because of statistics. The bad episodes are just way, way too bad for me to handle and this season has more bad episodes than the entirety of that season, with 7. This wouldn't be awful if this wasn't a half-season with only 20 segments, so technically, 1/3 of this season is bad. And that statistic automatically puts this under season 8. However, this still gets the same Meh (5.5/10) rating as that season, because while statistics show that this is worse, my overall feelings for both seasons are the same.
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