I was the little bit cautious when I watched the episode Salsa Imbecilicus, because it sounded like a pseudo sequel to I’m With Stupid, except everyone in town got stupid. While there were moments that kinda reflected that cautious thought, the episode was surprisingly delightful for the most part. It had some tiny fun moments, like a small reference to a possible oceanology fact:
Plankton: Crabs have a brain the size of the head of a pin, but Mr. Krabs seems to outsmart me every time!
But I think the big moments seem to shine. One big one, it’s a team up between Karen and Sandy. Like I said, later seasons have character team ups that work surprisingly well. We’ve had two smart ones team up with Sandy and Plankton, but having Karen and Sandy team up is a delight! For one, you see how they think differently when it comes to their smart thought processes:
Karen: Maybe we can feed him something to make him smart. You’re smart, what do you eat?
Sandy: Nuts? You know Plankton, what do you usually do?
Karen: I usually yell at him.
Then they take a uniquely smart turn by reeducating the whole town. But, it still doesn’t leave out any fun humor.
Sandy: It’s not working, they’re not visiting the school!
Karen: Try jiggling the keys!
But then it has another big moment, during the reeducating process, we see Plankton and Mr. Krabs playing off of each other like a bully picking on a smart kid. I like to think we’re looking back on what their dynamic was in high school, Plankton trying to bully the formula out of Mr. Krabs as he spent home ec and cooking classes trying to perfect it, which led to Plankton not learning much at school. And with Plankton bullying SpongeBob like the nerd he uses to do his homework assignments for him, I kinda wanna see a special where we see the characters in school! Bonus, we get Squillaim and Squidward in high school too, and learn more of their past and dynamic! And a special bonus for me out of that, BAND GEEKS!! And we get more time with SpongeBob and Patrick being besties in their teen years. Someone contact the SpongeBob writers immediately!!
Okay, back to the episode, because I love the very end where Karen takes still dumb Plankton home with her. Not only a nice comment that Karen sticks by her little big guy, but I like to imagine that “post college years” crack was a comment that Karen was going to personally smarten up Plankton. But if simply teaching him wasn’t going to work, I can only imagine what she did. Did she make some antidote to counteract the “dummy DNA” or just went all computer and downloaded the smarts into Plankton’s fleshy little brain? I guess we’ll never know, but just the speculation is pretty funny.