Recap / The Patrick Star Show: S1E18: "The Patterfly Effect" / "A Space Affair to Remember"

The Patterfly Effect

Original air date: 4/17/2023

Patrick's mother confesses that she used to dream of being a race car driver. However, Patrick interrupts her and thinks she wants to be a race car, and goes back in time to make that happen. But every time he tries to change the past, he ends up in a radically altered future.

While previous episodes of the show were written and directed by staff from SpongeBob SquarePants, this episode marks the start of the "new crew" era, with Patrick getting its own team.

The Patterfly Effect contains examples of:

• Aesop Amnesia: An older Patrick goes back in time to convince his younger self not to go back in time, after all the trouble it's caused him. But when his younger self suggests going back in time 15 minutes to have breakfast again, Patrick easily agrees to do it.
• Bait-and-Switch: In a universe where Bunny really is a car and her kids have wheels, Squidina says that she ended up being a street sweeper after an accident. Patrick is horrified, and goes back in time. Turns out Bunny is actually a street-sweeping machine, and she's very happy with her life.
• Behind the Black: Patrick returns from the future for the first time, and everything seems normal. However, Squidina has wheels, since Patrick had turned his mother into a race car. It's only then that the screen zooms out and shows Patrick himself on treads.
• Butterfly of Doom: Patrick goes back in time to turn his mother into a race car. In the future, everyone has wheels. He goes back in time to fix it, but knocks over a lamp and lights a fire. In the future, everything is on fire.
• Career Not Taken: Bunny confesses to Patrick that she always dreamed of becoming a race car driver until she had children. This leads Patrick to go back in time to make her dream come true.
• Close-Enough Timeline: Subverted. After many crazy timelines, Patrick winds up in one where everything is normal — except he has a mouth on his stomach, and (more horrifying to him) there's no word for "breakfast". He tries to go back in time, but there's a major difference that time travel doesn't actually exist in this universe, forcing Patrick to reinvent it himself.
• Continuity Nod: Bunny's Klopnodian heritage was established in "Klopnodian Heritage Festival."
• Droste Image: Patrick is in bed, dreaming that he's in bed, and in his dream, he's also dreaming that he's in bed. The end result is three layers of Patrick sleeping.
• Failure Montage: A brief montage shows Patrick ending up in a variety of different strange futures, each of which having something off about them.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The episode opens with Patrick having a great dream, then trying to get himself to fall back asleep so he can dream it again. This plot gets dropped a few minutes in, where it becomes a Time Travel episode instead, and the original plot is never brought up again.
• Hard-Work Montage: So he can invent a time machine, we see a montage of Patrick going to college, studying hard, understanding time itself, and graduating.
• Hope Spot: During the Failure Montage, Patrick comes across a universe that does look like his normal one, which makes him think it could be the right one. Then a giant monster steps on his house and crushes it, forcing him to try again.
• In Case of X, Break Glass: Patrick has a hammer sealed away in a case that says "In Case of Not Asleep, Break Glass" (so he can hit himself in the head and get a concussion). He smashes it with a hammer and takes out an identical one to it anyways.
• Insane Troll Logic: Patrick has to convince his mother, as a kid, that he's her son in the future. All he does is say, "Your favorite color is purple!" This convinces her, somehow.
• Losing Your Head: Patrick's head detaches from his body. It runs wild around the house until Bunny calms it down with some breakfast. Squidina brings his head back into the kitchen while the body is trying to eat.
• Randomly Reversed Letters: Patrick's makeshift Time Machine has "TIME CLOƧET" prominently written on the front.
• Spinning Paper: A newspaper spins on screen with the news of Bunny winning a race.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Bunny overhears Patrick say that he has a dream he wants to live out, and shares her own dream that she never had (being a race car driver). However, Patrick was literally talking about a dream he had just that night.
• Training Montage: In the past, we see a montage of Patrick training his mother to be a race car. It works.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Patrick doesn't have much of a reaction to his future self coming in with a warning.
  Older Patrick: You are not going in there!
  Younger Patrick: Who are you?
  Older Patrick: I'm you! As an older, smarter sea star. I'm here to tell you that going back in time could impact your future in horrible, unspeakable ways!
  Younger Patrick: Oh! Guess I'll go do something else, then!
• Visual Pun: One of the experiments Patrick does in college to understand time is dropping some worms into a hole. Or, in other words, a wormhole.

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A Space Affair to Remember

Original air date: 4/18/2023

Cecil and Bunny are celebrating their anniversary. Patrick gets them a reservation at a Greek restaurant; but the time closet sends them to an outer-space alien contest instead, which they're determined to win. Meanwhile, Squidina and Patrick throw a party that quickly escalates out of hand.

A Space Affair to Remember contains examples of:

• Bait-and-Switch Comment: GrandPat scolds Squidina and Patrick for throwing a party — and not inviting him.
• Comically Missing the Point: Cecil thinks that a "dinner for two [people]" means you get to eat dinner twice.
• Continuity Nod: One of the alternate versions of Patrick at the party is his college-educated self from "The Patterfly Effect", just one episode prior!
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: To An Affair to Remember.
• Space Episode: The main plot involves Cecil and Bunny at a space station, facing off against aliens in a three-round competition.
• Wild Teen Party: Patrick and Squidina's party escalates as unexpected guests keep showing up. By the end of it, most of the people there are guests Patrick and Squidina don't even know, demanding drinks and wrecking the house.