Recap / The Patrick Star Show: S1E19: "Home ECCH!" / "Fun & Done!"

Home ECCH!

Original air date: 4/19/2023

Squidina's home economics projects are absolute disasters, and she's in danger of failing the class. When her "pickle pie" ends up sending her teacher to the hospital, she gets the idea to put on a show that'll raise her grade.

Home ECCH! contains examples of:

• Ambulance Cut: The moment Squidina's teacher tastes her "pickle pie," we Smash Cut to an ambulance driving to the hospital. It happens again when Squidina makes another one, correctly. However, the ambulance drives past, and we see Squidina and her teacher, alive and well, sitting on a bench outside the hospital and continuing to eat.
• Black Comedy: Much of the episode revolves around Squidina's teacher constantly almost dying as a result of her horrific projects.
• Chekhov's Gag: In a montage of Squidina's failed projects, one is her knitting a giant sheet while Slappy runs away from it. It feels like a throwaway gag at first, but during the next segment, it turns out Slappy is still knitted to the ceiling, and he actually helps her get through the project.
• Chekhov's Gun: The episode opens with Squidina's failed pickle pie recipe poisoning her teacher. For her final assignment, she tries to make it again... but breaks down crying before she can even start. Slappy gives her instructions and she makes it correctly. In the end, it's what makes the teacher raise her grade.
• A Day in the Limelight: This episode primarily focuses on Squidina and her school projects.
• Disney Death: Squidina's teacher ends up dying when the hospital staff are unable to revive him for a third time. Squidina manages to use her home ec skills to bring him back to life.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: One of Patrick's backboards is in the style of an insurance advertisement. The text reads "MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT? That's too bad. I'm wearing a suit." It's visible for less than a second and only readable for half of that.
• Funny Background Event: There are some jokes in the chalkboard on Squidina's home ec class. It includes stuff like "Ch 23: the 6 types of carpet litter" and "Monday: Cheese due!". They're small and not on screen for very long, so it's easy to miss them.
• Gotta Pass the Class: Squidina has As in almost all her classes, but is failing home economics due to her projects backfiring (most turn out dangerous or disgusting). If she fails, she has to go to summer school. With the help of Patrick and Slappy, she manages to make a delicious dish that saves her grade.
• Hurricane of Puns: Squidina sets a bunch of forks on a table. This starts off relatively normal, but then escalates to a bunch of puns on things with "fork" in the name, like a fork in the road or a forklift.
• Like a Surgeon: Inverted. Squidina operates on her home economics teacher by treating it like a home ec project, such as using a fork to scoop out his organs and a sewing machine to sew him back up.
• Meaningful Background Event: When Patrick and Squidina burst into the hospital, you can very briefly see a tray of forks on the left side of the screen. A few scenes later, Squidina notices these forks and helps use them to perform surgery on her teacher. It serves as very sneaky Five-Second Foreshadowing.
• Nine out of Ten Doctors Agree: Parodied. When Squidina presents her new pickle pie to her home ec teacher after he wakes up in the hospital, he wonders if it's safe to eat. The doctors react, with four telling him to eat it and one telling him not to. He says, "Four out of five doctors can't be wrong!" and eats it.
• No Name Given: Squidina's teacher is not given a name throughout the episode.
• Noodle Incident: Near the start of the episode, Squidina tells Patrick that she poisoned her home ec teacher again.

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Fun & Done!

Original air date: 4/20/2023

SpongeBob and Patrick are made to babysit an incredibly boring child named Andy. But once they teach him how to have fun, his imagination becomes unstoppable! Can they seal it back up before Andy's mother comes back?

Fun & Done! contains examples of:

• Failure Montage: SpongeBob and Patrick show Andy a bunch of fun stuff like action figures, television, and kazoos to find something that'll unleash his imagination. None of it works.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Pause when Patrick goes out to greet Andy's mother, and you'll see that he actually opens the door with his teeth.
• Gainax Ending: The episode ends with Patrick accidentally triggering Andy's imagination again with the word "fun". This time, it's completely unrestrained, eventually engulfing the entire Earth.
• Indubitably Uninteresting Individual: Andy speaks in a slow, monotone voice, and is so boring that he has no sense of imagination and finds nothing fun about things like TV, ice cream, or toys. At the end of the episode, his mother takes him home to fold laundry, which he agrees to.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: SpongeBob and Patrick crawl into Andy's head to let his sense of imagination free: it's represented by a door with a bunch of padlocks on it. Patrick destroys the padlocks and a giant rainbow shoots out. When Andy's imagination proves too much to handle, they head back inside and use the locks to seal the door back up.
• Lack of Imagination: The episode prominently features a young child named Andy who is incredibly boring: he eats plain oatmeal, prefers to sit on the floor quietly, and has an overbearing mother who stifles his imagination because she is afraid of him being "overstimulated". SpongeBob and Patrick teach him how to have fun... but once he starts imagining things, it ends up being incredibly dangerous as his strange mind creatures come to life. Patrick and SpongeBob seal up his imagination again to turn him into the same boring person he used to be.
• Malaproper: Patrick pronounces "kazoo" as "Kalamazoo".
• Minimalist Cast: Not counting the imagination creatures, the only characters in this episode are SpongeBob, Patrick, Andy, and Andy's mother.
• "Open!" Says Me: When Andy's mother rings the doorbell and refuses to get an answer regarding the noises inside the house, she finally ends up kicking the door down. Just in time — she only sees the aftermath, of SpongeBob, Patrick, and Andy sitting on the floor quietly.
• Out of Focus: SpongeBob and Patrick are the only pre-established characters to appear in this episode.
• Rhyming Title: "Fun" and "done" rhyme.
• White Void Room: Since Andy's imagination has been locked away, the inside of his head is entirely white with subtle shades of gray. When SpongeBob and Patrick unleash his imagination, the room becomes full of rainbow-colored liquid. Eventually, they seal it back up, making the room empty again.