YMMV / The Adventures Of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius S 2 E 16 Men At Work

• Accidental Aesop: The lesson with Jimmy's demotions can be a cautionary tale to not let your ego get in the way when working a job.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • A few fans like to interpret Jimmy as an Insufferable Genius, putting their own spins on the "sodium chloride" scene, and making Skeet turn out to be not as dumb as he sounds, criticising him at length for his overly-technical speech patterns.
  • On that note, was Jimmy's supervisor Skeet really ignorant on what sodium chloride is, or did he understand perfectly well what Jimmy meant and was annoyed at his insistence on calling it that?
• Character Perception Evolution: Skeet was intended to be seen as something of an idiot and a disrespectful manager to Jimmy, with kids watching the episode and taking Jimmy's side. The discourse changed once the fandom grew up, many of these kids taking minimum wage jobs for themselves, and beginning to realize that not only was Jimmy being a bit of a brat, but everything Skeet said was entirely correct. In this light, Skeet has become an Ensemble Dark Horse often depicted as an Only Sane Man.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Skeet has become popular with the fandom mainly due to the various memes surrounding him and his relatable everyman personality.
• Memetic Badass: Skeet. According to the show, he's a dim-witted fast-food worker who acts like he's a lot smarter than he really is. According to show's fanbase and the memes associated with his character, he's a well-spoken genius who's able to psychologically analyze and rip apart Jimmy's obsession with being smart.
• Strawman Has a Point: Skeet might not be the smartest character on the show, but many viewers are quick to point out that two of his reasons for demoting Jimmy in the first act of the episode are fairly understandable.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: This episode ends with the Space Bandits vowing to track down Skeet, but in their next appearance, they not only don't care for Skeet in the slightest, but he isn't even shown.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The audience is meant to feel sorry for Jimmy due to his super-genius mind being unappreciated and Skeet picking on him, but this falls flat for several reasons. When Jimmy works the register, instead of ringing up the customers' orders on the cash register, he memorizes the prices and does the taxes and change in his head. Skeet chastises him for this, telling him to push the buttons on the register, which Jimmy brushes off. In reality, what Jimmy was doing was illegal under-the-table transactions for a business that needs all transactions monitored by the register for the sake of inventory and taxes. His method is also unable to provide a sales receipt to the customers. Later, Jimmy's asked to mop up the restaurant floor. When Skeet tells him he missed a spot of spilled salt, Jimmy insists on correcting him and calling it by its chemical name: "sodium chloride." While Skeet may have demoted him because he thought Jimmy didn't even know what salt was and thought he was too stupid for mop duty, Jimmy using scientific names in a simple fast-food job to begin with is textbook Insufferable Genius behavior, and it should have come as no surprise that talking back to his manager for trivial reasons got him in trouble.