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Behold, the nadir of SpongeBob's de-cline.
Season
7
Episode No.
137a
Main Reason for being ScumBob
The harshest Plankton/character torture episode of the entire series.
Plankton is disturbingly tormented to the point of insanity and suicidal ideation, and yet nobody takes his situation seriously.
Mr. Krabs at his worst.
SpongeBob betrays Plankton at the end.
Every single character is unlikable.
Horrifying imagery.
Painfully unfunny.
Suicide jokes.
Very dark.
One Coarse Meal is a HYPER-infamous episode from Season 7 of SpongeBob SquarePants. In this episode, Mr. Krabs discovers that Plankton is afraid of whales, and disguises as Pearl to scare him.
Why This Meal is a Coarse Nightmare
This episode is notorious for not only being the harshest Plankton torture episode, but also the absolute harshest torture episode of any character in the entire series.
Almost every single character in this episode is unlikable in their own ways:
Mr. Krabs is at his absolute worst, as he needlessly and outright torments Plankton for sixteen whole days, to the point where Plankton even considers committing suicide by getting run over by a bus.
Mr. Krabs appears to be portrayed as a protagonist, even though he acts like a diabolical, arrogant sociopath and shows no remorse for his actions. He also never faces any real consequences for his actions whatsoever. He almost does when Plankton tries to torment him with a mime, but it goes back to Mr. Krabs winning anyway.
Karen criticizes Plankton because of his fear of whales and ignores the fact that Plankton's ancestors, including his grandfather, were eaten by whales, making her just as unlikeable as Mr. Krabs.
SpongeBob tries to help Plankton get revenge on Mr. Krabs at first, but then, he suddenly betrays Plankton and helps Mr. Krabs for no reason without questioning anything. SpongeBob listens to Mr. Krabs without questioning him a lot in this episode, and when he sees Plankton trying to ender his life, he still betrays him, which implies that he knew what Mr. Krabs was doing, and did not care in the slightest.
When Plankton orders SpongeBob to step on him as hard as possible, he states it would fly in the face of his good nature, which makes him a massive hypocrite as he has done horrible things before this episode, particularly to Squidward.
This episode is written in a tone that shows genuine hatred towards Plankton, as Mr. Krabs uses Plankton's fear of whales to scare him, leaving him in depression, paranoia, and even turning him suicidal. Even when SpongeBob points out the consequences of his deeds, Mr. Krabs just laughs and points out how much of a mess Plankton is now.
There are countless plot holes and inconsistencies with previous episodes, most notably with The Algae's Always Greener, where Plankton and Pearl directly interact with each other, making Plankton's fear of whales in this episode come out of nowhere.
This episode tries and fails miserably to do horror-comedy correctly.
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The nightmare scene adds to the whole atrocity of this episode.
The title card for some reason plays light-hearted music, which is a very bad contrast to this episode's scary tone.
This episode tries way too hard to make Plankton unlikable, as one part has him trying to take revenge on Mr. Krabs by tormenting him with his own worst fears and it portrays that moment as bad, which is very hypocritical of both the show and the episode.
Redeeming Qualities That Might Make You Want Another Course
The battle scene at the beginning is very entertaining.
The "Wacky Bucks" scene is the only funny moment in the episode.
Plankton and Pearl are the only likeable characters in this episode.
Despite the torment he goes through, this episode is still one of Plankton's most well-developed roles yet, making for a more interesting plot than the typical "Plankton tries to steal the Krabby Patty formula" storyline that has been used several times already.
Reception
"One Coarse Meal" was universally panned by fans and critics and is widely considered one of the worst episodes of the entire series. Along with its sister episode, Gary In Love, they received a 3.7/10 on IMDb, making it the 2nd lowest-rated episode of SpongeBob. PhantomStrider ranked it the number #1 worst episode of the series, making it his Lea favorite episode of the series. WatchMojo ranked it Number #1 on their Worst SpongeBob Episodes list. The Mysterious Mr. Enter ranked this episode as the #2 worst episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, behind "Pet Sitter Pat". Some fans and viewers stopped watching the show altogether after this episode. Just goes to show how appalling this episode was. It is also one of the lowest-rated episodes on Episode Ninja, with an average score of 5.66/10 based on 119 votes, making it the only episode prior to Season 11 to score less than a 6.0/10.
PIEGUYRULZ considered this episode to be his final 3rd least favorite episode of Season 7. Although, he doesn't think this one is bad enough to appear on his bottom 5 or even the Bottom 10 (all of his bottom 4 episodes of Season 6 (Boating Buddies, The Splinter, Truth or Square, and Choir Boys) more, Atlantis SquarePantis, SpongeHenge, Back to the Past, That Sinking Feeling, Are You Happy Now?, and, SpongeBob, You're Fired being examples of episodes he hates more) of the entire series, and he thought there're still some of the episodes are less entertaining to watch than this such as Boating Buddies for example.
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Trivia
This episode was originally going to be titled "Plankton Got Served" during production.
A similar episode, Plankton Paranoia, released in 2018 to a significantly better response.
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>>16134624 (OP)I like SpongeBob he my favourite