Soaking up viewers

[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer] SpongeBob SquarePants graces the desk of Pasco county Sheriff’s Office spokesman Kevin Doll. The plastic toy squirts water and can drop his pants. “There’s something about the immature type humor that I really like,” says Doll of the Nickelodeon cartoon. “And I’ve seen enough bad things in my life to enjoy the good parts.”

By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic

© St. Petersburg Times
published May 16, 2002

SpongeBob SquarePants is a TV show about a tie-wearing household sponge and his undersea pals who live in a land called Bikini Bottom. And it's not just kids who love it.

He's a former U.S. Marine who now works for the Pasco County Sheriff's Office.

But when visitors stop by Kevin Doll's desk, they're greeted by a small plastic nod to his unorthodox TV obsession.

SpongeBob SquarePants.

Given to the Sheriff's Office spokesman by his wife as a Christmas gift, the toy squirts water and can drop his pants -- "The briefs are a little risque," admitted Doll, laughing -- serving as a subtle signal of Doll's devotion to a show originally crafted to please kids ages 2 to 11.

"I guess it's just so stupid, it's funny," said Doll, 40, of SpongeBob SquarePants -- a series he grew to love while watching with his 10-year-old stepdaughter, Kiirsten. "There's something about the immature type humor that I really like. And I've seen enough bad things in my life to enjoy the good parts."

[Nickelodeon]

Doll's enthusiasm is echoed by WFLA-Ch. 8 and WDAE-AM 620 sportscaster Chris Thomas, who regularly references the show on his radio and TV broadcasts, even hauling a SpongeBob doll onto his TV reports occasionally to spice a comment or two.

"The other day I was trying to think of my favorite SpongeBob character, and I couldn't do it. . . . I like them all," said Thomas, 54, who, like Doll, got hooked on the show while watching it with his daughter, 5-year-old Caitlin.

"It's a make-believe land with a diverse set of characters that represent all our weaknesses," he added, trying to explain why middle-aged grownups might warm to a cartoon about a tie-wearing household sponge and his undersea pals. "It's adult humor in a child package. It reminds me of watching Rocky and Bullwinkle when I was a kid."

For those who haven't somehow stumbled onto SpongeBob's singular appeal, all this fuss about a cartoon sponge must seem a little, well, strange.

Centered on the life of an earnest sea sponge who lives in a two-bedroom pineapple at the mythical undersea community of Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob SquarePants unfolds as a series of goofy situations -- SpongeBob plans a party, SpongeBob brings home a wild jellyfish, SpongeBob gets fired for performing too many feats of karate -- made outlandish by his cast of friends and his own guileless personality.

But unlike other buzzworthy TV hits -- say, ABC's The Bachelor or MTV's The Osbournes -- there's no deluge of media stories and personal appearances to hip the uninitiated to the most popular children's show on TV.

Ozzy Osbourne might wind up on the cover of Rolling Stone or on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, but just try finding an Entertainment Weekly cover or E! True Hollywood Story devoted to a show that somehow drew 18.6-million viewers ages 18 to 49 in February.

"If you don't have kids, it's totally possible that this whole SpongeBob thing passed you by," said Robert Thompson, head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Which is weird . . . that you could have a show that is a massive hit on cable, but totally passed (other) people by."

And make no mistake, it is a hit. Over 56.1-million viewers watched SpongeBob in February -- numbers helped by the fact that Nickelodeon plays the show up to four times a day. That was an increase from 48.5-million fans in November and 36.7-million viewers in July 2001, according to figures provided by the cable channel.

Since its July 1999 debut, celebrities such as Bruce Willis, Rob Lowe and Jennifer Love Hewitt have expressed a fondness for the show, which already has spawned a DVD release, Playstation game, CD sampler, digital trading cards and menswear boxer shorts.

But don't bother asking creator Stephen Hillenburg why adults gravitate to the show. "When you make something like this and it takes off . . . it's beyond you on a certain level, (explaining) why it happens," said Hillenburg, 40, who created SpongeBob after working on a cartoon called Rocko's Modern Life.

"Just the other day, somebody pointed out a web site called the Church of SpongeBob, with a whole life philosophy based on the episodes," added Hillenburg. (A sample: "Wearing lucky underpants may not work . . . but how can it hurt?") "Things like that are telltale signs you're reaching people."

To help the show expand its adult reach, Nickelodeon will air a half-hour special deep in prime time Friday night dubbed SpongeBob's House Party -- focused on SpongeBob's misguided effort to present the best party ever at his home.

The episode may offer some of the most grownup humor in the show's history, bouncing between SpongeBob's cartoon party and a live-action party held by Patchy, a pirate who lives in the suburbs and is president of the SpongeBob fan club (played by standup comic and Just Shoot Me guest player Tom Kenney, who also provides the voice of SpongeBob).

While SpongeBob's relentless planning and efforts to control his party nearly destroy it (he insists guests use subject cards to guide conversations and stuffs a pinata with deviled eggs), Patchy insists on performing a one-man-band repertoire that stops his party cold.

The live-action scenes are deliberately low budget, adding a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style absurdity to the proceedings. And the adult edge to the humor is often subtle -- a brief shot shows a female ship's figurehead catching a wooden sailor sculpture staring at her chest, while the voice of a puppet band hired to play at Patchy's home is provided by Lux Interior of the punk band the Cramps.

But Nickelodeon executives said they never worry about Hillenburg offering jokes that may be too grownup for the show's kiddie fans.

"Steve gets the audience, he's respectful. . . . You never get the sense he's going to any perverse place," said Kevin Kay, the executive vice president at Nickelodeon who helped Hillenburg develop SpongeBob. "Besides, part of what appealed to us about the show was that it made us laugh, too."

Hillenburg, who holds an undergraduate degree in nature sciences and marine biology and a graduate degree in experimental animation, developed the show as a mixture of influences -- including his past studies, the Rocko cartoon and Nickelodeon's legendary subversive cartoon Ren & Stimpy.

"What really clicked was when I drew a square sponge. . . . The idea of a squeaky clean, nerdy character who is literally square just clicked with me," he said. "It is an odd choice. Nickelodeon said, 'You want to do a series about a sponge?' But all those sea creatures I really liked hadn't been featured in a series of their own."

Hillenburg sent shock waves through the show's fan base when he let slip a few weeks ago that he planned to stop working on the show soon, shutting down series production once Nickelodeon has completed 60 episodes to focus on making a SpongeBob movie.

"TV can be a grind. . . . To keep the quality up, you have to stay pretty vigilant," said Hillenburg, noting that a final deal hasn't yet been cut for a movie, but all involved expect it to happen. "Everybody has to keep coming up with new ideas, keeping the animation solid, trying to top yourself. I've been focused on the show for four or five years now (the show was in development for 18 months), and I want to focus on a bigger project."

Kay downplayed Hillenburg's statements, noting that many cartoons stop making new episodes after 60 shows and that unseen SpongeBob episodes will air into 2003.

"For us, it just made sense," the executive added. "He wants to make a feature, and we want to make a feature. If it's successful, then we would hope to make more (TV episodes) later."

And does Hillenburg have any lingering resentment over the fact that he had to sell much of the SpongeBob rights to Nickelodeon just to get them to make the show?

"I heard this quote from a rap star once, who said, 'If you didn't want barbecue, why did you bring your pig to the picnic?' " Hillenburg said, laughing.

"I knew this was a commercial project from the beginning, and what I was hoping to gain was creative freedom . . . to make it better than animation that was just for selling toys," he said. "I think I thought it would be too weird for everybody. So we're just thankful people like the show."

At a glance

SpongeBob's House Party airs at 9:30 p.m. Friday on Nickelodeon. Grade: A. Regular episodes air weekdays at 8:30 a.m. and 5, 5:30 and 8 p.m.; on weekends at 10 and 10:30 a.m.

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