Spongebob and the Cave

I remember 2002 like it happened just a few years ago. I'd just started fifth grade in a brand new school in Seattle, Washington, and my father had just married his dental assistant Jessica. My sisters and I felt like life had thrown a curveball at us, especially after Jessica and her infant son had moved in. I was having the most trouble adjusting to it all, so I would often watch "SpongeBob SquarePants" as a form of escapism. Looking back now, it was mostly harmless and stupid fun but of all the episodes I watched during my childhood, one in particular still manages to give me nightmares to this very day.

It was a week after Halloween and we were still going through all the candy we'd managed to collect throughout the neighborhood. I'd just finished all my homework and I was excited to watch reruns of "No Weenies Allowed" and "Squilliam Returns." These were, and still are, my favorite episodes so I made absolute sure to be there when they aired... but they didn't.

Instead, I got "SpongeBob and the Cave," an episode that had never aired before and has not aired since. This episode was animated completely in CGI, but it wasn't the good kind. The sky was just a dark blue with no textures of any kind and the ground was shiny and beige. SpongeBob himself looked absolutely terrible and his body would always fluctuate into weird and impossible shapes while he moved. He was singing an extremely off-key version of the theme song while he was entering the titular cave and even while he was goofing around. I couldn't help but find it strange that this episode was ever airing at all even when it seemed like no effort had been put into it whatsoever. The off-key singing, the atonal music that was playing throughout the episode, the texture-less backgrounds and floors, the ugly model... everything screamed low-budget to me. Eventually, an eel appeared from out of nowhere and for some reason, he appeared to have Nigel Thornberry's face. SpongeBob stopped singing at that point and he got the hell out of there. Once he was out of the cave, he started running around in circles. A few seconds later, the eel popped out and snapped SpongeBob right into his stomach. That's when the episode ended and they went to commercial.

My first thought after the episode had ended was that Nickelodeon must have somehow screwed up and aired it by mistake, but as far as I knew, they'd always been thorough with airing episodes of their shows. I didn't know what else to think, so I just forgot about it. I did manage to find it again on YouTube a few days ago, but it would seem it was taken down for copyright reasons because I could never find it again. Honestly, it's gone.

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