The world crushes us all. No one more than children. Don't get me wrong, I have children, and with 6.7 billion inhabitants on the planet, everybody needs a little crushing now and then for society to function. (No, you cannot throw your spaghetti in the waiter's face.)
And yet SpongeBob and the Terminator are not cowed by the world's huge pile of petty conventions. SpongeBob laughs at the tsunami of rigid societal rules, while the Terminator fills them full of blazing hot lead -- two coping techniques more than a few of us may have fantasized about.
Time and again, SpongeBob defies the established custom and instead of being punished is rewarded. In "Idiot Box," one of the television series' more memorable episodes -- and that's saying something -- the Stephen Hillenburg creation and his dimwitted sidekick Patrick Star excitedly open a giant box, which contains a television. The two promptly discard the device and hop into the big box, where they use their imaginations to create a new and more entertaining world of avalanche rescues and pirate adventures. (The friends are promptly ridiculed by Squidward, a sarcastic and naysaying octopus and stand-in for parents, who later tries to join in the box fun but can't.)
"We don't need television. Not as long as we have . . . our imagination," explains SpongeBob, who summons a tiny rainbow in his hands. The message is clear -- don't be bound by the narrow vision of others and revel in the power of your own mind. Like the person who dreamed up the SpongeBob ceiling fan.
Another classic episode, which requires no imagination to understand its larger appeal, is called "The Bully." It sounds more like Terminator territory, but bullying is a theme frequently explored in the undersea world of Bikini Bottom. (Imagine television writers who were picked on as children and then working through their issues as adults -- and getting paid for it!)
SpongeBob gets a new classmate named Flatts the Flounder, who despite earnest attempts at friendship is interested in only one thing -- pulverizing the sponge. SpongeBob runs, hides, even tries to form alliances, but all to no avail. Finally, SpongeBob surrenders to his fate and Flatts pounds away.
Suddenly, SpongeBob realizes something everyone in a similar situation wishes they could -- "I'm absorbing his blows like I was made of some kind of spongy material." It doesn't hurt, and eventually the bully is utterly exhausted and defeated by the rope-a-dope.
