RJ Writing Ink

Kneel Before Zim!

Do you remember this show? Invader Zim, the cult classic of Nickelodeon. Created by comic book writer Jhonen Vasquez and premiering in 2001, this show isn’t like other Nicktoons. It was extremely dark for a kids cartoon. Too dark, it seems, for some kids to watch, and it worried a lot of parents.

Me, I didn’t care one bit. I loved Invader Zim because it was dark and different from other Nicktoons. I did think some of the episodes were a little too scary (I don’t even remember the “Dark Harvest” one that well). But it holds a special place in my heart for the amazing use of CGI. It was one of the first times I had ever seen CGI in a kids show, so I was mesmerized by it!

All the love can’t help with bad ratings, though, and the show got pulled in the middle of its second season, with a bunch of episodes remaining unreleased or unfinished. The last episode I ever saw was its Christmas Special, which aired sixteen years ago tonight. In honor of that, I decided to rewatch it for my 25 days of Christmas. So without further ado, I give you The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever.

Zim Ruins Christmas Forever

The entire story takes place in flashback, being told by a robotic snow who is a clear parody of Frosty the Snowman. He explains that two million years ago, Zim discovered the concept of Christmas, and more importantly Santa. 

After seeing how much humanity loved and adored Santa, Zim got an idea. An awful idea. Zim got a wonderful, awful idea. *cue the evil Grinch smile*

Using alien nanotechnology, Zim creates a robotic Santa suit for him to control, then with a flourish, presents himself to the world as the real Santa Claus.

Humanity successfully fooled, he summons them to the North Pole for a huge rally. In hindsight, the decorations, chanting, and the sinister overtones of the song, reminds me of a cult rally. It does give us the most oppressive and tyrannical Christmas Song ever, though. And I loved it!

Zim’s master plan is to build a teleporter and beam humanity to the Irken Empire to use as slaves. The only one with enough sense to oppose him is Dib. But since humans in Zim are stupid, they don’t believe Dib and Zim throws him in Jingle-Jail.

Fortunately, Dib doesn’t have to do anything this time around. Zim made the Santa Suit too good, and it’s started to think it’s the real Santa. Anything Christmas-related makes it take over.

Despite his best efforts, the suit manages to overpower Zim, trapping him inside.

So Zim’s trapped forever and Santa is real. Happy ending for all! Until Dib shows up with a giant robot suit and causes the suit to go berserk. 

The Fight I Couldn’t Show You

After a giant monster fight, Dib weakens the suit enough for Zim to escape, shrink it down, and have Dib throw it into space. There might have been a moral behind all that, but for the life of me, I still don’t know.

But despite thinking him destroyed, the Santa Suit, in fact, survived to gather power in deep space. Now it comes back every year on Christmas and terrorizes the Earth, so everyone has to live inside domes and placate him with milk and cookies. Dark

Dark Show, But I Loved It

Yeah, Invader Zim was a dark and scary cartoon more often than not, but that’s what it was supposed to be. That’s why I liked it so much: it was different, and not seeing it canceled leaves a hole in my heart. I know it’s sounds sappy, but I wanted to see where the series would go. This Christmas Special was the last episode that ever aired; the rest were released years later by Nickelodeon.

In hindsight, maybe it would have been a good idea to just leave Zim trapped inside the suit. It would have been a good way to end the series: Earth saved, Santa is real, and Dib got what he wanted with Zim stopped. At least we still have the comics and the upcoming movie. And even after all these years, I still love this Christmas Special! Ho-ho-ho, Happy Holidays one and all!

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I think that by now, you guys will have noticed a trend behind my choices: several have been from Nickelodeon. That’s what I mainly watched in the first half of my childhood. I didn’t discover Cartoon Network until after I was ten, and I didn’t get into Disney Channel until a year or so later. So, I have a fondness for Nicktoons. That’s not what I’m here to write about. I’m writing about Holidays Specials I’ve watched every day, and I picked an old Nickelodeon one, Holly Jolly Jimmy from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

Jimmy Doesn’t Believe in Santa

The premise behind the special is simple: it’s Christmastime in the town of Retroville, and everyone is getting into the spirit of the Holiday. Everyone, that is, except for Jimmy Neutron. As a boy of science, Jimmy refuses to believe in the idea of Santa Claus, as most of his abilities defy science. When he openly says so in class, it makes his best friend Carl run out crying.

The trope of “the kid who doesn’t believe in Santa” is not a new concept, but I can’t remember where I first saw it. Plenty of kids will go through a point in their childhood when they doubt in the existence of Santa. Almost every special that deals with this trope end up reaffirming the belief in some way. Personally, I don’t care if Santa is real or not. Historically, he was, but that’s a whole other ball game.

At any rate, Jimmy and his friends, Carl and Sheen, go to the North Pole to prove whether Santa is real or not. Despite all evidence saying so, Jimmy refuses to admit the truth out of pride. Then his DNA tracker accidentally “breaks Santa”.

So, now we have a “saving Christmas” story as well. The three decide to deliver all the presents, but fail and end up being rescued by Santa himself, finally affirming Jimmy’s belief in him. Then, in typical Santa fashion, he manages to save Christmas and deliver the boys and all the presents back home.

Simple Premise

Like I said, the ideas in this episode are not new, and while much of the special stands out as particularly memorable. Still, I did like Jimmy Neutron as a kid, and it was fun to see the main character grapple with an idea that went against everything he stands for and ends up accepting it.  I liked it enough, and it was a good reminder of one of my favorite memories: the Merry Nickmas theme Nickelodeon did in the early 2000s. 

Well, that’s about it for tonight. Gotta blast!

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There are plenty of Christmas specials out the wazoo, but there are more holidays in December than just Christmas. Coincidentally, as a kid the only specials I remember watching that had anything to do with Chanukah or Kwanzaa were made by the same show, Rugrats on Nickelodeon.

Rugrats was a personal favorite show of mine growing up, and with the revival of the series announced earlier this year, I’d thought now would be a good time to look back at their holiday specials. I’m not actually Jewish, so I don’t celebrate Hanukkah. But ever since I learned about the story behind the holiday, I’ve had a mild fascination with the holiday. Plus, I think driedels look like a lot of fun! So, here’s my look back at the Rugrats Chanukkah.

The babies, being babies, don’t really understand the meaning behind Chanukah. They take one look at the Menorah, how Tommy get’s presents every night, and their conclusion: it’s HIS BIRTHDAY! To be fair, that does have some logic to it from a kid’s point of view. 

The whole special is about the kids learning the meaning of Chanukah, though they are, at first distracted. So is Grandpa Boris: his childhood rival, Shlomo is playing the role of King Antioch, and when the Rugrats hear Boris complain about him, they decide they need to beat the “meany of Hanukkah”

As for Angelica… I don’t really care about Angelica. I never really liked her, because she’s mean and bossy all the time. She also personifies the kid at Christmas: she doesn’t give two cents about Hanukkah, she just wants to watch a dumb Christmas special. Then she enlists the Babies in order to do that at the Synagogue.

Eventually, all the plots come together as Boris and Shlomo resolve their rivalry and the babies (and Angelica) learn about the meaning of Hanukkah.

I honestly liked this special as a kid. It was different from the other Holiday Specials that I had been seeing, it was about something new, and I appreciated it for it. For the life of me, I cannot think of any other Hanukkah Special that was on for me as a kid to watch. As an adult, I can appreciate even more, because, and this sounds really corny, the holidays are universal. No matter what religion you are, this should be the time of year when we together and celebrate and have fun. So, to all my readers, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays.

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Before we start, I would just like to say that I do not, repeat, DO NOT consider Nickelodeon’s idea of “Spongebob Merrypants” to be a Christmas Special. Including Santa Claus in an episode does not make it a Christmas Special by default.

Now, today as a tribute to Stephen Hillenburg, the man who created their most popular cartoon, Nickelodeon ran an 8-hour marathon of SpongeBob. Some of the best episodes from the first three seasons of SpongeBob (AKA what fans call “The Golden Age”) running from noon to 8. Since I hadn’t watched a holiday special yet today, I decided to cap off the night with a SpongeBob Christmas special. 

I was tempted to do the first special, “Christmas Who?”, but I wanted to save that for another day. So instead, I did the more recent one, “It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!”

I had always loved SpongeBob, but once I reached a certain age, I moved on to new shows. Plus I had to worry about school more. I kept up with the show, but it didn’t entertain me as much as before. Then I saw the stop-motion SpongeBob Christmas Special and fell in love all over again!

Just Like The Old Days

This special has all the trappings of the legendary stop-motion Christmas Specials of the 1960s and 70s. Several songs about Christmas? Check. A problem that threatened to ruin Christmas? Check. An appearance by Santa Claus himself as Christmas is saved? Check! And as an added bonus, Patchy the Pirate even plays a mailman delivering mail to Santa. Well, more like he steals a mailman’s truck to get his letter to Santa

The whole special revolves around Plankton’s attempts to ensure that he finally gets on Santa’s nice list. Rather than be nice, though, he decides to turn everyone else in Bikini Bottom into jerks using a convenient new element called Jerktonium. It turns everyone who ingests it into jerks, so he laces fruitcake with it, and tricks SpongeBob into feeding it to everyone in Bikini Bottom.

Pretty soon everyone in town is mean and grumpy. Except for SpongeBob, whose love of the holidays makes him immune. It also means he’s the only one who can save Christmas. One Christmas Song later…

It works, though Santa nearly writes off the whole town as naughty. Thankfully, Plankton’s Plan B (release a robot SpongeBob to ruin his good name) backfires when tries to kill Santa.

SpongeBob ends up saving Santa and everyone gets back on their rightful place on Santa’s list, but I’m confused at how Plankton thought this would work. It was two days before Christmas. How could everyone being jerks in two days put them on the naughty list so easily, or get Plankton off it? 

Thank You, Spongebob Christmas

Well, it doesn’t really matter. I liked this special. It was original, it captures the spirit of the original SpongeBob Christmas Special, and it hearkens back to some of the specials that my parents grew up on. It was an excellent way to cap off a day dedicated to the memory of the man who helped make my childhood. RIP Stephen Hillenburg! And to all of my readers, happy holidays!

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My fellow goofy goobers, nickelodeoneans, and millennials: yesterday Nickelodeon announced on social media that Stephen Hillenberg, creator of the legendary show Spongebob Squarepants, had passed away from ALS.

You may now commence with the crying.

 I’m crying too, by the way. But not just out of sadness. I’m crying tears of joy, laughter, and gratitude. Growing up, Spongebob was probably my favorite cartoon to watch on TV, not counting Avatar: The Last Airbender. I loved watching Spongebob and his friends in their adventures through Bikini Bottom. I played the video games, I saw the original movie, and read the comics. For a time, my parents even banned me from watching the show because it was making me too silly. That just made me love it more 😉

Spongebob was a massive part of my childhood, and I’m taking the creator’s passing pretty hard. As hard as I took Stan Lee’s passing. But after I wipe the tears off my face, I just started remembering all the good memories Spongebob gave me. And then I wanted to just start laughing. Now, I just want to talk about a few of my favorite episodes and moments in Spongebob in honor of the man who gave us so many laughs. In no particular order, by the way.

Pranks a Lot

I remember this one very well. It came out on video before it ever aired on TV, so I got my parents to haul me to the Library to check it out first chance I got. Spongebob and Patrick bought that can of invisible spray from a jokes shop and decide to use to prank everyone in Bikini Bottom. So they strip down and go around scaring the whole town into thinking they’re ghosts. But when they try and scare Mr. Krabs, he turns the tables on them and exposes them.

The whole plot of the episode is funny enough as it, watching everyone freak out over the “ghosts.” But the real clincher is how Mr. Krabs gets payback on the duo. Instead of getting mad, he pretends to laugh it off. But as soon as the two leave the bathrooms in the Krusty Krab, this happens:

I don’t remember if I laughed at this or just sat there smiling, but I can imagine that I was laughing myself to death on the inside. The way Mr. Krabs sets up the prank by fooling Spongebob and Patrick and then timing it just as the episode ends is comedic gold. Now THAT is what I call comedic gold.

I Had an Accident

I think this episode aired right before the Kid’s Choice Awards in 2003. Spongebob breaks his butt in a sand-sledding accident and then gets too scared to leave his house. Then a gorilla attacks Sandy and Patrick and he has to go outside and save them.

I liked this episode as a whole, but the really funny came at the end, with this:

To this very day, I have no idea what it was that I had witnessed. Like, no idea at all. I think that that was the point, though: to get people to laugh at the sheer absurdity of what had happened. That or the staff couldn’t come up with an ending. Either way, Stephen Hillenberg did good.

Goofy Goober Rock!

I loved this movie as a kid! I was one of the first people in line to go see The Spongebob Squarepants Movie. Not to mention I read the junior novel and played the video game. But this was my favorite scene by far because it has to do with the underlying message of the film: it’s alright to be yourself.

Spongebob spends the whole movie trying to prove to everyone that he’s not a kid, but by the film’s climax, he learns to accept that he is very much a kid in a man’s body. And he’s fine with that because he still managed to do everything a “kid” shouldn’t do. Then he proceeds to jam out to one of the coolest songs I had heard in my childhood. 

The message rings true even today now that I’m grown up. With everything negative that comes with being an adult, it’s easy to end up being a Squidward. I’d rather be an optimistic goofball like Spongebob and enjoy my life than spend it being a Squidward! #GoofyGoober4Life

Help Wanted. Stephen’s Legend Begins

This was the episode that started it all: Help Wanted. Spongebob goes to get his dream job as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab (not something most people would want, but Spongebob made it look cool). Mr. Krabs and Squidward sent him on that wild goose chase, and then the infamous scene happens:

I wish I had a video of what happens next, but YouTube seems deadset on not letting that happen. But it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen in my life.

Band Geeks

For nearly every fan of Spongebob out there, this is considered to be the best episode of the entire show. The finest moment of Stephen Hillenberg. It gave us so many jokes and funny moments: from the “dying animal” joke at the start, to the “kicking” incident, and of course, Patrick’s words of wisdom up above. Also, eager face:

But that’s not why it’s the best. It’s the ending. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call it one of the greatest moments in cartoon history. IT’S THAT GOOD! I actually call it “Squidward’s Finest Hour”, because it is one of the few times that Squidward, or any of the other cast members, is able to be this successful. I read a tweet on Twitter yesterday from another fan, saying that they felt this moment perfectly encapsulates Spongebob’s rise to success: it was nervous and unsure of itself, but once it got going, everybody loved it, and everyone loved Stephen Hillenburg for giving it to us. Just look at how much love the clip of it got when someone posted it on Twitter. It’s clear that Spongebob meant a lot to my generation, and that a lot of us will miss Stephen Hillenburg and thank him for what he gave us.

What Stephen Hillenburg and so many others created nearly twenty years ago has become one of the greatest cartoons of all time, with a cast that’s right up there with the gods of cartoons like Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and the Simpsons. Decades from now when it’s all over, the fans of today are probably going to be sharing this with their grandchildren and scholars are gonna study it as an example of what cartoons can do for our culture. So, I’m only going to say this once: Stephen Hillenberg, THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!!!!!

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