Referring to either anything after the first movie or season 4, whichever you feel is when the golden age ended.
>>150991611The one where spongebob becomes a crazy cat lady and the episode is also an allegory for hunchback of notre dame. Also bob barker makes a cameo
That's a wide range of episodes, anon, so I'll choose multiple answers:>Post-moviePost-movie peaked pretty early on not gonna lie. Fear of a Krabby Patty, Krusty Towers, Have You Seen This Snail, Dunces and Dragons, all excellent stuff that could fit in well with pre-movie.I also enjoy later things like Friend or Foe, Gone, The Splinter, etc. Season 7 is when the show truly became a slog and earned a bad reputation and it wouldn't recover til after the sequel. I'm gonna go with Have You Seen This Snail as my favorite of the era.I liked post-movie's earnest attempts at expanding the world and taking the characters a little more seriously.>Post-sequelIt's not strong on writing but I like how creative the drawings/stories can get.Krabby Patty Creature Feature, The Krusty Bucket, Handemonium, Karen's Virus, I also didn't mind the fanservice they had early on, it didn't feel forced and more like a natural expansion of previous ideas (Bubbletown is good and I like that Puff x Krabs is an established ongoing character dynamic)Hard to choose a favorite but I'll go with Kooky Cooks.SpongeBob is going through another downward slump as of late but it's still putting out great stuff on occasion. Go Fetch! is one of the most recent episodes and it's genuinely the best use of CG in the entire franchise, it makes the theatrical films look like shit.
>>150991906IMO, seasons 10-11 are the closest SpongeBob has ever been to golden age quality after the first movie. Those seasons brought pretty expressive and fluid animation to the table, but the problem is that from season 13-onwards you can visibly tell how much the episodes just lean towards being style-over-substance. As a cartoonist and Ren & Stimpy fan myself I don’t have a problem with over-the-top animation and actually do dig it, but when you make the writing shit just to showcase the animation it becomes a problem that alienates people who aren’t animation fans, I feel like this is also the reason why SpongeBob was a bit flanderized after Hillenburgs death, but rather than being flanderized into a childish retard like Tibbitt SpongeBob he was flanderized into a goofball.I also notice the animation was far better in seasons 10-11 too, there was good timing and the wacky faces actually looked professionally done, you can tell which moments in season 12-present were done by younger and more inexperienced animators, not to say the younger animators can’t make good stuff, but I feel they need some more quality control with what they draw. "Meme face" discourse has caused people to argue whether they’re just meme faces or regular cartoony faces but honestly with seasons 12-now it feels like both are the case. I’ve made this image to showcase my thoughts on this, like 30 years ago Ren & Stimpy did NOT make faces that look like the ones of the bottom, they’re clearly what zoomers think qualifies as wacky faces.
>>150992333When people confuse Tex Avery takes with meme faces in modern cartoons, it's because the design sensibilities have changed under the influence of R&S and web cartoons. Some modern cartoonists can't hack the subtleties of making a crazy take balanced and strongly hierarchical. Those are the ugly takes, some of which are in the "regular pushed expressions" panel, that some people confuse with meme faces. However, all the drawings at the bottom are indeed meme faces.>
>>150992333This is a good image... The only one I don't really mind much in the meme faces section is the Newgrounds stuff
