Bumper to Bumper

Characters

• Template:Data:Links
• Mrs. Puff
• Gary the Snail
• Fancy guy
• Teenage fish
• Highway Speed Patrol Officer
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  • Steve
  • Incidental 64
  • Incidental 41
  • Incidental 48
  • Stretch
  • Incidental 8
  • Incidental 49
  • Frank (Inc 105)
  • Incidental 92

Synopsis

One day at Mrs. Puff's Boating School, one fish is doing the boating course perfectly with Mrs. Puff, and then it is SpongeBob's turn.

File:Bumper to Bumper 039a.png

"No buts, SpongeBob! You fail this test over and over."

SpongeBob puts the boat to reverse, then he crashes it to the obstacles and crashes into a house. Mrs. Puff gets very furious at SpongeBob after he fails the test again. SpongeBob cries in despair and run to his house. At home, Mrs. Puff thinks about how SpongeBob could pass his driving test, and then realizes SpongeBob is afraid of the course and that if she took him to drive on a real road, he would pass and he would eventually be out of her life forever. Mrs. Puff goes over to SpongeBob's house and tells him to forget about what she said earlier. Mrs. Puff takes SpongeBob to an abandoned road, but SpongeBob is scared.

Mrs. Puff tells him to keep repeating "Focus on the road, there is nothing but the road" to get his confidence back. SpongeBob follows her instructions and imagines himself doing crazy driving tricks and poses as he proceeds to repeat the phrase. When SpongeBob has almost passed all the tests, Mrs. Puff tells him to safely dock the vessel as the last step, but due to constantly repeating the phrase, SpongeBob has mesmerized himself into a daze and cannot focus on what he is doing. He soon drives out of the road and freaks out. SpongeBob gets on a dangerous shortcut and gets back on a road, but he actually gets on a 10-lane intertidal seaway and he is gripped with fear and cannot concentrate once he realizes that.

A police officer catches them speeding and thought they were reckless drivers because Mrs. Puff crossed the county line, which she should not have done. The police officer tells SpongeBob to pull over, but instead he accelerates as he mistakes the gas for the brake causing the officer to believe he is running from them. Then, when Mrs. Puff tells to stop the vessel again, he finally parks the boat safely. Seeing that the boat didn't get a single scratch, SpongeBob has officially passed the test, and Mrs. Puff happily gives him his driver's license, feeling that she can no longer endure him in boating class anymore. Unfortunately, the police officer arrests Mrs. Puff for violating her parole and declares the test null and void before ripping up SpongeBob's license. As Mrs. Puff goes to jail, she says, "SpongeBob, I'll get you for this! I'll get you!" and the episode ends.

Production

Metadata for a character drawing of SpongeBob from this episode on Virginia Hawes' website is dated April 23, 2012.

The episode was confirmed and added to the US Copyright Office on October 25, 2012, along with its sister episode "Little Yellow Book."

Model sheets

File:SB904 CH sc016 shattered puff.psd.png

Art

Character design

• Designed by Virginia Hawes.

• File:SB SAD SITTING.jpeg
• File:SB BOAT SHOES.jpeg
• File:ROAD-SB-2.jpeg

Storyboards

• Rough boarded by Casey Alexander, revisions by Tuck Tucker.

• File:SB904CaseyAlexander.jpeg
• File:325-904.jpg
• File:325-904-1.jpg

Release

Broadcast

• This episode was paired up with a rerun of "Demolition Doofus" during the original airing.

Distribution

Format	Title	Region
DVD	The Complete Ninth Season	United States, Australia
	Evil Spatula	Poland
	Glove World Forever	Europe, Latin America, Australia, South Africa
Box set	The Next 100 Episodes	United States
	The Best 200 Episodes Ever	United States
	The Best 300 Episodes Ever	United States
Digital release	SpongeBob SquarePants Vol. 15	Global

Trivia

General

• This episode was originally scheduled to premiere with "Little Yellow Book" on Sunday, November 25, 2012 at 7:45 PM, but was pulled at the last minute and was instead moved to November 17, 2012.
• The title card is similar to that of "Cephalopod Lodge" and "Model Sponge," except it is brown.
• The fancy guy from "Grooming Gary" returns as a character in a show that two fish are watching.
• SpongeBob is previously said to be "unteachable" by Captain Frostymug in "License to Milkshake," which is another season 9 episode, even being written and storyboarded by the same team.
• A recursive image appears in this episode for the second time in series with the first time being in the episode, "No Free Rides."
• This episode reveals that SpongeBob is afraid of the driving course.
• When Mrs. Puff muted SpongeBob, he mouths the word "unteachable."
• SpongeBob says, "Focus on the road, there is nothing but the road" 21 times.
• During SpongeBob's episode of psychedelic scenes due to his hypnotic mantra, SpongeBob is shown to be driving on a mobius strip, a figure with only one side, and one boundary, though it can be easily made from one strip of paper.
• List of tasks on SpongeBob's list:
  1. Boating within the lines
  2. Uses turn signals
  3. Obeying speed limit
  4. Round-about navigation
  5. Vertical driving
  6. Jumping gaps
  7. 10-point turn
  8. Avoiding obstacles
  9. Safe 'n steady acceleration
  10. Bump handling
  11. Mobius drag strip
  12. Safely dock vessel
• This is the third episode SpongeBob almost knows how to drive. The first was "Boating School," and the second was "The Hot Shot."

Dub facts

• In the Serbian dub, the police officer who chased SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff sounds like the Montenegrin from the well-known Yugoslavian movie "A Great Guy at Heart" from 1981.

Episode references

• When Mrs. Puff sits down on her couch, a small picture of her sitting down at the same shot can be seen next to her, making a recursive picture. This is a callback to another infinite picture in Mrs. Puff's house in "No Free Rides."

Cultural references

• The Intertidal Seaway is a parody of the US Interstate Highway System.
• SpongeBob's trance might be a reference to Highway hypnosis.
• The two teenage fish watching a 3D movie are a parody of Jay and Silent Bob.
  • They could also be a parody of the characters Beavis and Butt-Head from the MTV animated sitcom of the same name.

File:Bumper to Bumper 125.png

The Möbius strip road.

• The curvy road that SpongeBob drives on is a Möbius strip.

Errors

File:Bumper to Bumper 048.png

Mrs. Puff's shoes are black, when they are supposed to be red.

• Mrs. Puff's shoes are wrongfully colored black from their usual red throughout the episode.
  • This error also occurs in "Knock Knock, Who's There?"
• When Mrs. Puff tells SpongeBob to scoot over, he has a seatbelt on. When the camera zooms in, his seatbelt disappears.
• The boat that is used for the driving test in the outskirts has four wheels, when usually the boats have three wheels.
• SpongeBob calls Mrs. Puff 'Ms. Puff' when he asks if he is 'unteachable' in the outskirts.
• When the policeman first yells at SpongeBob, he has a megaphone. In the next shot, after SpongeBob accidentally speeds up, the policeman's megaphone is suddenly gone.
• When the policeman comes up to Mrs. Puff, the security cuff on her ankle disappears (also mentioned missing during the exam), then when she looks down at her ankle, it reappears.
• When Mrs. Puff gets thrown into the police car, she is wearing hand cuffs. When she appears at the window threatening to get SpongeBob, her hand cuffs are suddenly gone.

Video

File:SpongeBob SquarePants Driving Test In 3D Nickelodeon UK

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
French	La maxime du conducteur	The Driver's Motto
German	Denk nur an die Straße	Just Think About the Road
Hebrew	פגוש אל פגוש pgush el pgush	Face to Face
Italian	C'è solamente la strada	There is Only the Road
Russian	Бампер к бамперу Bamper k bamperu	Bumper to Bumper
Spanish (American)	Parachoques con parachoques	Bumper from Bumper
Spanish (European)	De choque en choque	From Crash to Crash