Ditchin'

Characters

• Barnacle Boy
• Mermaid Man
• Man Ray
• Realistic Fish Head
• Patrick Star
• Template:Data:Links
• Jellyfish
• Sandy Cheeks
• Squidward Tentacles ^(mentioned)
• Mrs. Puff
• Template:Data:Links
  • Incidental 40
  • Incidental 115
  • Incidental 37B
  • Incidental 7
  • Incidental 41
  • Incidental 46
  • Incidental 73
  • Incidental 47
  • Incidental 42
  • Incidental 48
  • Incidental 4
  • Incidental 105
  • Incidental 107
  • Incidental 67
  • Sandals
  • Scooter
  • Incidental 11
  • Incidental 150
  • Incidental 152
  • Incidental 64
  • Incidental 27
  • Incidental 114
  • Incidental 151
  • Incidental 49
  • Incidental 102
  • Incidental 103
  • Incidental 14
  • Incidental 153
  • Incidental 2
  • Incidental 69
  • Incidental 37A
  • Incidental 108 ^{(name revealed)}
  • Fred
  • Incidental 22
  • Incidental 45
  • Incidental 118
  • Policeman 2
  • Incidental 92
  • Incidental 31
  • Incidental 8
• Old Man Jenkins
• Other beachgoers
• Octopus children
• One of the octopus quintuplets
• King Neptune ^(mentioned)

Synopsis

After watching an episode of The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, SpongeBob and Patrick see a commercial for the new book saying that Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy will be signing the book starting at 8 o'clock. SpongeBob is unhappy due to the fact that he has to go to boating school. Patrick suggests calling in sick, but SpongeBob does not want his perfect attendance record to end. They then decide that SpongeBob will wait until he has to go to the bathroom, and then sneak to the comic book store when Mrs. Puff gives him the bathroom key.

The next day in boating school, SpongeBob has to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Puff gives him the bathroom key and tells him to return it to her desk, and with that, SpongeBob exits the school. He and Patrick get to the store and get their books signed and walk through Jellyfish Fields. The jellyfish start to lift up Patrick and let him sit on them, with Patrick stating they are "friendly." They then throw themselves into SpongeBob's net, then leave. SpongeBob and Patrick continue ending up buying ice cream. Incidental 49 congratulates SpongeBob on being her 100th customer and tells him he can come back for free ice cream anytime.

File:Sandy in Ditchin'-21.png

Badminton.

The two pursuit into Goo Lagoon where they get into a Badminton match with Sandy and a friend named Dale. SpongeBob and Patrick end Sandy's unbeatable streak and are convinced by their fans to play another round. The cops come and arrest Dale, who is an ex-con on probation, for eating gummy fish. A fish tells SpongeBob that he and Dale were classmates back at Boating School and he was a nice guy until he started cutting class and ever since then, he became a criminal. With this, SpongeBob, who fears that he will meet the same fate as Dale if he kept ditching class, started to head back to school.

File:Ditchin' 200.png

Mrs. Puff being sent to jail for ditchin' jury duty.

SpongeBob has to race through the Bikini Bottom hug fest where a woman grabs him. He forces her to let go and continues. He ends up in a pit of tar and starts to drown, remembering the last words that Mrs. Puff said to him. Realizing he never returned the bathroom key, SpongeBob then fights his way out with a crowd cheering him on. He makes it back to the school with Mrs. Puff at the door and she becomes infuriated. He explains what he did, with her not knowing what he is talking about and does not have time for it since she has her own problems. The police are arresting her for ditching jury duty. The car pulls off with her telling SpongeBob to never ditch. SpongeBob adheres and says he will never ditch again, leaving her furious and confused with him wondering what "again" meant.

Production

Art

• File:SB 614 mm bb comic book open 2.jpg
• File:3625768959 fbba074991 c.jpg

Release

• The episode is available on the Viking-Sized Adventures, Season 6 Volume 2, Complete Sixth Season, Triple Pack 2, Big Hits: Volume 1, Time Travel, Kids Double Pack: Volume 5, Kids Double Pack: Volume 7, SpongeBob's Legendary Adventures, The Ultimate SpongeBob Box Set, SpongeBob SquarePants Vol. 9, The SpongeBob SquarePants Collection, The SpongeBob SquarePants 8 Season DVD Collection, The Best 200 Episodes Ever, and Next 100 Episodes DVDs.

Trivia

General

• The title card is similar to "Mrs. Puff, You're Fired," except the lines are blue and the text is 3D and purple.
• SpongeBob cannot go to see Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy because class starts before 8:00, but in the episode "New Student Starfish," SpongeBob says that class does not start until 9:00. So, the time school starts must have changed.
• The two octopus children from "Squidville" make a cameo in the line for Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy's autograph.
• Sandy is good at badminton and was undefeated before being beaten by SpongeBob and Patrick, yet the crowd only cheered for SpongeBob and not Patrick.
• In "The Fry Cook Games," fish are cooked as fish sticks, and Incidental 39 sells them. In this episode, Dale gets arrested for possessing Quasi-Gummy Chewy Candy Fish on account of it being deemed cannibalism. The fish sticks were made from real fish, but the gummy fish were not, so Dale should not have gotten arrested.
• Dale's friend said that Dale has been a criminal ever since he started cutting class, even though everyone else in this episode calls it ditching class.
• This is the fourth episode to feature Goo Lagoon without Larry the Lobster. The first was "No Weenies Allowed," the second was "Sun Bleached," and the third was "The Card."
• This is the fourth episode where Mrs. Puff goes to jail. The first was "Hall Monitor," the second was "No Free Rides," and the third was "Doing Time."
• In the German dub, this episode is called "Schulschwänzer," which means "Truancy," a synonym for ditching.
• In the Latin America dub, this episode is called "No Dejes la Escuela," translating to "Don't Leave School."
• In the Indonesian dub, the scene where SpongeBob and Patrick going to the Jellyfish Fields is skipped to the two buying ice cream. Like most of season 5 and early season 6 episodes, this was done mostly due to time constraints.
• During a tribute to Ernest Borgnine, this episode was skipped.
• During the SpongeBob vs. The Goo marathon, this episode was paired with "Selling Out."
• Tar pits do not exist underwater in real life. Also, they act like quicksand in this episode, when in real life, tar pits are only a few inches deep and are safe to walk through.
• This is the sixteenth episode to be bookended by a soundtrack, in this case, "Cream Pie". The first was "Take That! (a)" in "Karate Choppers", the second was "Down by the Riverside" in "Survival of the Idiots", the third was "Daytime Drama" in "Dumped", the fourth was "Nostalgic Hawaii" in the short "Gary Takes a Bath", the fifth was "Grass Skirts Blowing (Hilo March)" in "Club SpongeBob", the sixth was "Horlepiep" in "New Student Starfish", the seventh was "Disneyland" in "Krabby Land", the eighth was "Sunny Samoa" in "Bummer Vacation", the ninth was "Wahini Wobble Faster" in "Driven to Tears", the tenth was "Puka" in the short "Waiting", the eleventh was "Kailua Jubilee" in "Breath of Fresh Squidward", the twelfth was in "Tentacally Speaking" in "A Flea in Her Dome", the thirteenth was "Drunken Sailor" in "Penny Foolish", the fourteenth was "Slide Whistle Stooges Full Mix" in "Slide Whistle Stooges", and the fifteenth was "Hawaiian Misadventures B" in "Giant Squidward".
  • Including "Christmas Who?" would make this the seventeenth time.
  • This is the eighth episode to be bookended by an original soundtrack, the others being "Driven to Tears", "Waiting", "Breath of Fresh Squidward", "A Flea in Her Dome", "Penny Foolish", "Slide Whistle Stooges", and "Giant Squidward".

Errors

File:Ditchin' 003.png

• When Mermaid Man says, "You'll never escape this time, Man Ray!," his purple belt is miscolored.

File:Ditchin' 012.png

Barnacle Boy's missing mouth.

• When the narrator says, "You just enjoyed another exciting episode of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.," Barnacle Boy's mouth is missing.

File:Errors on Mrs. Puff's Boating School students in Dichin'.png

Boating School student errors.

• There are three errors during two of the scenes in Mrs. Puff's Boating School.
  • Incidental 41's body and pants color changes from yellow and blue to blue and brown.
  • Incidental 46's bottom changes from green to red.
  • The fish sitting behind SpongeBob's desk changes from Incidental 47 to Incidental 42.
• The fans outside of Near Mint Comic Books should not have their comic books yet because when one gets a book signed, they buy the book at the store and then go over to the signer and get it signed.
• When Patrick eats his chocolate ice cream, he has only one tooth, but when he is done swallowing, he is seen with a full set of teeth.

File:Sandy in Ditchin'-26.png

Sandy's white boots instead of gray.

• In one shot of the badminton competition, Sandy's gray boots are colored white.
• Earlier in the episode, when SpongeBob is in Mrs. Puff's Boating School, Dale is not seen. Later in the episode, a fish stated Dale went to Boating School before getting arrested.
• When SpongeBob gets his legs back before the Bikini Bottom Hug Festival, his left eye flickers.
• When SpongeBob is trapped in tar, he remembers Mrs. Puff's kind last words as "Make sure you return that bathroom key to my desk or you're in big trouble mister!" However, after she said those words that SpongeBob claimed were her last, she also said, "No dilly-dallying!"