Doing Time

Template:Infobox episode Characters Present:

• Mrs. Puff
• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Patrick Star
• Policefish
• Officer Nancy
• Inmates
• Fish at Shady Shoals
• Fred (janitor, accountant)
• Mayor
• Bank Teller
• Fish at Bank
• Sylvester
• Donna (2 cameos)

Songs:

• Surfin' Summer
• Pomp and Circumstance

Plot

SpongeBob is taking his driver's license exam yet again, and ends up leaving the driving course and wrecking the city before driving off an unfinished bridge the mayor just opened. The police follow the boat and end up driving off the bridge themselves. They hit a truck full of fruit punch which is being delivered to Shady Shoals Rest Home, causing it to explode and flood the home in punch. Although SpongeBob is responsible, Mrs. Puff is sent to prison for gross negligence. In prison, she realizes that she'll never see SpongeBob again, and starts to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, SpongeBob is depressed that Mrs. Puff in jail, and Patrick tells him it is his fault. The duo set out to free her from jail, first trying to rob the "1st Nautical Bank" in order to get arrested themselves, but fail.

They then disguise themselves as rocks that the prisoners are made to smash as labor, and try to communicate with Mrs. Puff, who calls the guards, but they dismiss it as a hallucination and move her to kitchen duty. SpongeBob and Patrick are then smashed by another inmate, costing them their deposit on the costumes. They then hide in a vat of chili in the cafeteria and offer to help Mrs. Puff escape through it, but she explains to them that she likes it in prison, which they refuse to believe. She calls for the prison guards again, and is reassigned again. SpongeBob and Patrick appear to her yet again on a hanger assembly line, and when she calls for the guards, they dismiss SpongeBob and Patrick as raw materials and send Mrs. Puff to her cell, convinced that she is going insane. SpongeBob and Patrick next appear in Mrs. Puff's toilet, and when she calls the guards, they turn out to be SpongeBob and Patrick in disguise. When she next sees the guards, she rips off their faces, and is put in solitary confinement. She is glad that she is finally safe from SpongeBob, but she begins hallucinating her room to be made of sponge (SpongeBob), and actually goes insane.

She wakes up screaming in the car flying off the cliff, and realizes that it was a dream. However, she wakes up again and again, in a series of false awakenings. After several of these, she says "Oh, forget it."

Quotes

• SpongeBob: (in the bank) ALRIGHT! PUT THE MONEY IN THE BAG! (cut to inside of the bank, where SpongeBob is shown wearing a sock over his head, holding a sack, facing the opposite direction of the teller. Patrick stands in the background with a sock over his head, too.) PUT IT IN!!

Teller: Um, you're facing the wrong way, sir.

SpongeBob: Oh. (laughs and turns around) ALRIGHT! GIVE ME THE MONEY!!

Teller: Will that be from your savings or your checking account, sir?

SpongeBob: Uh, savings.

Teller: May I please see some identification?

SpongeBob: Sure. (takes out his ID and gives it to the teller) Here ya go.

Teller: Thank you. (cut to a shot of the ID, which is SpongeBob's Jellyfishers Club Membership card. SpongeBob lifts up his sock mask and gives Patrick the thumbs up. Patrick thumbs-up him back.) Sir, we are seeing a balance of $0.00 for both of your accounts.

• SpongeBob: Oh.
• Teller: Next! (cut to SpongeBob and Patrick walking out of the bank)
• Mrs. Puff: (singing) Happiness is just two kinds of ice cream!

Trivia/Goofs

• This is the third time Mrs. Puff has been sent to jail, the first two being "Hall Monitor" and "No Free Rides". The fourth time will be in "Ditchin'"
• Originally, the episode ended with a scene similar to the beginning, but this time, it was SpongeBob that got arrested instead of Mrs. Puff, much to her delight.

• When SpongeBob and Patrick appear inside the pot of chili, they appear to be much smaller compared to Mrs. Puff.
• Tom has a female voice in this episode.
• 26th time Squidward doesn't appear.
• This is the second episode in which the majority is revealed to be just a dream. The first one was Procrastination, and the third is The Main Drain.
• When the juice truck starts to tip over, a police car can be seen far away, missing by a long shot. It is in the same position the second time there is a crash
• The first time the Bikini Bottom Jail is shown, there is a padlock with a "cannonball" weight attachted to it. But the next time, the weight is gone and only the padlock is present
• In the cutaway gag, when the fish is in working as an accountant, Fred can be seen in front of him, contradicting the fact that he was working as the janitor of Shady Shoals earlier in the episode
• This episode's cutaway gag (when SpongeBob tells Patrick that she forgot about the outside world of prison, the random fish is shown going to work, then being there then looking out the window at night as his wife asks if he's coming to bed) is a perfect example of the similarity to Family Guy's cutaways
• This episode is a paradox, which is a never-ending cycle.
• When Mrs. Puff is working outside with rocks and Spongebob and Patrick disguise themselves as rocks, A guard tells her it's the heat. She then believes it is and walks away. As she walks away, her hat changes colours.
• It is revealed that Mrs. Puff's first student is Spongebob when she opens her Boating School. As of her flashback, this explains the origin of boating disaster.
• This marks the second time Spongebob is seen in the toilet bowl, but is not recognized. The first time was in The Bully: a student sees a live action sponge in the toilet and mutters, "Nice". In Doing Time, the guard grumbles, "They don't pay me enough for this," and flushes Spongebob and Patrick.

Errors

• Mrs. Puff's hat changes colors during this episode. When Mrs. Puff goes to lunch duty, her hat turns from red to blue, and one second later, it changes back to red. When the police are leading Mrs. Puff into jail, her hat changes from blue to red to blue again. And when Mrs. Puff drinks her cup of water her hat turns black then back to red. Than again, most of the episode is a dream.
• When Mrs. Puff's jail cell is first shown, there is a single bed. But later, it is a bunk bed. Once again, this can be excused because it is Mrs. Puff's dream
• When Spongebob crashes into the juice truck for the second time, the boat he was driving can be seen. But in the next shot, it is gone.
• When Mrs. Puff is first put into the solitary confinement, there is a rubber duck in one of the corners. But when Spongebob says "Made of sponge!", there is holes on the SpongeBob room and the rubber duck disappears. This, once again, is Mrs. Puff's dream.

APM music identification

• Horlepiep - SpongeBob is once again taking his boating exam.
• Hail to the Chief A - "It is with great pride that I officially open this unfinished bridge."
• Pomp and Circumstance - Flashback of the opening of Mrs. Puff's Boating School.
• Hawaiian Breeze - "Alright, seniors, let's open these windows so the world can see your nice white clothes."
• Surfin' Summer A - The Beach Boys-like tune that Fred listens to on his headphones.
• Hawaiian Cocktail - "But I don't belong here! It's all a big mistake!"
• Keel Row - "No more phone solicitors, no more SpongeBob, no more company potlucks, no more SpongeBob, no more road rage, no more SpongeBob, no more insurance payments, no more SpongeBob...No More SpongeBob!....No More SpongeBob!!...NO MORE SPONGEBOB!!!!!....I think I'm gonna like this place."
• Kamakani B - "Class just isn't the same without Mrs. Puff."
• Cierre Bob Esponja - SpongeBob and Patrick try to rob a bank.
• Springtime for Lovers - "These are my people!"
• Hawaiian Link A - Mrs. Puff walks away from the kitchen as SpongeBob and Patrick watch.
• Lonely Stranger - SpongeBob gets arrested.