TV URBAN LEGEND: One of the earliest SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons, "Reef Blower," had no dialogue because the recording equipment broke before the dialogue could be recorded.

The first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants aired on Nickelodeon on May 1, 1999, following the 1999 Kid's Choice Awards, so it had a really good lead-in (it is rare to think of a Nickelodeon show getting a special lead-in, which only speaks to how much the network liked this new series). SpongeBob SquarePants is a sweet, but strange sea sponge who keeps getting into misadventures with his best friend, a starfish named Patrick. The series, like many other cartoons of its kind, featured multiple segments in a single episode, so a typical SpongeBob Squarepants episode would have two 11 minute segments. The first episode, though, was a bit more unusual than a typical episode.

The opening story in the world of SpongeBob SquarePants, "Help Wanted," served to introduce everyone to the world of the underworld city of Bikini Bottom, specifically showing how SpongeBob SquarePants was able to get his job as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, working for his boss, Mr. Krabs, and working alongside his neighbor. co-worker and overall nemesis, Squidward Tentacles. Patrick, SpongeBob's best friend, is also in this first story. However, while the episode introduced the audience to these characters, it also served to introduced Nickelodeon, as well. In other words, it was the pilot produced to let Nickelodeon decide whether it wanted to make a whole series starring these characters. Therefore, it was produced in 1997, while the rest of the episodes of Season 1 were produced in 1998 and 1999. That, though, left the first episode in a different format than most episodes, as the pilot was less than eight minutes long, leaving the show a few minutes shy when adding in the first regular 11 minute segment, "Tea at the Treedome."

Enter "Reef Blowers."

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WHAT WAS UNUSUAL ABOUT THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS STORY, "REEF BLOWER"?

"Reef Blower" was written by the main SpongeBob SquarePants creative team in Season 1 of Stephen Hillenburg (SpongeBob's creator), Derek Drymon and Tim Hill. The storyboard director was Paul Tibbitt, with Jay Lender doing the storyboard artwork. Fred Miller and Tom Yasumi were the animation directors.

The story, which clocked in nine seconds shy of three minutes, features SpongeBob using a "reef blower" (a Bikini Bottom variation on our typical leaf blowers) to clean his front yard, but inadvertently causing all sorts of problems for his neighbor, Squidward.

The episode is unusual because there is no spoken dialogue in the short, despite there even being a moment where SpongeBob says "You," but it is presented only as a caption on the screen and not audible dialogue.

In any event, as the story goes (taken from the trivia section on IMDB, not to call that out specifically but rather just to note that this is a fairly well-accepted piece of trivia, "'Reef Blower' was meant to have dialog, just like the other episodes. Unfortunately, the studio had bad sound equipment at the time, so they decided to make the episode dialog-free. However, Rodger Bumpass did record Squidward's growling and gasping sounds."

Interesting piece of trivia, but is it actually true?

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WHY WAS THE SEGMENT ACTUALLY DIALOGUE-LESS?

It is not.

This lasted for so long as a legend it is surprising just HOW well it has been debunked. The aforementioned Jay Lender replied to a fan on Twitter who asked him about this legend, "Hi, Jay. If it's possible, would you be able to answer a question of mine about Spongebob? Over the years, claims have been made that the episode "Reef Blower" has no dialogue because sound equipment broke before any could be recorded. Is this true or false? Thank you in advance!" Lerner replied, "FALSE! My understanding at the time was this: Reef Blowers was made to extend Help Wanted to a full half-show, but since they were separate productions SAG rules mandated paying the actors a second set of session fees. That was around $2500 bucks total back then! So... SILENCE!"

As noted earlier, "Reef Blower" was unusual because it was less than three minutes, meant to make up for the fact that "Help Wanted," the pilot of the series, was shorter than a typical half-episode. As Lerner notes, there likely was a budget for each half-episode, and the way that SAG worked, while the SpongeBob producers would be looking at "Help Wanted" and "Reef Blower" as essentially one half-episode, that is not how the actors are paid (this is a very important rule built into voice acting regulations because animated shows were infamous for wringing out SO much content from voice actors under the auspices of it being a "single" session back in the day), so to keep the budgets on track, they decided not to pay voice actors for the segment. Note that Lerner is speaking second hand on that specific point, but it makes sense.

He continued to tear apart the logic of the legend, though, pointing out, "I see that legend from time to time and it always makes me chuckle, like there's only one sound booth in all of Hollywood and the show was broadcast LIVE or something..."

Here, courtesy of the SpongeBob Wiki, are two original storyboards for "Reef Blower"...

reef-blower-storyboard-1

Do note that there is no reference to dialogue in the storyboard, which also supports the fact that it was always intended to be dialogue-less...

reef-blower-storyboard-2

And note that storyboards typically WILL note dialogue, as seen in this "Tea at the Treedome" storyboard...

tea-at-the-teadome-storyboard-1

The legend is...

STATUS: False

Thanks to Jay Lender for the great information! And well done, SpongeBob Wiki, just a great site overall!

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