Vince Gilligan’s bizarre love for ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’: “He has passion”
Despite creating one of the greatest crime dramas of all time, Breaking Bad showrunner Vince Gilligan has a particular affinity for an insanely optimistic yellow cartoon sponge known as SpongeBob SquarePants that begs dissection.
Breaking Bad is an intense show, and Gilligan has been involved in several other programmes that have had viewers on the edge of their seats; he helped to co-create and write the spinoff Better Call Saul, and penned some of the most terrifying episodes of The X-Files, hence, while one might expect him to simply have an interest in dark material, he revealed to Vulture that one of his favorite shows couldn’t be more different than what set him into the big leagues.
“SpongeBob SquarePants is a great show, and it centres on a character that is courageously nice,” Gilligan told the outlet, musing, “Why is SpongeBob interesting? It’s because he has passion. He has a passion for chasing jellyfish.”
Many of Gilligan’s characters could be described as “courageous”, but only a few of them could be hailed as “nice”. In fact, it was the transition that Bryan Cranston‘s Walter White took from being a wholesome family man to a sociopathic drug kingpin that helped kickstart public fascination with anti-heroes, and while this amazing character development seemed like it would be challenging to write, the showrunner doesn’t see it that way.
“I’m very glad people love Breaking Bad, but the harder character to write is the good character that’s as interesting and as engaging as the bad guy,” he said, adding, “My hat is off to the SpongeBob showrunners.”
Gilligan might find it particularly challenging to write more heroic characters after spending nearly two decades in the trenches with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, as he likened “writing the good guy now instead of a bad guy” to “how Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in high heels”, however, he’s not alone in his appreciation for SpongeBob Squarepants and it’s sunshine-pooping protagonist.
SpongeBob Squarepants first debuted in 1999, which is a year that saw animated sitcoms at their peak, where adult animations like South Park and King of the Hill were still in their early run, The Simpsons still had a captive audience, and both Family Guy and Futurama began airing.
However, SpongeBob aired on Nickelodeon, which wasn’t a network known for making shows that were engaging for adults. Yet, what began as a kid-oriented cartoon show with the novel twist of occasional dirty jokes thrown in to entertain the bored adults having to keep their children company has turned into a multimedia franchise that continues today, and like Breaking Bad, has managed to stand the test of time based on strong word-of-mouth and a genuine love of the characters among viewers.
It’s how Gillian also continues to thrive, where even though there was little information revealed about his new show Pluribus, the series still sparked a lot of interest because his name has come to be associated with quality. The latest film, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, is set to hit theatres in December, and maybe Gilligan could try his hand at a nice character in a run-up to the possible sequel, expanding his horizons?
