From Everett Collection.

There’s no shortage of wonderful episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants—but anyone trying to pick their top three is almost guaranteed to cite “Band Geeks,” from Season 2. It’s a classic: Squidward pulls together a band at the last minute in an attempt to impress a former classmate from band camp, the intimidating Squilliam Fancyson. Naturally, the group is terrible, leading Squidward to leave their rehearsal in a panic. But SpongeBob rallies everyone to practice extra hard, and in the end, they rock out to a perfectly performed number: “Sweet Victory” by David Glen Eisley.

The episode encapsulates the indomitable spirit of SpongeBob, Stephen Hillenburg’s wildly popular cartoon—which launched in 1999 and has aired new installments continuously on Nickelodeon ever since. (Season 12 began just weeks ago, on November 11.) It is, of course, one among many standouts: there’s “Pizza Delivery,” in which SpongeBob and Squidward must deliver off-menu food to a faraway patron—and brave terrifying conditions by embracing the traditions of the pioneers. There’s “Chocolate with Nuts,” which introduced one of the series’s best characters, Screaming Chocolate Guy. There’s “The Camping Episode,” “Sailor Mouth,” “Graveyard Shift,” and “Shanghaied,” among dozens more.

But “Band Geeks” ties together everything that makes SpongeBob irreplaceable—the show’s creative bombast, its knack for delightful non sequiturs, its instantly quotable lines (“Is mayonnaise an instrument?”), its surprisingly deep emotional core. It shows precisely why Hillenburg’s signature creation has won over millions of fans, from a wide range of ages and backgrounds—and why the news of his death at the age of 57 came as such a blow on Tuesday.

The root of SpongeBob’s appeal—both to the kids who watched it growing up and to the adults who now share the memes it inspired—is its embrace of the absurd. This show takes place in a world where nothing makes sense, by design. SpongeBob is set underwater, but its fish still go swimming at the Goo Lagoon. Mr. Krabs, who is a crab, has a daughter who is a whale. It somehow snows each winter in the glass dome where expat squirrel Sandy lives. Existential threats came not from, say, a changing climate, but from giant sea worms threatening to level the entire town of Bikini Bottom.

Everyone in this cheery place reacts to these circumstances differently—none more so than SpongeBob and Squidward, his grumpy neighbor. SpongeBob’s boundless cheer and energy stand in stark contrast to Squidward’s perpetual ennui—and unsurprisingly, it’s SpongeBob whose worldview gets affirmed more often than Squidward’s. In “Band Geeks,” for instance, Squidward’s nagging belief that he’s inferior to Squilliam convinces him that he and his band will fail—but instead, SpongeBob pulled through for him, despite having many reasons not to. Because in the world that Stephen Hillenburg created, pretty much everyone cares about their neighbors. Even Squidward, who claims to hate SpongeBob, shows tenderness toward the yellow guy now and again—like when he worries that he accidentally gifted SpongeBob with an explosive pie.

It’s that sense of solidarity that makes “Band Geeks”—and SpongeBob as a whole—so special. As SpongeBob tries to convince everyone to stick around for a late-night rehearsal, he acknowledges that Squidward hasn’t really given any of his neighbors a reason to help him. He rallies them by talking up the good deeds of others and urges everyone to pretend Squidward was actually responsible for those acts of heroism. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from SpongeBob, whose heart is boundlessly open, even to those who are rotten toward him—and it turns out he’s got the right idea. The band practices and becomes a smash hit at the Bubble Bowl, impressing Squilliam to the point of fainting as everyone on stage has the time of their lives. In Hillenburg’s universe, even when the stakes are nonsensical, it’s always a good bet to count on friends—even when, like Squidward, you don’t know how many you have.