"Doing Time" is a SpongeBob SquarePants episode from season three. In this episode, Mrs. Puff imagines going to jail and SpongeBob and Patrick try to break her out.

Characters

Note: There is an asterisk (*) icon for all of these characters, except possibly Mrs. Puff and SpongeBob, who are exclusively their daydream versions.

Synopsis

SpongeBob is taking his driver's license exam yet again and ends up leaving the driving course and wrecking the boating school and the city before driving off an unfinished bridge the mayor just opened, and falling into an abyss. The police follow the boat and end up driving off the bridge and into the abyss themselves. When SpongeBob, Mrs. Puff, and the police land, they all land on top of a truck full of fruit punch which is being delivered to Shady Shoals Rest Home, causing it to fall over and spill all the punch. The rest home gets flooded with it as a result. 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 is in jail and Patrick tells him it is his fault. The duo sets out to free her from jail. First, they try to rob the "1st Nautical Bank" in order to get arrested themselves but fail. Next, they 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 SpongeBob refuses to believe. He worries that Mrs. Puff is completely institutionalized in Prison and he needed to get her out. So SpongeBob tells Mrs. Puff if she can escape, he will stay after school and decorate the entire classroom, but Mrs. Puff refuses. She calls for the prison guards again and is reassigned again after the prison guards believe that Mrs. Puff is going crazy.

SpongeBob and Patrick appear to her yet again on a coat hanger assembly line, and when she calls for a guard, he dismisses SpongeBob and Patrick as raw materials and send Mrs. Puff to her cell, still convinced that she is going insane. SpongeBob and Patrick next appear in Mrs. Puff's toilet, which causes the guards to flush them, then they appear on her bed and when she calls the guards, they turn out to be SpongeBob and Patrick in disguise. When she next sees the real guards as they ask Mrs. Puff what is going on, she rips off their faces after thinking it is SpongeBob and Patrick in disguise and is put in solitary confinement after the guards believe that Mrs. Puff has gone mental. She is glad that she is finally safe from SpongeBob, but she actually begins hallucinating her room to be made of sponge which is SpongeBob and is driven insane by his laughter.

Mrs. Puff wakes up screaming in the car flying off the cliff and realizes that it was a dream. The car crashes into the fruit truck again; however, this time, Mrs. Puff is not the one that got arrested—it's SpongeBob. Mrs. Puff is happy that she is not going to the jail, but a police officer tells her she already did her time, and Mrs. Puff sees she's wearing a jail outfit. She screams, and wakes up screaming in the car flying off the cliff again. When she is about to relax, she sees Donna, the prisoner who incredulously asked her what the jail's dinner menu was, driving the boat instead of SpongeBob. She screams, and wakes up screaming in the car flying off the cliff, yet again. This time SpongeBob's driving and there are no police chasing them. She panics for a moment, but after realizing she’s just going to loop again, she stops screaming, says "Oh, forget it", and unenthusiastically sits in the boat, as the episode ends.

Production

Music

( ‣ ) Associated production music

( • ) Original music

( ◦ ) SpongeBob music



‣

‣ Horlepiep - Jan Rap [opening]

‣ Chase That Car - Laurie Johnson [police chasing SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff]

‣ Hail to the Chief A - Will Schaefer [unfinished bridge opened]

‣ Chase That Car - Laurie Johnson [falling off cliff]

‣ Pomp and Circumstance March #1 - Edward Elgar, Fiachra Trench [flashback to opening of boating school]

‣ Chase That Car - Laurie Johnson [truckload of fruit punch]

‣ Fisticuffs - Laurie Johnson ["Thank Neptune I'm still-"]

‣ Hawaiian Breeze - Jon Jelmer [opening windows]

‣ Surfin' Summer (a) - Richard Myhill [plays on janitor's headphones]

‣ O Primavera - Robert Foster ["A memoir of my life, written in red ink!"]

• Steel Licks 7 - Jeremy Wakefield ["Oh, barnacles!"]

‣ The Crime Busters - Ralph Dollimore ["Freeze! You're under arrest!"]

‣ Hawaiian Cocktail - Richard Myhill [Mrs. Puff imprisoned]

‣ Keel Row - Brian Peters [looking at the positives]

‣ Kamakani (b) - Kapono Beamer [empty classroom]

‣ Sugar Beat - Sid Phillips [montage of Mrs. Puff in jail]

• SpongeBob Closing Theme - Steve Belfer, Nicolas Carr [SpongeBob trying to rob a bank]

• Seaweed - Steve Belfer [SpongeBob, Patrick disguised as rocks]

‣ Unease - Dick Stephen Walter [SpongeBob inside pot of chili]

‣ Springtime for Lovers - Len Stevens ["These are my people!"]

‣ Danger Zone - Mike Sunderland [Mrs. Puff refuses to go with them]

‣ Hawaiian Link (a) - Richard Myhill [later]

‣ Mud - Ron Aspery [SpongeBob and Patrick appearing everywhere]

• Steel Licks 1 - Jeremy Wakefield [solitary confinement]

‣ Shock - Cornelus Joh Bolten [SpongeBob's face appearing on the walls]

‣ Chase That Car - Laurie Johnson [falling off the cliff again]

‣ Lonely Stranger - Laurie Johnson [SpongeBob arrested]

‣ Shock - Cornelus Joh Bolten [Mrs. Puff screams]

‣ Chase That Car - Laurie Johnson [ending]



Release

Reception

"Doing Time" was ranked #52 during the SpongeBob's Top 100 event in the UK and Ireland from June 4-8, 2012.

Trivia

General

The episode is part of other three episodes that aired on Martin Luther King Jr. Day called the SpongeBob-A-Thon.

It is revealed that Mrs. Puff's first student in her boating school was SpongeBob. As of her flashback, this explains the origin of boating disaster.

The scene where Fred mops and the "Surfin' Summer" music is playing has become an internet meme.

The scene where SpongeBob and Patrick are robbing a bank has become an internet meme.

When Mrs. Puff gets thrown into "solitary confinement," there is a rubber ducky in the corner in the first scene.

This episode is a paradox: a never-ending cycle.

Cultural references

The bank shown in this episode is called the "First Nautical Bank," a parody of the real-life First National Bank.

Errors

Mrs. Puff's hat changes colors throughout 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. When Mrs. Puff drinks a cup of water, her hat turns black for about two seconds before turning back to red.

When Mrs. Puff's jail cell is first shown, there is a single bed. Later, it is a bunk bed.

When the Janitor was sweeping up the room (both before and after the fruit punch got in), his arm keeps going through the headphone wire.

When SpongeBob crashes into the juice truck for the second time, the boat he was driving can be seen. In the next shot, it is gone.

Tom has a female voice in this episode.

During the bubble transition there is a blue screen that was made sometime in 2001 by Rough Draft Korea.

While Billy Gus is looking at the window, it is supposed to be night but instead it is taking place during the day but dark.

The coals and the coat hangers do not move uniformly on the conveyor belt. When SpongeBob and Patrick appear on the conveyor belt, the coat hangers move faster than them and towards off-screen.

When Mrs. Puff begins hallucinating her solitary confinement to be made of sponge, all SpongeBob's faces appearing on all sides of the wall that maniacally laugh should include the following. In each face, his eyebrows and his eyes should be on the upper part of his face, his nose should be in the middle of his face and his mouth should be in the lower part of his face. However, one of SpongeBob's faces on the upper side of the wall is rotated with the anticlockwise rotation of 90° at the center of his nose. His eyebrows and his eyes are on the right side of his face and his mouth is on the left side of his face. This error is considered to be the rotation error.

When SpongeBob tells Mrs. Puff that Patrick came along because he likes chili, his eyes are yellow for a split second.

On a traffic scene in "life on the outside" cutaway gag, the boat behind Incidental 107's boat is missing its driver.