The Krusty Krab, the summer of 2009...
"Steady, steady... nice. Oh, you're off-center by 3.6 millimeters. Mmmph, try it again, Sandy." Spongebob continued to lecture "Sandy" in his ever so obnoxiously cloying tone.
"Aaugh! This is getting so tedious!" Plankton grumbled inside Sandy's pelt, which he was piloting like a robot, mirroring the audience's feelings.
Why did he think this would work? It was a stupid idea from the get-go. Like the time he impersonated Krabs in a similar manner 8 years ago….
"Wait? Did I just recycle a previous failed scheme of mine?" Plankton face-palmed. When you've been trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula for so long, it was hard to remain original. Why the heck didn't he just build a Sandy robot? It wouldn't reek as much as her unwashed, flea-infested pelt.
Actually, why didn't he just order a Krabby Patty as Sandy and take it with him? It would have been weird for Krabs to order one, but perfectly normal for a customer like Sandy?
"Agh! Curse my compulsive need to needlessly overcomplicate things!" Plankton lamented.
"Sandy, are you listening?" Spongebob lowered his magnifying glass. "What's that about needing to complicate things? Making a Krabby Patty is very simple as long as you follow the basic steps."
Right then, someone kicked down the kitchen door, startling Spongebob and "Sandy". It was Sandy, wearing her spacesuit and helmet but her face was hairless and flesh-colored and her lush, bushy tail had been reduced to a thin rat tail.
"Ah-ha! Thair ya ahr, ya thievin' varmint!"
"Well, the jig is up." Plankton gulped, knowing he was screwed now.
Sandy recoiled in horror after finally seeing the crook who nabbed her pelt. "Ewww! What in tarnation is that thang? No wonder Larry said ah looked like a zombie!"
"Sandy?" a dumbfounded Spongebob looked back and forth between the two Sandys, as if the one he had been teaching this whole time looked remotely convincing. "But you?" he pointed at Plankton, then at the squirrel. "But you? How? Why?"
Sandy rolled her eyes. She knew Spongebob was never the brightest bulb in the shack, but he still sometimes surprised her. She stormed towards her imposter and grabbed him tightly around the neck.
"Alright, ya've jus' won a one-way ticket t' a world of hurt!"
"Wait?! How did you track me down so fast?!" Plankton asked.
"What kind of a dumb question is that? Ah walked out off maah dome, asked some fellas and thay all pointed at thuh Krusty Krab!" Sandy explained the blatantly obvious.
"Oh, I really didn't think this one through?" Plankton looked aside fearfully. Nearly a decade of only manipulating Spongebob made him forget that not all people were nitwits who couldn't tell the difference between a bucket of bolts and a flesh and blood being.
"QUIET!" they both turned to see Spongebob, sporting bloodshot eyes, holding a giant hose attached to a huge tartar sauce machine that somehow materialized in the kitchen. "Until I know who the real Sandy is, nobody moves! And nobody gets hurt!"
Sandy sent him an exasperated glare. She could have proven her identity by telling him something only the real Sandy Cheeks would know, but why complicate things when there was a simpler solution?
"Spongebob, jus' give me a sec, and ah'll prove ah'm thuh real Sandy." Before Spongebob could say or do something that would pointlessly prolong this easily solvable situation, Sandy squeezed her imposter's head and Plankton popped out of one of the eye holes, and Sandy swiftly grabbed him.
"Plankton!" Spongebob gasped and dropped the hose. "You were pretending to be Sandy!?"
Sandy resisted the urge to roll her eyes again and glared at Plankton. She didn't seem particularly surprised to learn it was him, his distinctive baritone voice was the likely tip-off. Or maybe it was Larry's claim that "she" angrily defended the Chum Bucket as her favorite eating establishment. Yeah, this was no mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
"So, tryin' t' swipe thuh formula again, are ya? Ya had some 'air-brained schemes before, ya microscopic miscreant, but this is some next-level beef-headedness." Sandy scoffed.
"Oh, cut me some slack!" Plankton squeezed his arms free so he could throw them up. "I've been trying to steal this blasted burger formula for decades, not every scheme of mine can be a perfect master plan!"
"Well, here's a free tip. Yall doomed ta fail if ya try ta hornswoggle Sandy Cheeks." The Texan squirrel retorted smugly.
"I'll keep that in mind." Plankton grumbled, resting his head in his hand.
"Plankton, how dare you try to trick me by impersonating one of my nearest dearest friends again!" Spongebob stormed up to him, sounding like a preschool teacher lecturing a misbehaved child.
"Well, you know what they say." The sponge continued. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me…." He stopped and scratched his chin "….wait, that didn't sound right?"
"Spongebob, ah say this because I'm yur friend end ah care about ya." Sandy deadpanned. "Next time ya see "me" and I'm not wearin' maah space suit, or tawk in a masculine voice, or, ah dunno, look like an emaciated corpse with no eyeballs, try takin' into consideration that this Sandy might be a charlatan? Kay?"
"Affirmative, Sandy!" Spongebob replied obliviously. No doubt Plankton would try this scheme again in a few years and Spongebob would fall for it completely.
Sandy looked back at Plankton. His blood ran cold as she grew an evil smirk. "And now it's taahm t' punish this no-good yellow belly!" Suddenly she was holding a jar of mustard in her other hand.
"No! No! This is inhumane!" Plankton cried and struggled in her grasp. "I have rights!"
So this is something I wrote on the fly. Take an infamous Spongebob and add a dash of basic logic to it. I tried to make this at least somewhat humorous and not just a thinly-veiled surface-level critique of the original. In other words, I'm not trying to "fix" the episode as much as just lampoon its faults XD
When it comes to "Someone's in the Kitchen with Sandy", well, Plankton having a stupid plan is nothing new. Spongebob being oblivious to reality while yes, horribly flanderized by Season 7, is also nothing new. But Sandy making such stupid decisions like going to search for her pelt in the nude, even though Plankton never stole her spacesuit? Sandy is supposed to be the smart one.
It's amazing how by just fixing her character, the episode "conflict" was solved in a matter of seconds.
And yes, I'm continuing the trend of the Spongebob universe being subject to the passage of time.