The Chum Bucket, the summer of 2008…
This was it! He, Sheldon J. Plankton, had finally triumphed!
He had both SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs (in his Catwoman cosplay) pinned down under giant spoons. And as if things couldn't get any better, he had caught Krabs trying to steal his chum formula! Oh, the delicious, scrumptious irony! And Krabs didn't get it! Double irony!
"Good thing I sprang for the dual spoon installation." The copepod said smugly.
"You'll never get away with this, Plankton!" SpongeBob shouted.
"Actually, laddie…" Krabs deflated. "He did nothin' this time. It be you and me who trespassed on his property and I tried t' steal his formula."
"Oh…" SpongeBob realized.
"I know!" Plankton laughed in the sponge's face. "Talk about a double irony!"
Oh, but this was not actually the best part. The best part was yet to come, but Plankton was savoring his victory.
"But do you know what's even better than double irony?" Plankton sneered at them.
"Um…" SpongeBob mulled. "I dunno? Double irony with a side of fries?"
"No, you fool!" Plankton said irritably before grinning again. "I'm talking about TRIPLE irony!"
"Triple irony?"
"Yes!" Plankton chuckled before starting his evil pacing. "Y'see, you and your portly employer-"
"I'm not fat! This be all muscle!" Krabs lamented.
"…walked straight into a trap of mine! And I'm not just talking about the spoons!" Plankton monologued with glee. "In actuality, Nat never was my regular!"
SpongeBob gasped, accompanied by "dun dun dun" music.
"No! I can't be!"
"Yes, it can! As a matter of fact, he hates chum, like most folk." Plankton shrugged. "But I hired him to be a double agent and to assist me with a very elaborate and convoluted plan to steal…guess what? The Krabby Patty formula!"
"Wait? You mean like when you pretended to give up trying to steal the formula in favor of being a harmless if eccentric souvenir shop owner?" SpongeBob asked.
"Eh…no. That plan was too convoluted to work, I've streamlined this one!" Plankton explained. "See, I knew Krabs's massive ego wouldn't allow him to just sit back and allow me to even have one regular! So I hired Nat to keep Krabs distracted while my dear wife Karen stole the formula!"
"Sweet mother of pearl!" Krabs exclaimed. "That…that…that was actually a pretty smart plan." He admitted begrudgingly with an aside glance.
"Ha! Joke's on you, you fiend!" SpongeBob laughed. "See, the real formula is actually-"
"Zip it, boyo…" Krabs hissed at him.
"Ha! Joke's on you, sucker!" Plankton poked SpongeBob in the nose. "I've already figured out that the real formula was actually under Krabs's mattress!"
"What!" Krabs blurted while SpongeBob gasped, once more accompanied by "dun dun dun" music.
"I know, right!" Plankton boasted. "Am I an evil genius, or what!"
"You mean by utilizing my plan?" Karen said threateningly, suddenly standing behind her husband and sporting a miniature-sized death ray on top of her monitor.
Plankton gulped and his antennas dropped.
"Yes, yes! Of course it was your plan, baby." He said hastily. "I was just kidding. Just kidding."
"Better." Karen relaxed while lowering the death ray into her head.
"Curses! How did ye get into me house, ye unholy bucket of bolts on wheels!" Krabs yelled furiously.
"It was actually surprisingly easy." Karen replied and showed them a first-person POV video on her monitor, which showed her entering Krabs's home and finding Pearl talking on her phone on the couch.
"I'm not joking! Brad Barracuda totally said "hi" to me in the hall!" Pearl squealed. "He's so into me!"
"Excuse me?" Karen asked, causing Pearl to cover her phone with her fin.
"WHAT!" she said in a demonic voice while turning red and sporting fangs and yellow eyes with tiny pupils while her hair and eyebrows turned into flames, causing Karen to wheel back in fright and hold her hands up into view.
"I just wanted to know where your father's room is?" the computer said nervously.
Pearl calmed down and pointed over her shoulder. "Up the stairs, to your left." She said dismissively before resuming her chat.
"He's totally going to ask me out to the dance! Then I'll be the most coral girl in school!" Pear continued yapping while Karen gave her a wide birth and moved up the stairs.
"Pear, how could ye?" Krabs sniffed and shed a manly tear while Karen pulled out the scroll containing the secret formula.
"Yippee!" Plankton snatched it and looked at it like a starving man about to eat a freshly baked turkey, complete with drool.
"At long last! The secret of the Krabby Patty shall be mine!" he exclaimed with maniacal joy!
"No, wait, Plankton! Don't do it!" Krabs implored him.
"Too late, Krabsy." Plankton scoffed at him while opening the scroll.
"But ye don't understand! There be some things that aren't meant t' be seen!" Krabs begged.
"Yeah, right! Nice try!" Plankton laughed. "You won't fool me into thinking the secret ingredient is plankton again!"
"No, it's not that!" a sweaty Krabs shook his head. "Please listen t' me! Ye won't be able t' handle the truth! Neither ye or the boy!"
"What do ya mean, Mr. Krabs?" SpongeBob asked in confusion
"Oh, I'll handle it alright." Plankton smirked while reading the scroll until his face dropped like a boulder.
"What!" his eye bulged out. "This can't be…"
"The secret is not love, Plankton!" SpongeBob yelled desperately. "This is another dud! I swear!"
"Dear diary? I still can't believe that one-eyed barnacle-head is trying to steal my secret formula? For a so-called genius, he's unbelievably clueless? He's as clueless as SpongeBob and those fools that are all too eager to give me all their money for junk food that's in no way special? All these years and he still hasn't figured out that the Krabby Patty formula is a sham? A charade? A myth I thought up on the fly to ensnare as many gullible idiots and their money-filled pockets as possible? It's so simple and yet so ingenious? The boy's naïve and unbridled enthusiasm and that chucklehead's obsession with besting me are only helping to elevate my run-of-the-mill burgers to mythical status, making me all the more money? See, the "secret formula" is marketing and I didn't have to spend a nickel on it? Am I a corporate whiz or what? Har har har har har?"
Once Plankton finished reading it, a very long and awkward silence ensued.
"Well…I did not see that one coming?" Karen admitted in a blasé tone.
"WHAT!" a horrified SpongeBob pulled himself free.
"Give me that!" he grabbed the scroll and read it. "No, this can't be! This can't be!"
"No! No! It's impossible!" Plankton clutched onto the scroll and read it several more times. "The Krabby Patty formula… doesn't exist?!"
"Mr. Krabs?" tears poured down SpongeBob's face as he gave his boss a pleading look. "Say it ain't so?"
"Yes!" Plankton did the same thing and pressed his hands together. "Please, say it ain't so!"
Krabs looked down in shame and sighed. "I'm 'fraid it is so…"
SpongeBob and Plankton both gasped and the latter plopped on his butt, once more punctuated by "dun dun dun" music.
"There is no secret ingredient to the Krabby Patty? They are just… regular burgers?" SpongeBob clutched his face, his mind struggling to process this. "You…you… lied to me? All these years? You LIED to me!"
"I'm sorry, SpongeBob." Krabs sniffed. "I've been meanin' t' tell ya this…when I thought ye were ready."
"It's all a lie! It's all a lie!" a dazed SpongeBob rambled while rocking bath and forth in a fetal position. "It's a lie. The Krusty Krab is a lie. My whole life is a lie!"
"Plankton? Are you alright?" Karen asked her husband but received no answer.
Plankton just stared blankly at the audience until the world around him literally shattered like a broken mirror and the individual pieces drifted away as Plankton himself slowly wafted down a black void.
We zoom out of his eye and find him laughing like a lunatic while in a straightjacket, foaming at the mouth and bashing his head repeatedly against the padded walls of a van.
"The Krabby Patty formula! I know the Krabby Patty formula yall! I know it! Cuz I AM the Krabby Patty formula!" the deranged copepod laughed. "I POOP out Krabby Patties! Get it! Customers order our patties!"
"All aboard the Patty train! Poop poop! Poop po-" he was cut off as the back door was closed and the vehicle drove off to the nearest funny farm, leaving Karen alone with a psychiatrist (who was just the doctor character from "Lost Mattress"), holding a clipboard.
"Doctor? Is he going to be alright?" Karen asked worriedly.
"No." the psychiatrist shook his head. "It seems this mind-shattering revelation has…well…shattered his mind. We'll have to lock him up for his own safety. Forever."
He walked away as an angry Krabs stormed up to the W.I.F.E.
"I hope ye're happy wit' yurself, ye wretched wench!" Krabs ranted.
"You're blaming me?" Karen shot back. "You're the fraud who lied to everyone in Bikini Bottom so you could fill your pockets!"
"Aye, and me fraudulence was the glue that held everythin' together, ye bottle-headed woman!" Krabs snapped at her. "And now me arch-nemesis has been hauled off t' a looney bin while me best fry cook has lost all passion fer cookin'! Look!"
He pointed at the eating area of the Krusty Krab and they saw Bubble Bass facing a bored-looking, frowny Squidward at the counter, while an equally bored-looking, frowny SpongeBob leaned on the kitchen window, whose nose was also dropping down.
"I want a Monster Patty Delux, and make it snappy." Bubble Bass ordered.
"Nope." Squidward smirked.
"Excuse me?" the bass put his fins on his hips. "I made an order."
"And we'll give it to ya." SpongeBob yawned and leaned on his hand. "When we feel like it."
"Good one, Sponge." Squidward snorted while Bubble Bass scowled.
"I have a half a mind to complain to your manager!" He said indignantly.
"For what?" SpongeBob elbowed his coworker in jest. "For trying to save ya from falling through the floor, Bubble Butt?"
He and Squidward honked with laughter while Bubble Bass teared up, wailed like a baby and ran away while flailing his fins.
"No." Karen said in shock. "SpongeBob!"
She saw SpongeBob bringing a platter with two burned patties to a fish couple and threw it at the table, causing their drinks to spill all over them.
"Here's your gruel, chumps." He snarked before leaning towards them and "whispering", "It's great for trimming off the years from your life."
Ignoring their angry complaints, he nonchalantly walked away before running into a young fish boy with a propeller cap, holding a pen and paper.
"Mr. SquarePants?" he said innocently. "Can I have your autograph?"
"Sure, pipsqueak." SpongeBob said half-heartedly and gave him his autograph.
The kid's smile turned upside down as he read, "Get a life, you loser? Love SpongeBob?"
He ran off crying while SpongeBob looked like couldn't give a barnacle and was approached by Squidward.
"You're a natural, Sponge!" the octopus laughed and threw his arm over SpongeBob's back.
"I've learned from the best." SpongeBob returned the favor before shaking his head.
"Man, how did we ever end up in a dump like this, Squiddy?" he asked sardonically.
"I know, there simply is no justice in this Neptune-forsaken world." Squidward agreed and the two honked with laughter again while their noses inflated and deflated.
Outside, Karen saw one angry customer leaving the Krusty Krab in a huff after another.
"This place is the worst!" Harold lamented.
"I'm never eating here again!" Tom threw his fins up.
"What are we gonna do without Krabby Patties!" Fred clutched his head in despair. "This is the end of society as we know it!"
"See what ya did? Ye thievin' bilge rat!" Krabs pointed at Karen. "Ye've bankrupted me! Ye broke the lad! And ye've doomed us all!"
"But I didn't mean to!" Karen panicked while the town behind her was being set ablaze and fish were running rampant, plundering, fighting each other and destroying everything in sight.
"What did I do!?"
"Doomed us all!" Krabs roared.
"No!" Karen cried.
We get a close-up of Krabs's enraged, wrinkly and wart-covered face, "DOOMED US ALL!"
"NOO!" Karen snapped out of her carefully calculated visual simulation of what would have transpired if she went through with this plan, inside the Chum Bucket.
"What did I almost do?" she panicked and panted heavily (despite not having lungs) while staring at the accursed scroll in her shaking hands.
"No. I cannot allow anyone to see this! This dreaded paper must be destroyed!"
She threw it on the floor and used a flame thrower to incinerate it.
"Hey, lady?" Nat said blandly as he walked in. "You gonna give me my final payment?"
"No!" Karen snapped at him, making him flinch. "Change of plans! Forget the double agent thing! I'll pay you twice as much if you tell Plankton that I hired you to pretend to like his chum!"
Luckily, she had planned not to tell Plankton anything about her plan until the last possible moment, to make sure that he didn't screw anything up.
"Here!" she rolled up to Nat and gave him a wad of cash, while a tuxedo-wearing SpongeBob with a bouquet in his hand walked in behind Nat.
"Now be back in an hour and pretend to be sick!" Karen told Nat while using her free hand to gesture at SpongeBob to get out and the latter just quietly left by walking backward.
She gave Nat a second wad of cash. "And hire a bunch of paramedics to carry you away on a stretcher, to make it look convincing!"
Nat grew a big smile. "Fine by me." He shrugged and walked out. "Pleasure doing business with you."
Now alone, Karen just said, "Some things were not meant to be seen."
I don't know why I didn't do this sooner, I had this idea for a while and it's frankly a great continuity cascade that brought back my two most infamous twists from this fic, as seen in "One Coarse Meal" and "Truth or Square".
"Plankton's Regular" is…well, it's a season 6 episode, so as to be expected, it's light on comedy and severely underwritten. Besides those things, the main issue that brings this episode down is that ending, which is just…cruel for the sake of being cruel. It really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The sad thing is that the seed of a good idea was there. The idea of Mr. Krabs getting all petty and vindictive over the fact that Plankton got himself ONE regular customer and it ultimately culminating with a classic role-reversal where Krabs tries to steal Plankton's chum formula was a GREAT idea for an episode, but since this was a season 6 episode, they naturally didn't think things through and just squandered that good idea.
This episode gave me a new appreciation for "New Leaf". While I still don't like the ending of that episode and find it to be a cheap cop-out, "Plankton's Regular" could have really benefited from this kind of ending, where everything turned out to have been an elaborate ploy by Plankton to trick Krabs into letting his guard down by exploiting one of Krabs's weaknesses (his ego) in order to steal the Krabby Patty formula under his crooked nose.