Obviously I was part of the group of fans who left, what was once a show that had fun, memorable characters was now being dumbed down for its target audience and lacking the quality that made its first three seasons so great. With Hillenburg not around to give any supervision in the show's writing, the characters were becoming flanderized and generic. SpongeBob was equally as dumb as Patrick, Squidward is more aggressive towards SpongeBob, Plankton felt like a tacked on villain and Sandy wasn't appearing as much. To put it simply, anyone could tell that the novelty had gone stale and the show wasn't being as talked about anymore, at least from the people I knew at the time, and people my age.

It wasn't until years later, in 2015 that Stephen Hillenburg made a comeback to write the second SpongeBob movie, Sponge Out of Water and ex-fans felt that there was a glimmer of hope with him returning to the show. As exciting as the news was, Stephen sadly passed away from ALS just a few years later, but his yellow creation is still going strong to this day, with a supposed third movie coming soon.

As I look back on my memories of watching the show in its golden years, I will say that SpongeBob was one of the few cartoons that helped me cope with my difficult years of high school. Depression was taking its toll on me, but it was all thanks to the antics of a talking yellow sponge that I kept my chin up and continued moving forward. It's funny that you can take any out of context quote from a familiar episode of the show and almost anyone will recognize it, and it just goes to show just how strong it was as a program for kids and adults alike. Thanks for the memories SpongeBob, and thank YOU Stephen Hillenburg, for creating such a memorable and inventive cartoon.