Mrs. Puff, You're Fired (Episode)

Mrs. Puff, You're Fired
© Viacom
Episode No.:	69b
Season:	4
Airdate:	1 April 2006
Previous Episode:	Krusty Towers
Next Episode:	Chimps Ahoy
Characters	Voice actors
SpongeBob SquarePants	Tom Kenny
Patrick Star	Bill Fagerbakke
Sergeant Roderick and SpongeBob © Viacom

"Mrs. Puff, You're Fired" is an episode from Season 4.

Plot

At Mrs. Puff's Boating School, Mr. Fitz (Boating School Superintendent) is talking to Mrs. Puff on her high record of flunking students, in which SpongeBob is the only one, who has flunked 1,258,056 times. Mrs. Puff needs to show Mr. Fitz everything she taught SpongeBob. A few seconds later, SpongeBob has flunked another driving test. Mr. Fitz fires Mrs. Puff, and a new boating instructor named Sergent Roderick (most likely a shark) comes in and takes over the school. He has various strict rules in his class, but one student is thrown out for talking and another is thrown out for eating. The other students run away, except for SpongeBob, who is his only student.

The new boating instructor has set up a difficult course, in which, before driving, SpongeBob must crawl, walk, run, then walk blindfolded. As soon as SpongeBob masters this, he has to face a driving test, without the blindfold, which he could not do. When he starts driving, he ends up destroying the boating school and destroying about half of the town. Mrs. Puff, meanwhile, is painting a field, but the boat drives through it and Mrs. Puff is caught in the boat. Roderick is removed from the boat trying to stop the car but he is run over, killing him. The rampage continues until most of the city is destroyed until he hits Patrick and he has Patrick's pants on his head. he now drives very good and goes back. Mr. Fitz then realizes that SpongeBob is "unteachable" and he rehires Mrs. Puff which gives her mixed emotions.

Cultural References

When Sergeant Roderick comes in and talks about his second rule (no eating in class), then he offers bon-bons to one of the students, and after one of the students eats one, he literally throws the student through a wall. This scene is remarkably like the scene in the movie, Matilda, where the "Trunchbull" offers a piece of cake to a young boy, and punishes him for it.
After all of the other students flee from the classroom, Sergeant Roderick says to SpongeBob, "Looks like you're the man, sponge," a reference to Finding Forrester, and the site YTMND.

Trivia/Goofs

The Season 4, Volume 1 DVD case was taken from this episode.
Mrs. Puff says that only SpongeBob has ever failed her lessons. This is contradictory to a subtle reference to another catastrophic driver in the episode, No Free Rides.
SpongeBob can only drive non-catastrophically when he is blindfolded.
This is the first season 4 episode that doesn't feature Squidward.
In the episode Squirrel Jokes, SpongeBob revealed that he doesn't have bones. However, his bones appeared in the episodes Squid on Strike, Shell of a Man, and this episode.
Sergeant Roderick says that its illegal to drive blindfolded in Bikini Bottom.
SpongeBob could have easily closed his eyes in his boating test to substitute a blindfold.
Closed-captioning error: At the beginning of this episode, Mr. Fitz says that he represents the Boating Teachers Accreditation Bureau. However, the captions said "Voting" instead of "Boating."
In Boating School, SpongeBob had only failed 38 times.
"Krusty Towers"/"Mrs. Puff, You're Fired" was the last episode to get a 9.0 or higher on TV.com until Sand Castles in the Sand.
This is the second time we a see realistic sponge jumping from the island. The first was No Weenies Allowed.
It is possible that Sergeant Roderick and Mr.Krabs knew each other since they were both in the Navy.
How did Mrs. Puff paint SpongeBob, Sergeant Roderick, and Mr. Fitz speeding toward her over her current painting of Jellyfish Fields so quickly?