The main festive period might be over, but at least we can look forward to some potential snowy weather, what with our old friend global warming shaking things up and probably making the chances of some decent snow more likely.
On the subject of that white stuff, you’re probably familiar with the concept of the snowball effect, the idea that small choices or actions trigger larger and larger actions until there’s a metaphorical (and, occasionally, physical) explosion of consequences.
What you’re probably less familiar with, however, is The Snowball Effect, as in that SpongeBob episode from the series’ third and last great season before Stephen Hillenburg left the show following his work on the first movie. The plot is fairly simple. Lots of snow falls, Spongebob and his best buddy Patrick decide to go outside and have a fight, eventually dragging their perpetually downbeat neighbour Squidward into the mix.
One of the great strengths of golden age SpongeBob seasons was the weird mix of animation with real life imagery, in this case, icebergs, as our familiar French Narrator informs the audience that one of these freezing objects has landed on the surface of waters just under SpongeBob’s hometown of Bikini Bottom, causing snow to fall down below (as the writers frequently poke fun at during the series, logic rarely comes into the proceedings. Just come along for the ride and enjoy the fun).
Our main minimalist moment comes during a scene that has been fairly maximalist. After Patrick hits SpongeBob with a snowball and laughs uncontrollably, SpongeBob removes his Christmas hat to reveal a funnel in the same shape hiding beneath. After proceeding to fill the aforementioned funnel with snow and hitting Patrick with a barrage of snowballs, Elf-style, Patrick unwisely rises from behind his defensive barrier to gloat to SpongeBob that he missed him, despite 8 snowballs being attached to his head. The yellow sponge then takes his moment to catch the pink starfish as he shows off, firing a series of machine gun speed snowballs into his mouth.
In a quick but genius bit of animation, we watch the snowballs hitting the back of Patrick’s mouth in slow motion, with the reverberating sound of each snowball sounding like the hit of boxing gloves against a slowly losing opponent. I’m not comparing this to the majesty of stone cold classics like Raging Bull, you understand, but if you were to play Mascagni’s ‘Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo’ in this clip, you might receive a similar emotive effect. A comedic one, at least. Anyway, young me laughed her respective backside off the first time she saw this moment, and many times after too. Sometimes it’s the quieter moments that have the greatest effect.