No Free Rides

Template:Episode/30a

Characters

• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Mrs. Puff
• Harold SquarePants
• Margaret SquarePants
• Harold Bill
• Frank
• Henry-Bart ^(cameo)
• Nat ^(cameo)
• Tina ^(cameo)
• Sally ^(cameo)
• Charlie ^(cameo)
• Paco ^(cameo)
• Prisoners
• French Narrator ^(cameo)

Synopsis

SpongeBob begins the episode by failing the last boating exam of the year which ends after he runs over the French Narrator. Mrs. Puff tells him that he hit another pedestrian, so he gets a 6 out of 600. Mrs. Puff, tired of administrating boating exams for SpongeBob, makes SpongeBob take an extra credit exam, where SpongeBob has to write about one thing he learned in boating school. SpongeBob cannot decide, gets nervous, and starts having a nervous breakdown. But Mrs. Puff, completely tired of SpongeBob, lets him pass anyway.

After SpongeBob leaves, Mrs. Puff considers that she has done the wrong thing, and starts feeling guilt. Luckily, she knows that he does not yet have a boat to drive. Later when Mrs. Puff gets home, she opens the door and SpongeBob and his parents are inside with a huge cake yelling "Surprise!" Mrs. Puff, surprised, starts feeling guilty again when SpongeBob's parents thank her for finally teaching their son how to drive. Then, SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff get a surprise when they see that SpongeBob's parents bought him a brand new boatmobile. Surprised, SpongeBob faints into the cake. SpongeBob's parents take him home. Mrs. Puff realizes she needs to cover this up before anyone figures out she let him skip through boating school. 

Mrs. Puff screaming after SpongeBob is revealed to be the radio.

Later, SpongeBob's parents tuck him into his bed and tell him that he cannot drive anywhere that night. When his parents are gone home, he sneaks out his bedroom window, gets into the car, and falls asleep. Not long after, Mrs. Puff hi-jacks SpongeBob's car and steals it. SpongeBob then wakes up constantly saying "You're not gonna get away with stealing my car" and him and Mrs. Puff start to fight.

Mrs. Puff drives through very obstacles that hinder SpongeBob (including cheese grinders and educational television), but eventually gets the upper hand and the police take notice. Then, he finds out that the thief is Mrs. Puff, and then the car crashes into a police car, and Mrs. Puff is arrested and put in jail for a short term. As for SpongeBob, he gets his license taken away.

Production

Music

( ‣ ) Production music

( • ) Original music

( ◦ ) SpongeBob music

 ‣ Hen Pecker - The Surfdusters [title card]
 ‣ Dingle's Regatta - Brian Peters [opening at boating school]
 ‣ El Dementia - The Surfdusters ["No, SpongeBob, wait!]
 ‣ Whisper from the Past - Gregor F. Narholz ["Don't worry. I'll be alright, Mrs. Puff."]
 ‣ Hawaiian Link (a) - Richard Myhill [Mrs. Puff inflates]
 ‣ Unease - Dick Stephen Walter ["Another year with him!"]
 • ? - Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield ["Extra credit!"]
 • SpongeBob Closing Theme - Steve Belfer, Nicolas Carr [SpongeBob sharpening his pencil]
 ‣ Muscovite Rebellion - David Arnold, Paul Hart ["No, wait, I changed my mind!"]
 • Vibe Sting - Nicolas Carr [SpongeBob's essay]
 ‣ Youthful Days - Mike Sunderland [SpongeBob's license]
 ‣ The Nightmare Begins (a) - John Devereaux [Mrs. Puff imagines SpongeBob destroying the city]
 ‣ Hawaiian Link (b) - Richard Myhill [Mrs. Puff goes home]
 ‣ Honolulu March - George de Fretes [surprise party]
 ‣ Danger Zone - Mike Sunderland ["What have I done?"]
 ‣ Hawaiian Sting 12 - Otto Sieben [SpongeBob sneaks out of his room]
 ‣ Stepping into Danger - Mike Sunderland [Mrs. Puff in a ski mask]
 ‣ Hen Pecker - The Surfdusters [SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff scream]
 ‣ Gorgeous Girl - Kurt Schick [Mrs. Puff turns on the radio]
 ‣ Hen Pecker - The Surfdusters [boat out of control]
 ‣ Holiday Dream - Max Mahlmann [ending]

Release

• This episode is available on the Sea Stories, Complete 2nd Season, and First 100 Episodes DVDs.

Reception

• "No Free Rides" was ranked #33 during the Best Day Ever event from November 9–10, 2006.
• This is tied with Life of Crime, Wet Painters, Krusty Krab Training Video, Shanghaied, and Survival of the Idiots as the highest ranked episode on SpongeBuddy Mania with 9.6/10.

Trivia

Template:Trivia

• In "Boating School," SpongeBob was upset about failing his driving test, but as of "No Free Rides" he clearly doesn't care about failing. This is likely because he received his license.
• This is the first time SpongeBob calls a boat "Boaty." The second time is "Gone."
• Boaty appears years later in the video game SpongeBob's Boating Bash under the name Woody. It's unlockable via points or cheats.
• The accident company has the same phone number as the Tattletale Strangler (555-1234).
• The fourth wall is broken when the French Narrator is run over by SpongeBob at the beginning of the episode.
• SpongeBob and his parents hold a surprise party for Mrs. Puff. When Mrs. Puff enters, a small picture of her standing at the door in the same shot can be seen. In addition, the same picture is seen within this picture. This is an example of a recursive image, one image that is repeated infinitely within itself.
  • This happens with Mrs. Puff again in "Bumper to Bumper."
• When Mrs. Puff gives SpongeBob his driver's license, he licks it and comments "It tastes just like I dreamt it would". Incidentally, he dreams he holds a drivers license and licks it in "Sleepy Time."
• If looked upon closely, SpongeBob has written on his paper, "What I learned in Boating School is how drive" which is 9 words long, which is probably why SpongeBob said it wasn't finishes yet, and if you look in the manga it says pays off.
• Although SpongeBob is seen coming out of the radio slot in the car, earlier on in the episode this same radio is shown (when Mrs. Puff is first stealing the boat) it still had a SpongeBob-like appearance before the event occurred.
• This is the second time Mrs. Puff goes to jail. The first was in "Hall Monitor."
• MY LEG: SpongeBob crashes into the table just as somebody having a birthday party in Mrs. Puff's fantasy.
• Apparently, Mrs. Puff has given a student a drivers license before, and it ended in mayhem, like SpongeBob, as she said "I'll have to move to a new town, open a new boating school, with a new name! No. Not again."
• A scribbled out word that says "Pat" can be seen at the bottom of SpongeBob's paper.
• The radio station that SpongeBob hosted was called "K.R.U.D." (Crud)
• In the Cine-Manga version of this episode, the scene between SpongeBob being kicked out of the boat and Mrs. Puff turning on the SpongeBob radio was cut out for some reason.
• It is the first and, so far, only time where the French Narrator is physically seen

Errors

• In the episode SpongeBob says his first line (in the episode) "What happen?" but to some people it looks like SpongeBob saying "Whapping."
• SpongeBob's wallpaper on his room looks so different.
• Mrs. Puff said that SpongeBob had -224 points during the test, but later she says the final score was 6 points, despite his score should have decreased.
• In the scene where the cops look at the boat, it is downhill, but when the boat comes towards them it goes off a cliff. When it focuses on the cops again, it is back downhill, making the boat look like it got into the air from nowhere.
• Even though it is the final boating school exam for the year, SpongeBob says that he will see Mrs. Puff next Tuesday. However, it is possible it was the last Tuesday of the year.
• There are candles on top of SpongeBob's bedposts that are lit. When SpongeBob's mom turns the lights out in his room, the candles go out too.
• In this episode, SpongeBob's room is missing his clock, the top part of his bed, and has a new wallpaper.
• When SpongeBob climbs inside Boaty, he is wearing socks. Although, seconds before, his socks fell on Boaty's floor.
• Boaty is much wider than Mrs. Puff's front door, though it still ends up in Mrs. Puff's house.
• After SpongeBob and his parents leave her house, Mrs. Puff says, "I gotta move out of town and change my name!...No, not again." This implies that she has actually done so in the past which means that Mrs. Puff might not even be her real name.
• When SpongeBob is being grated by cheese graters, his eyes come out the graters twice.
• When Mrs. Puff yells, "Extra Credit!," runs to SpongeBob with his unicycle, and leads him back into the classroom, the unicycle disappears.
• When Mrs. Puff imagines the news report on the destruction caused by SpongeBob, it says "Live," but at the end the of the report, when SpongeBob runs over the reporter, the reporter says "let's not use that take..."

File:Poorly colored pens.png

Poorly colored pens

• In the scene where Mrs. Puff is fight with SpongeBob to hand over the paper, Mrs. Puff's desk has pens. If you have this episode on DVD, pause it where it shows that scene and you'll notice the pens are poorly colored.

• The cliff that the police car is parked next to disappears in the next shot.
• When SpongeBob goes to Boaty, he has casts on his head. In the next shot when he is out the window, his head casts disappear from here to the rest of the episode.