Shanghaied (SpongeBob SquarePants)

The original version begins in Encino, California whereSpongeBob SquarePants fan Patchy the Pirate presents a special episode where the viewer can vote for 3 different endings. He shows them a special phone number that they could call and tells them not to call until he tells them to but they start calling.

SpongeBob is shocked to find that an anchor (which he mistakes for a "baby") has suddenly dropped onto his house during breakfast, and alerts his next door neighbor Squidward to what happened. As Patrick shows up to take notice of the anchor, it soon swings from SpongeBob's house to Squidward's. This compels Squidward to begin climbing the anchor rope to see where it comes from, with SpongeBob and Patrick joining him.

The three come across a large, floating, and glowing ship, which Squidward proceeds to board, impatiently demanding to know its owner. As SpongeBob tries to recall the ship's owner, the Flying Dutchman appears and insists on knowing who disturbs him, upon which SpongeBob naively expresses to him Squidward's complaints. After the Flying Dutchman burns Squidward for his alleged insults, the pirate turns to SpongeBob and Patrick for their own punishment, to which they try to escape from multiple times and fail. The Flying Dutchman then announces his rule that for anyone who sets foot on his ship, they will be forced to serve as his "ghostly" crew for eternity. Due to Squidward's continuous complaining, the pirate throws him through the "Fly of Despair", a seemingly endless void filled with horrific imagery, which intimidates SpongeBob and Patrick into becoming part of the ship's crew.

After the Flying Dutchman instructs SpongeBob and Patrick to prepare the ship for a Bikini Bottom haunting spree, they prove inept at their haunting task, failing to frighten citizens even with the pirate leading by example. Due to their poor performance, the Flying Dutchman decides that he will eat SpongeBob and Patrick instead of letting them continue to be his crew. The two then try to escape through the perfume department, though they still end up on the ship. However, they overhear the Flying Dutchman mentioning in his diary that he could not eat without his dining sock, which leads the two to try and take it. The pirate notices them, and tries to take the sock back, which results in a stalemate. The Flying Dutchman proposes that when they give back the sock, he will give them three wishes. Upon settling the terms of the proposition, Patrick unwittingly wastes the first wish by wishing they had known this earlier, while SpongeBob wishes that Squidward could see them having wishes.

Squidward safely returns to his home after passing through the void, only to be brought back to the ship by SpongeBob's wish. Upon realizing there is only one wish left, SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward argue as to who should get the last wish. The Flying Dutchman intervenes and uses eeny, meeny, miny, moe to ultimately decide who gets the wish. All of a sudden, the episode stops when the Flying Dutchman is about to make his decision and it cuts back to Patchy. He tells the viewers that they must decide who gets the last wish.

After the commercial break, Patchy tallies the votes and shows the viewers the losing endings:

If the Flying Dutchman picked Patrick, Squidward tells him that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life on the ship and he and SpongeBob pressure him to think hard. Patrick figures out what he wants to wish for and the Flying Dutchman grants it. It’s revealed that Patrick wished for chewing gum, thinking that if they’re going to be there forever, they might as well have fresh breath. SpongeBob and Squidward reluctantly have a piece and they are all eaten by the Flying Dutchman.

If the Flying Dutchman picked Squidward, he wishes that he never met SpongeBob and Patrick in his entire life. The Flying Dutchman grants his wish, but all he does is erase SpongeBob and Patrick’s memories of Squidward and they are all eaten by the Flying Dutchman.

Patchy announces the winner, which is SpongeBob, only to be blown up with his parrot Potty who lit a fuse on himself, not knowing it is no longer planned for the program.

Squidward tells SpongeBob to wish for something that they don’t get eaten. He then wishes that the Flying Dutchman was a vegetarian so that he will not eat them. The three are then seemingly transported back to SpongeBob's pineapple home, but they quickly realize that they have also been turned into fruits, and are now in the Flying Dutchman's blender. A chase ensues as they bounce their blender away from the pirate, who now resides in a hippie van with a mast.

After the ending, Patchy tells the viewers that when they watch the episode in the future, it’ll have the winning ending. He then learns that Potty is quitting, so Patchy tries to put Potty in a cage. The narrator thanks the viewers for voting and Patchy is bit on the nose by Potty.

"Shanghaied" originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States as a television special titled "You Wish" on March 9, 2001. In the special, viewers who tuned in can vote by telephone or online for who gets the wish at the end of the episode. After SpongeBob received the most votes, the original episode proper had SpongeBob get the wish, and Patchy then featured what would have happened if viewers voted for either Squidward or Patrick.[2]

For every subsequent broadcast of the episode, SpongeBob is the official character selected to get the wish, while the segments featuring Patchy the Pirate are trimmed down to remove any reference to the original polling feature of the episode. The original broadcast version of the episode was released on the 14-disc DVD collection titled "The First 100 Episodes" on September 22, 2009,[3] while the revised version was released on "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Complete Second Season" DVD collection on October 19, 2004; the latter release includes a commentary track for the episode from director Aaron Springer, animation director Frank Weiss, and writer C.H. Greenblatt.[1] The revised version would also be featured in the UK edition of the "SpongeBob Squarepants: Ghoul Fools" DVD release on October 8, 2012, with dubbing in French, German, Italian, and Dutch.[4]

A five-minute edit of the episode was released on YouTube by the official SpongeBob SquarePants YouTube account.[5]

"Shanghaied" received critical acclaim from online pop culture critics. Lizzie Manno of Paste ranked "Shanghaied" at No. 3 in her top ten list of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, commending the episode's abundance of jokes and stating that it "might be the most underrated episode of Spongebob due to its high laugh ratio."[6] Jaclyn Kessel of Decider ranked "Shanghaied" at No. 1 in her "10 Essential 'SpongeBob Squarepants' Episodes" list, writing that "[t]he terrific writing, creativity, and absolute goofiness of 'Shanghaied' makes it the best episode ever."[7] Jared Russo of the website Medium ranked the episode at No. 1 in his top 100 list, praising its clever dialogue and "hilarious" gags and expressing that it "perfectly encapsulates the humor that SpongeBob is known for.... I’ve been watching this episode for thirteen years now, and I still find it funny."[8] Elijah Ackerman, who also writes for Medium, gave praise to the episode as well, describing its pace as "really really fast" and stating that "it gets better with every watch."[9] Oliver Whitney of TV Guide ranked "Shanghaied" at No. 6 in his "100 Best SpongeBob SquarePants Episodes" list, while Aaron Kirby of WhatCulture ranked it at No. 10 in his top ten list.[10][11]

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• "Shanghaied" at IMDb
• "Shanghaied" at TV.com