E! True Spongebob Stories: The Hidden Past of Mrs. Puff

I originally posted this as a note on Facebook, may as well post it here too.

The following is a late night, sleepytime induced combination of ranting and musing (which I refer to as rantusings), by me, on nothing of any particular importance, with no real proofreading or look over. Enjoy.

I saw something rather interesting on VH1 today. It was a Spongebob Squarepants retrospective that talked about how the show has become a cultural phenomenon of epic proportions, and why it's become the ginormous monster that it has. Part of the reason the show is so popular has to deal with some of the more sophisticated and adult oriented humor that permeated the show's writing throughout, primarily, the show's second and third seasons. I've had those two seasons [hooray for dvd box sets!] and realized the depth and, at times, sophistication of the show's humor. From one-off musings like "The inner machinations of my mind are an ENIGMA!" cutting to a mental image of a carton of milk falling over to spill onto a table to represent Patrick's typical thought processes, to lines of absolute genius such as during the episode "Squilliam Returns" we are treated to a look into Spongebob's mind as he empties it, in order to absorb knowledge on only "Fine dining....and breathing!", in which we see your standard image of hundreds of little clones of the character emptying trash cans. One such character, presumable the supervisor asks the usual smart-ass question "What are we paying you for" to another, which he replies with "You're not paying us anything. We're just a creative visual metaphor personifying the abstract concept of thought." Brilliant, sophisticated, hilarious, and absolute genius.

Throughout my viewings of the series, I've become intrigued by one certain character- Mrs. Poppy Puff. While few characters have had any sort of backstory developed or information divulged; it's been my assertion that Mrs. Puff has had a rather devious past.

The character of Mrs. Puff is that of one a rather stressed out driving school teacher (due, majorly, in part to Spongebob), who seems to be fighting against her own mental instability. Consider the episode "The Bully"- where Spongebob is threatened to be beaten up by Flats the Flounder- during the first few minutes of the episode she comes into the class late and remarks "Sorry I'm late class. I was caught in traffic when that 'I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life thing reared it's ugly head'", and then chuckles nervously. This establishes that Mrs. Puff is suffering from a nervous disorder that is causing her to go into panic attacks out of worry about her current life conditions- perhaps a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of Spongebob's many, and very destructive, catastrophic failures during his driving tests. Further evidence of Mrs. Puff's mental instability is provided in the Episode "Krusty Love"- the episode where Mr. Krabs falls in love with Mrs. Puff, and begins a relationship with her using Spongebob to help. Spongebob decides to introduce Mrs. Puff to Mr. Krabs; so he walks up behind her and simply says "Hi Mrs. Puff", causing Puff to snap into wild hysterics where she shouts out driving instructions to Spongebob while stomping on an imaginary brake pedal (something not uncommon to people who've been in traumatic automobile experiences). This incident, combined with the aforementioned panic attack, have lead me to believe that Mrs. Puff suffers from chronic anxiety problems, and is mentally unstable. Now, there is something else in this episode (Krusty Love) that further makes me question Mrs. Puff's overall mental condition, but I shall return to it later.

Not only does Mrs. Puff currently suffer from mental problems, it seems she's also had a history of them. In the episode "Doing Time", we another instance of Spongebob failing a driving test. Spongebob is very inattentive to what he's doing, and eventually sends his boatmobile, and a slew of police officers, off the edge of a cliff onto a juice tanker, which floods an old folk's home. In (what we learned at the end of the episode) a vivid hallucination, Mrs. Puff is sent to jail for Spongebob's rampant disregard for public safety, and extensive property damage. While in jail, she convinces herself that she "...can do this, Puff. You can get through this without losing your sanity." She then remarks, interestingly, "Oh, that’s a road we don’t want to go down again." On its own this remark seems innocuous, but when combined with another fact about Puff's past is could signal that Mrs. Puff has always suffered from mental illness. In the episode "No Free Rides"- where Mrs. Puff let's Spongebob pass a test on extra credit and receive his license- Mrs. Puff comes to the horrifying realization about the implications of her letting Spongebob slide (wanton property damage, chaos, traffic pileups), she explains her plan for fixing the problem- "Ill have to move to a new city, start a new boating school with a new name." It's a funny line, but becomes somewhat disturbing when Mrs. Puff then says "No...not again." This means Mrs. Puff has had to flee from her previous home, change her identity, restart her business, and start a new life. The implications of this knowledge are staggering. Let's recap.

Mrs. Puff currently suffers from anxiety issues, is possibly clinically psychotic (what kind of teacher would keep Spongebob as a student, even though he's inflicted great physical harm to her), and has panic attacks. She has had a history of mental instability, been in jail twice, had to flee her previous home, and change her identity. All of this eerily resembles the standard psychological profile of a murderer, or serial criminal. But this is a kid's cartoon right? No one in their right mind could put something like this in a show meant for little tykes....right?

Let's return to the episode "Krusty Love", and the most frightening thing about Mrs. Puff. Has anyone notices how she's called Mrs. Puff, yet there has been no sighting of a Mr. Puff? The only women with the title Mrs. are currently married, or widowers. This idea did not escape Mr. Krabs when Spongebob told Krabs her name. The following exchange occurred between Mr. Krabs and Spongebob:

" SpongeBob: Hey, that's my driving instructor, Mrs. Puff!
Mr. Krabs: Mrs. Puff? Aw, she's married.
SpongeBob: Oh no, Mr. Krabs; she's single.
Mr. Krabs: Then what happened to Mr. Puff?
SpongeBob: She doesn't like to talk about it."

The conversation cuts away to a scene of a puffer fish style novelty lamp being turned on before Spongebob's final line. The fact that this, very clearly, shows that Mr. Puff has been sent to the great Novelty Store beyond the clouds; and Mrs. Puff not wanting to talk about it makes things even more curious. This could simply just be a lady in mourning of her late lover and not wishing to reopen old wounds, but taking into account Mrs. Puffs mental problems and relocation and identity change, there can only be on explanation that can be inferred.

MRS. PUFF KILLED HER HUSBAND.

Be it through a horrific boating school accident, or through murder, Mr. Puff was killed in conjunction with something that Mrs. Puff had done. The murder scenario seems all the more likely in that she's clearly mentally unstable, and under what other circumstances would someone need to skip town and change their identity, thereby restarting their entire life? Only someone who has done something extremely regrettable and would land her in prison for life would have to resort to drastic measures. We, also, can't ignore the fact that the late Mr. Puff is now a lamp- a move that an enterprising Mrs. Puff could have made quite a bit of money, maybe even enough to restart her entire life and pay for the repairs due to the extensive damage done to her driving school as the result of Spongebob's misadventures behind the wheel.

The reasons for Mrs. Puff slaying her husband are unclear. She could have been unhappy with her marriage, her husband could have been a total jerkfish, she could have just wanted the money. But it's perfectly evident that, out of all of the characters on Spongebob Squarepants, none could be more cunning, insane, resilient, and have a past more shady and full of debauchery than Mrs. Poppy Puff.

I hereby salute Mr. Hillenburg, and reward him with the "Life-Time Achievement" award for the "Greatest Mindfuck in Cartoon History" for so elegantly weaving in a character that perfectly matches the psychological profile of a serial killer into a kid's animated program, slipping it completely under the radar, and still making everything about it more hilarious than nearly anything that's ever been done before.

"Next up on E! True Spongebob Stories- Sheldon J. Plankton, the Makings of an Evil Genius"

Plankton- "I was just minding my own business in the schoolyard's playground, when every day these kids would just come up to me saying 'Sheldon! Sheldon! Will always be a tiny one! Sheldon! Sheldon! Being tiny's not so fun!'. It really stuck with me, the pain, you know? *sniffle* Could we...could we turn those cameras off? *starts crying*".