I can think of few things more timely than a Spongebob show. It's not as if some cash-in flash in the pan is making the jump- hell, it's not even a quirky new critical darling like "Steven Universe." This is Spongebob Squarepants, a cartoon that's been running for nearly twenty years by refusing to target children or adults exclusively, but catering to both without pandering to either.
If the mix of innocence and experience, wisdom and naiveté of Peanuts was the cartoon voice of its time, Spongebob is surely this century's equivalent. The childlike optimism, stoner weirdness and faux-intellectual surrealism and cultural references have made Spongebob a seemingly endless supply of memes (see the recently ubiquitous Mocking Chicken meme, so strongly tied to Trump-era internet discourse). Not even The Simpsons, the closest equivalent currently on the air, has remained as "fresh" and integrated in pop-cultural discourse as long as Spongebob has- can you picture a throwaway moment in a 2016-2017 Simpsons episode becoming an internet-conquering meme that acquires political relevance?
I don't even like Spongebob that much, but I certainly respect it. It's earned its place in pop culture and onstage more thoroughly than the now-immortal Peanuts did when they first staged "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown."
