Patrick Star

Patrick Star is the deuteragonist of the popular Nickelodeon animated comedy SpongeBob SquarePants, created by creator Stephen Hillenburg and voiced by Bill Fagerbakke. His most significant character trait is his lack of intelligence, which makes him a negative influence over his best friend, SpongeBob SquarePants. Patrick has been critically acclaimed. Plush toys of the character have also received popularity, especially with children.

Role in SpongeBob SquarePants

Patrick is a pink, lazy, overweight seastar who is SpongeBob's best friend and neighbor. He lives under a rock and his most prominent character trait is his lack of intelligence, which differs from one episode to another. In some episodes, Patrick is deprived of even the most rudimentary common sense and knowledge, though occasionally he will have bursts of great intelligence, much to the confusion of everyone around him. In the episode "Tentacle Vision" Squidward asks Patrick "Just how dumb are you?" to which Patrick replies "It varies,". He also seems to notice malice and sarcasm more easily than SpongeBob, indicating that he is more attentive or less naive than he appears to be. Depicted as a negative influence on SpongeBob, he has encouraged dangerous and foolish activities that get the two into trouble. Patrick is a career journeyman who is usually unemployed throughout the course of the series, but holds various short-term jobs as the storyline of each episode requires. Patrick has never had a long-standing occupation. However, he has had various jobs, mostly at the Krusty Krab. He has worked there a total of eight times: In the episodes "Arrgh!," "Big Pink Loser," "Squilliam Returns," "That's No Lady," "Bummer Vacation", "Banned in Bikini Bottom","No Hat For Pat", and "Pat No Pay".

Patrick has also worked at the Chum Bucket three times. The first was in "The Fry Cook Games", in which he takes the job in order to be able to compete in the Fry Cook Games. The audience was at first fooled into thinking an enormous fish would be the competitor, when in reality he was only carrying the real contestant, Patrick Star (a parody of a scene in the film Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls). In a later episode, "Chum Bucket Supreme", Patrick becomes the slogan manager for the Chum Bucket and creates the catchphrase "CHUM IS FUM". The third is "Bucket Sweet Bucket" when Patrick, Spongebob,and even Squidward become in charge of redecorating the Chum Bucket. but they mess up with everything, and finally get everything off the Krusty Krab and reconstruct it on top of the Chum Bucket. In "Rule of Dumb", Patrick was discovered to be of royal blood and briefly reigned as King of Bikini Bottom. However, this was a mistake, and the true heir to the throne was Gary (who is also revealed to be Patrick's cousin, though neither fact is referenced later).

In the episode "Sing a Song of Patrick," Patrick takes advantage of a mail-in offer to have a song written by him recorded by a professional band. The song was so horrible that the band died.

Lifestyle

Patrick has no steady occupation and spends most of his time sleeping or watching television under his rock house, or playing with his best friend, SpongeBob SquarePants. He does give advice to SpongeBob, although it's not usually practical and often gets them both into negative situations. When he tries to find work, it is shown that he has little practical skill; for example in Big Pink Loser, he struggles with tasks such as sweeping or opening a jar. Although he has an extreme "skill" for doing "nothing" as shown in Stanley S. Squarepants and Big Pink Loser, in the latter he wins a trophy for "doing absolutely nothing longer than anyone else". In the Episode Patrick SmartPants, Patrick becomes extremely smart after a freak accident, although SpongeBob dislikes this. Despite his innocence, he has also been a criminal many times in the series, like in the episodes Life of Crime and SpongeBob Meets the Strangler among others. Patrick doesn't usually intend to get SpongeBob and himself in trouble, but he sometimes does . For example, in the episode Sailor Mouth, Patrick and SpongeBob read graffiti on a dumpster, before learning the writing included "bad words."

Creation

SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg began creating cartoons and caricatures of tide pool-dwelling sea life, including sea stars, while teaching marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point, California, from 1984 to 1987.

In other media

The character of Patrick has appeared several times in popular culture. In 2007, the Amsterdam-based company Boom Chicago created a SpongeBob parody called Back to Work! in which a Chinese Patrick refuses to go to work and advocates freedom of speech and rights of leisure and income. During the same year, production company Camp Chaos created a SpongeBob parody entitled SpongeBong HempPants which features a multitude of the series' characters parodied in the form of various drugs. The series has received mixed reviews from television critics; Adam Finley of TV Squad believed the series sounded "hilarious on paper", but ultimately did not demonstrate its full potential.