Squidward is having a relaxing day outside, lounging on his lawn chair while chewing some bubble gum, and tosses the gum wrapper into SpongeBob's front yard. When SpongeBob heads outside of his house, he discovers the forlorn wrapper. Before Squidward can leave, SpongeBob asks him if he wants it back; Squidward views the wrapper as garbage and could do without it, while SpongeBob claims that in the right hands, the wrapper can be a goldmine of entertainment. Squidward does not believe SpongeBob and walks back home. As a result, SpongeBob asks him repeatedly if he wants it back, but he still refuses to keep it, asking SpongeBob to promise him "no matter how hard he begs, pleads, or cries to have it back." After Squidward is out of SpongeBob's sight, he decides to keep that promise and says to the paper that he is lucky to have a friend like Squidward.
Squidward is back inside his house to continue his relaxing day, when he hears SpongeBob's obnoxious laughter and begins to play his clarinet to tune it out. He still hears SpongeBob's laughing and opens his window to ask SpongeBob what he is giggling about - it turns out that he is thinking about all the fun he is going to have with the paper. Wondering how anyone can have fun with a piece of paper, Squidward starts to play his clarinet again, but is once again interrupted.
Squidward gets very angry and opens his window again to see SpongeBob frolicking with the paper and showing Gary what fun things he can do with it. He first pretends to be a superhero - SuperSponge - using the paper as his cape, then he pretends to be SpongeBob JunglePants and swings on vines wearing the paper as a loincloth before calling his animal friends. Gary encourages SpongeBob to indulge in his creativity, as he next becomes a box of army supplies using the paper as a parachute. Finally, he pretends to be a bull fighter with the paper being the blanket and having Gary as the bull. After doing impressions of a guy with a mustache, a pirate with an eye patch, and a regular guy with an eye patch, SpongeBob starts to suck the paper in through his holes and blow it back out repeatedly to Squidward's amazement. SpongeBob even makes "oral-gami" of a bird, snowflake, and paper dolls by swishing the paper around in his mouth. Squidward admits that the paper does look like fun, but quickly rescinds his compliment.
SpongeBob made a paper bird.
Squidward returns inside to engage in his own forms of fun: he reads Boring Science digest, takes a bath, and paints fruit, but his attempts are all foiled by his jealousy of SpongeBob's paper. To prove once and for all that his paper isn't fun, Squidward decides to play with a paddle ball - just as SpongeBob starts using the paper as one. He then gets SpongeBob's attention by playing with a Squidward ventriloquist dummy, to which SpongeBob uses the paper as a dummy to the delight of everyone in Bikini Bottom. Squidward rides in his shell car and asks SpongeBob if the paper can be as fun as that, only for him to hover above Squidward using the paper as a propeller. Squidward then asks SpongeBob if the paper can play music and starts to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on his clarinet poorly. SpongeBob is amazed, claiming that he made it sound original thanks to the wrong notes he played, and unintentionally corrects Squidward by playing a jazz version of it on the paper.
SpongeBob wearing Squidward's shirt.
Now finally having had enough, Squidward demands SpongeBob to give him back his paper, but he reminds him that he told him to never give it back and is sworn to the promise he made upon doing so. At this point, Squidward then tempts SpongeBob into trading the paper for his own possessions, only to be tricked into trading every possession he has, down to his house and clothes, for the paper. While Squidward is happy at first and attempts the same impressions and stunts that SpongeBob did with the paper, his joy quickly fades when he realizes that the paper isn't fun on its own, requiring creative, optimistic minds like SpongeBob's to truly take advantage of it.
As Squidward laments that he gave away all his possessions for a useless piece of paper, Patrick takes the paper from Squidward and uses it as a disposable wrapper for his gum, leaving him with nothing as he asks for sunscreen.
On November 14, 2016, recording scripts for every episode from season 1 were publicly released, found on one of the asset discs for the PlayStation video game, SuperSponge. This included the recording script for "The Paper," then known as "Lemons Out of Lemonade."[2]
Art
A sketch of Squidward's belongings coming alive, using his house as a head for the body it forms. This art was made for a proposed finale to the episode.[3]
In fan-voted SpongeBob SquarePants marathons, "The Paper" was ranked #46 during the Best Day Ever event from November 9–10, 2006 and #7 during The Ultimate SpongeBob SpongeBash event from July 17–19, 2009.
Carolyn Lawrence in several interviews, rates this episode as her favorite.[4]
Trivia
General
The scene where Squidward plays wrong notes on his clarinet and SpongeBob playing the correct notes on the paper and doing it in the key of A-minor has become a meme where the song that Squidward and SpongeBob were playing has changed into a different song.
According to the old Nickelodeon website and some production art, this episode was originally going to be called "Lemons Out of Lemonade."
The science-related things Squidward mentions are on the cover of Boring Science: Erosion on the back, mitosis on the front under the title. Erosion is when water or wind wears away rock and land, while mitosis is when one cell splits into two.
When SpongeBob plays the song Squidward played "the wrong notes" on, he claims to play in the key of "A Minor," when in fact, he actually plays in the key of C Major. Although technically, he could've been playing in A Minor, as it is parallel to the C Major scale.
The piece Gary plays on Squidward's clarinet has also been used in the intro and outro of every Astrology with Squidward short.
For the end of the episode, Jay Lender and Chuck Klein were considering for the finale of the episode to be about Squidward's belongings coming alive and SpongeBob having to fight back using the paper. Stephen Hillenburg "thankfully" talked them about out of it, according to Lender.[3]
The first episode where more than the first 30 seconds of "Honolulu March" plays, and is the only episode to do so until "Friendiversary" in season 13.
This is the only episode in the series to play "Dancing The Hula" entirely.
When SpongeBob first asks Squidward to take the paper back, he says how much fun it can be "in the right hands". This is a foreshadowing of Squidward's lack of creativity once he gets the paper, showing how worthless it is in Squidward's hands and he is unable to have fun with it like how SpongeBob did.
Due to the episode pairing with "Valentine's Day," this episode rarely airs on TV due to it being paired with a holiday episode.
Cultural references
The magazine that Squidward reads while trying to clear his mind from SpongeBob's paper is a parody/spoof of Popular Science.
User-drawn correction of the first erroneous "Mary Had a Little Lamb" music notation.
Neither sheet music that appears in the episode matches their respective songs that SpongeBob plays when making music with the paper.
When Squidward is trying to take the paper from SpongeBob, the former's skin color is pale.
When Squidward first shuts the door, it has a handle. Later, it is a doorknob.
Yellow teeth error.
When Squidward trades his house for SpongeBob's paper, the latter's teeth are yellow for a split second.
Most of his outline is gone and there's a small amount of green.
After the music sheet background disappears, when Squidward tries to get the paper from SpongeBob a light amount of green is shown and most of his outline is gone.
The painting has the mouth closed...
...but when Squidward breaks it in half, the mouth opens with a smile.
When Squidward is painting and gets distracted by SpongeBob's paper, his picture has the mouth closed, but when he breaks it, one of the halves show the mouth is open with a smile.
Patrick's and SpongeBob's houses are missing.
When Squidward tries to get back home, his neck and head are dislocated for a frame.
Seems like too much SpongeBob on your back can cut your neck off.
At the beginning of the episode, Patrick and SpongeBob's houses are missing.
When SpongeBob tries on Squidward's shirt, his house is missing its chimney. The same error also happened after Squidward sold his stuff to SpongeBob.
The episode becomes darker in the last two minutes.
![A sketch of Squidward's belongings coming alive, using his house as a head for the body it forms. This art was made for a proposed finale to the episode.[3]](/wiki/File:The_Paper_storyboard.jpg "The Paper storyboard.jpg (265 KB)")
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