The Old Spongebob

I grew up watching Spongebob.  Back in the day, I must have watched each episodes a couple dozen times each.  After the movie came out, the quality took a definite nosedive, and I stopped watching.  I grew up more, and I would go months without watching an episode.  However, I still had a very fond memory of the old show.  I can still quote off from just about each episode of the first three seasons.  Now, a big part of me wanted to chalk that up to nostalgia, that maybe they weren't as good as I really thought.  This really came about because most of my friends have been caught up in modern cartoons like Adventure Time, but I just can't get into it.  It just isn't funny at all.  It just seemed so much worse than what I was used to.  So, I've been watching old episodes of Spongebob, and let me just say, there's a reason the show became so popular.  They are still absolutely hilarious.  Something I notice with a lot of cartoons today is that the humor just seems lazy.  Nobody seems willing to take any extra effort, or to go that extra mile.  They go for the easy laugh.  I feel like this isn't the case with the old Spongebob episodes.  I don't know, maybe I just can't look at it objectively, but Spongebob just feels great.  It's absurd, but it doesn't lean on absurdity for its humor, utilizing verbal wit just as much.  I appreciate that.