Behind a great of the scene there is always a secondary that makes it even better or that, without more, steals the scene. The infinite legion of followers of ‘Sponge Bob’ knows that every appearance of Patrick star raises the level of the episode. Patricio, the pink starfish dressed in a green and lilac swimsuit, with weak intellectual talent but unbeatable ability to know how to live life; the hilarious box of surprises capable of combining capital stupidity with unexpected brilliance. It is understandable, therefore, that Patricio has achieved the impossible: outshine the iconic yellow sponge created by the late Stephen Hillenburg in 1999 for Nickelodeon.
After nearly half a thousand television episodes and three feature films as a deluxe secondary to SpongeBob SquarePants, heThe starfish makes the leap to the big leagues alone in ‘Patrick is the star’a proposal of unavoidable Martian nature that premieres on Monday the 16th, at 5:00 p.m., on Nickelodeon, with a preview screening of the first episode this Friday at 4:52 p.m. In the series, with 13 double episodes, a youthful version of our big pink friend hosts his own variety television show, ‘The Patrick Show’. The first episode already puts us in the background of the hallucinogenic setting in which the series takes place. It is not mentioned, but we intuit that the action also takes place in Bikini Bottom. A teenage Patricio who wears a green and lilac shirt and blue pants lives in a house shaped like a coffee pot in the company of his family: his father Cecilio, his mother Bunny, his sister Calamarina and his grandfather GranPat. Next to the coffee house we see a giant cup and a tube television with satellite dish in which ‘El show de Patricio’ is broadcastwhere the pink star, directed by her sister squid, recounts in her own way situations of her daily life in all imaginable audiovisual formats: VHS texture, ‘slow motion’ animation, recreations of old black and white genre movies…
Patrick’s Surreal Universe
The program is recorded in Patricio’s own room, converted into multicolor studio crammed with papier-mâché planets, space rockets and musical instruments in which the bed hangs from the ceiling and in which the doors can transport you to other dimensions of space-time. If SpongeBob had the snail Gary as a pet, Patrick has the stinging hedgehog Auchi as such. “I do everything, well, I don’t know anything (…) / I have my own ‘show’ and it’s a farce / Pretend that you like it and that you see it the way I do/ Patricio’s ‘show’ is only in my head” , sings the star in the first episode, warning that, apart from hilarious delirium and fantasy of carrolliano airthere may be an unexpected existential complexity.
“We are in the surreal universe of Patricio and the entire series takes place from his point of view, which leads us directly to ‘Life is a dream’, by Calderón de la Barca & rdquor ;, he assures this newspaper César Capilla, the actor who lends the voice to Patricio since the night of time. “The king dreams that he is a king and the poor man that he is poor. I think that thinking that reality is in your head and that it’s just a dream is a profound concept, but series like ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ or now ‘Patrick is the Star’ have a very simple appearance, but very powerful subtexts”. Chapel is excited by the new series’ untamed visual and narrative imagination, pure frantic ‘slapstick’ capable, at times, turning ‘SpongeBob’ into naturalistic fiction: “It’s a ‘spin-off at the height of the original, which wasn’t easy to achieve. Imagine the cosmos of SpongeBob, but filtered through Patrick’s funny, surreal and childish gaze. He is still in his world, in his parallel universe, enjoying everything he does. What a big boy unable to grow”.
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The actor claims to have passed it “bomb & rdquor; putting Patricio’s voice again (in a wonderful way), in an experience that he qualifies “as or more good & rdquor; that their 23 years working on the mother series: “As you know, Patricio has no middle ground. In ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ he sometimes spoke very little and sometimes he spoke a lot. In this case (laughs), he always talks a lot. He has been a very rewarding experience. Patricio and I have spent a whole life together, he is almost like a son, he is part of me & rdquor ;.
Second ‘spin-off’ of ‘SpongeBob’
The series is the second ‘spin-off’ of the ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ universe after ‘Kampamento Koral: SpongeBob First Adventures’, where the childhood adventures of our heroes are recounted in their dreamy summers. ‘Patricio is the star’, as expected, offers both visual delirium and scant respect for complex narrative arcs or the master plans, as was already the case in ‘SpongeBob’, where almost everything happened just because. In this sense, and given that in the mother series, whose action takes place later, neither Patricio’s current parents nor his sister squid nor his grandfather nor his pet hedgehog ever appear, one could think more of a parallel universe than of a logical evolution of history What happened between them so that all their traces were erased in ‘SpongeBob’? Unanswered questions, nor is it necessary, for a series that, according to Capilla, “should delight every fan of ‘SpongeBob’ & rdquor ;, well, not in vain, appear there, as guests, the main original characters, such as Squidward, Sandy, Plankton or the googly-eyed sponge itself. The series, by the way, and it’s good news, has been renewed for a second season.