SPONGEBOB'S BIG BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT
Nickelodeon, 7:00 p.m. ET
SPECIAL: When I poll my college students on which TV shows they’ve seen at least one full episode, the standard unanimous answers used to be The Twilight Zone, I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Honeymooners. But that was a generation ago. These days, those shows rarely have reached more than half of the students in my classrooms, and a show like the original Star Trek has been seen by fewer than 10 percent. But in 2019, what one program is guaranteed to be universally seen and beloved by the 18-to-22-year-olds in my TV history classes? Nickelodeon’s animated classic SpongeBob SquarePants, which in this very meta special celebrates its own 20thanniversary on TV. Creator Stephen Hillenburg died last year, but all the show’s other collaborators and voice actors are here to celebrate SpongeBob’s “birthday” – and without giving too much away, I can hint that many of them will be partying in the flesh, as well as in aquatic animated form at Bikini Bottom…