Squidward, the new Spock
It's admittedly a stretch to identify parallels between Star Trek and Spongebob, but the affinity is stronger than it might first seem. The cartoon's core emotional triad contains powerful echoes of the anxiety-ridden three-way that gave Star Trek its homoerotic frisson.
Spongebob's niceness obviously sets him apart from Kirk, even if it is as aggressive in its way as Kirk's eternal belligerence. Where Kirk puts everyone around him in peril -- and slaughters his adversaries -- with his triumphalist will to power, Spongebob's niceness dominates the daily life of Bikini Bottom.
As with Spock and Kirk, Squidward feels a justifiable superiority to the uncomplicated Spongebob yet finds his naive self-confidence irresistibly attractive. Their certainty may be infantile, but it enables for both Spongebob and Kirk an awesome progression from triumph to triumph.
Squidward and Spock, both uptight intellectuals, also are both jealously incredulous at the privileged intimacy between their job-obsessed love objects (Spongebob/Kirk) and regular guy sidekicks (Patrick/Dr. McCoy). But where Spock tries to hide his pain under a guise of amused, if bitchy, superiority, Squidward is just constantly irritated.
The sexual undercurrent in these relationships cannot, within the context of kid-oriented TV, speak its name. On Star Trek it was largely displaced into Kirk's promiscuity, Spock's hyper-rationalism and the mockery by Kirk and McCoy of the obviously superior (and anguished) Spock, raillery that closed many episodes.
With censorship much decayed in the years since the first Star Trek, the sexual issues sit closer to the surface on Spongebob Squarepants. Unlike Kirk, Spongebob does not over assert his heterosexuality. Where Kirk was put above suspicion by bedding every female who crossed his path, Spongebob's only close relationship with a woman is explicitly non-sexual.
Squidward, meanwhile, leads a lifestyle that in most contexts would be considered patently gay, while Spock's supposed lack of emotions simply excluded the concept of lifestyle. As for the feeble Patrick and McCoy, they are mostly sexless losers, often in the way, but also always there to comfort their "best friends."
Despite the atmosphere of repression, no amount of rationalization or bad acting could hide the sparks that flew among the three Star Trek principals. There was a reason the series' most satisfying emotional peaks included the boyish brawls in which the latent tensions between Kirk and Spock resolved periodically themselves. This reflected a bond that even McCoy could not disrupt.
Similarly, when Spongebob and Squidward are together, Patrick typically recedes into a foil, regularly used by Spongebob as a way to get at Squidward. It's the Spongebob-Squidward relationship that is at the show's heart. Spongebob is always trying to insert himself into Squidward's life while Squidward, terrified of intimacy (never a problem for the nice), cannot keep himself from fixating on Spongebob and his antics.
The relationship remains forever unresolved, however. This being TV, there is no real possibility for growth.
(Thanks to the July 1988 edition of Crow magazine for insight into the Kirk/Spock/McCoy relationship.)
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