Strongly disagree, didn't feel insensitive to me in the least, especially considering the twist that nobody was actually sick from the flu.
Every way I look at this it makes no sense, who knows maybe it has nothing to do with COVID at all and it being left off is just plain old incompetence on Viacom's part.
Spongebob season 12 january 2019 tv#
I truly don't get this one, yes there's a few scenes in the episode that can't help but evoke COVID(Mr Krabs putting on a facemask and disinfecting his money, the men in radiation suits locking the restaurant down) but aside from that the episode does not really deal with the characters getting sick, it's more Krabs being paranoid that others are sick and throwing them in the freezer and at the end the twist is that the health inspector guy was wrong about the Clam Flu and that nobody actually had it(though the characters did get other diseases from fighting while covered in grease, though those illnesses were much more humorous in nature so they had no resemblance to real life illnesses) so it's apart from some brief scenes it actually does not evoke the pandemic much at all, so it's exclusion from the DVD is quite baffling(Especially since the episode is legally available on Apple TV in Canada and it's not like they aren't also suffering big losses from COVID, not as much as us sure but it's still a big problem there, so it's weird that Viacom is OK with that episode being legally available there but not in the U.S.)after all other Spongebob episodes where characters do actually get sick like Suds are now back in reruns just fine and another sickness related episode in season 12-Hiccup Plague(Where characters really do get sick) wasn't left off the season set.