'Toon Reviews 18: Rocko's Modern Life Season 1 Episode 11: Rocko's Happy Sack/Flu-In-U-Enza

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Rocko’s Happy Sack

This cartoon fits the category of exaggerating challenges that come with life’s common tasks to hilarious effect, in this case going food shopping.  Its strengths to this setup make the cartoon stand out as a shopping trip unlike any other, especially if you get easily overwhelmed by its challenges like Rocko. 

There’s a creative depiction of Rocko’s hunger where his stomach is personified as a walking and talking organ demanding food.  Other depictions show how low Rocko’s food supply is such as a scene of a common house fly making a big deal over finding crumbs and dying of starvation before he can eat any.  It’s absurd dark comedy that brings to light the problem at hand which Rocko really needs to solve, except he doesn’t have enough money for a food order.  Fortunately, there’s a sale at the local supermarket where everything is 99% off, the only price he can afford. 

The cartoon then becomes a mad dash for Rocko and Spunky to get through the shopping with the sale lasting for a few minutes which becomes an even bigger hassle with all the challenges that come with shopping enhanced humorously by exaggerations.  They start when they reach the supermarket and get caught in a demolition derby of a search for a parking space.  Soon, Rocko is off doing his shopping with a cart that’s missing two wheels to carry everything.  From there, the shopping trip is a huge collection of creative gags based on the aisles Rocko passes through.  Lots of stuff gets stuck to Spunky’s elongated tongue after the dog tries to get a lick of ice cream in the freezer section, and Rocko gets his head set on fire while trying a free sample of lava puffs and gets lobsters snapped onto him when he drinks all the water in their tank to cool off. 

Regarding Spunky, this cartoon turns out to be yet another instance where he gets himself into messes that Rocko has to get him out of.  We already discussed the ice cream incident, but Spunky’s real trouble is when he’s caught and packaged by a butcher.  It’s not a huge issue since Rocko freaking out and trying to save him doesn’t take away from the food shopping experience.  Rather than taking up a lot of time, saving Spunky doesn’t become an issue until near the end of the cartoon when Rocko is close to purchasing everything before the sale ends.  Not only that, but there’s a funny scene where he convinces a customer who got Spunky to give him up, and the customer’s rebuttals of Rocko’s claims backfire, particularly how him insulting sea mammals hurts an actual sea mammal in front of him. 

All these hurdles to get through while shopping can be stressful to anyone, and what happens proves that Rocko’s human enough to reach a breaking point too.  When noon passes even after Rocko meets the deadline, the food price goes up to normal which Rocko can’t afford, and he snaps about everything he’s been through which convinces the cashier to let him pay the sales price.  To see that Rocko can succumb to stress too makes this moment work and stand out as a funny scene.  What doesn’t really work is the final scene of Rocko losing the food driving home.  It makes Rocko’s outburst a huge waste, and shows that he and Spunky will be going back to starving, the very thing they were trying to avoid. 

The creative and funny stuff is still effective while relating somewhat to what people like you may run into while shopping.  Ultimately, the cartoon is still very good if you can get past the ending.

A

Flu-In-U-Enza

Knowing from experience, getting sick always feels bad especially when it means you have to miss something you’ve been looking forward to.  In this cartoon where Rocko gets sick, this is the case when he may have to miss is a WWWWF wrestling match. 

There’s a lot of detail to how sick Rocko’s is, but they restrain it enough to not make look too disturbing.  It’s marked by a simple red nose, the first visual sign that he’s sick which includes snot dripping out.  While the snot is a little gross to see trickling out of Rocko’s nose and later ears in liters, it helps that it comes with a nice visual gag of how it feels like water dripping from a faucet, right down to Rocko temporarily stopping it by turning his ears. 

Now, being sick doesn’t keep Rocko from being put through life’s challenges as usual, and getting sick itself is a challenge.  They follow him through getting medicine from a local crazy doctor whose office is a huge mess and whose medical practices are careless.  In fact, it’s implied that he’s not even trustworthy when the nurse tries to keep him strapped to a bed.  Regarding the medicine, it brings an interesting interpretation of finding out how to take medicine when Rocko takes a tablet orally when he wasn’t supposed to. There’s a wild view with distorted and wavy backgrounds as they’d normally appear to people in a daze ending with Rocko throwing up. 

This action brings three personified half-eaten foods called the Enchanted Upchucks appearing out of the toilet Rocko threw up in to cure him once and for all.  I have to admit that like the giant tooth in “Rinse and Spit,” this exaggeration is near impossible to deduce what it relates to unlike most from this show.  The cartoon just decided to have half-eaten food cure Rocko just because, and there’s little to no sense to it.  Even if this is the case, we do get a lot of cute gags out of the Enchanted Upchucks attempts like treating a headache of Rocko’s with a big ice cube or squishing of the brain, and feeding Rocko oranges and an iron to give him Vitamin C and “iron.” The cure that does work is feeding Rocko a really hot soup, meaning that Rocko’s illness wouldn’t have been cured if it wasn’t for the Upchucks’ absurd mannerisms. 

While this is generally nice, their existence not making sense stands out a lot more because of this which is a problem.  Plus, while it’s great that Rocko ends up cured, he still can’t go to the WWWWF match when Spunky catches his cold the next day, so they have to stay home and watch it on TV.  Since they could’ve done this from the start, there was no need to make a big deal of Rocko being sick to begin with.  Also, couldn’t Rocko just give Spunky the soup that cured him?  That means they wouldn’t have to miss the match at all.  Heck, the Enchanted Upchucks are even present, so they can just make the soup again. 

We do end with moments that devalue the whole plot, but you can still enjoy the cartoon. Rocko is content with what happens and what’s entreating still works.  Things do get too random for their own good though.

B

The Ranking

1. Popcorn Pandemonium
2. Cabin Fever
3. Skid Marks
4. The Good the Bad and the Wallaby
5. Canned
6. To Heck and Back
7. Who Gives a Buck?
8. Dirty Dog
9. A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic
10. Trash-O-Madness
11. Jet Scream
12. Rinse and Spit
13. Carnival Knowledge
14. Keeping Up With the Bigheads
15. Rocko’s Happy Sack
16. Sand in Your Navel
17. Spitballs
18. No Pain No Gain
19. Flu-In-U-Enza
20. Power Trip
21. Bedfellows
22. Leap Frogs

The next Rocko's Modern Life review features the introduction to Heffer's family (even if they technically first appeared in Episode 2), and Rocko learns about the hardships of unrequited love.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is the OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "Sibling Rivalry."

If you would like to check out other Rocko's Modern Life reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.