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Junk Junkies
Garage sales don’t seem to feel like compelling centers for
stories. This cartoon about one,
however, features believable subjects to be brought up in such events.
Among the quirks is a creative reason for
there to be a garage sale in the first place.
Rocko already has a lot of bills to pay, but this issue gets worse when
he has a $500 bill to pay for a pizza place.
To show that the pizza company means business, they frequently drop
pizzas from out of nowhere reminding him to pay up. With so much junk around Rocko’s house, he
and Heffer decide that the best way they can earn the money needed is to sell
everything.
This brings many
expected events to come from garage sales.
The guys convince crowds of people to come over with the small publicity
of a simple sign. There are a few
humorous interactions of Rocko getting customers to buy things for the assigned
price, even if they’re already really cheap.
Heffer naively makes significant cash by giving a hillbilly family
Rocko’s furniture. For the most part,
the garage sale plays out no differently from those in real life.
However, there’s some noticeable sentiment to
it when it comes to one thing Rocko has lying around. When asked about how much he’d charge for his
pogo stick, he insists that it’s too meaningful to him and refuses to sell
it. However, the pizza guys constantly
harassing him with warnings shows just how much Rocko needs to get that bill
payed. Not to mention, one antiques
dealer shows intense interest in the pogo stick no matter how hard Rocko
insists on holding onto it. He finally offers to pay the amount of money needed
for the bill, and Rocko sells his pogo stick before he even realizing it. It’s being without his cherished childhood
toy that gets Rocko to regret the sale despite how much he needed to pay that
bill. His unease of letting it go and
breaking down over the memories of it feel believable to anyone needing
to let go of their childhood favorites.
By the way, the memories come to Rocko’s mind through talking with
another childhood toy of his, Mr. Onion Head who turns out to be a wholesome
well-meaning character. However, given
how the moment’s staged, it’s hard to tell if this is real or Rocko’s
imagination. If it is real, there’s
something disturbing about Heffer eating Mr. Onion Head afterwards.
So Rocko is led to get his pogo stick back
but is without a way to pay the pizza guys.
Thankfully he’s saved not by convenience, but by an earlier showing of a
melted GI Jimbo toy winning over a customer studying it for hours. It’s a clever twist making good use of
earlier gags. Now if only there were a
plausible way for Rocko to get his furniture back and still be happy.
While this cartoon is mostly standard for the
course, good presentation of the expected phases and relatable sentimental
themes make it very wholesome and enjoyable.
A-
Day of the Flecko
Relatability is key to this show’s appeal and entertainment
style, but cartoons like this prove that this strategy doesn’t mean success
every time. That’s not to say that what
we have is bad, it’s still quite entertaining on its own. However, a few factors don’t make the
experience very pleasant and at times make the story lose focus.
It starts with Rocko getting
ready to get off of work for a relaxing weekend. However, his boss Mr. Smitty pulls off a
particularly cruel work order. Just as
Rocko is about to clock out, Mr. Smitty stops him and makes him correct an
artist’s error on mountains of the same comic book. Of all the unnecessarily harsh moments from
him, this has got to be the worst of them all.
Not only does he show no remorse for having one hapless employee do work
that’s suited for a larger work force, but making Rocko do this afterhours is
just unacceptable. This may be an
exaggeration for how hard jobs can be, but there’s no attempt at humor and it
feels like a real form of cruelty. It
takes any potential for enjoyment out of the scene.
The rest of the cartoon isn’t nearly as hard
to watch as this, but it’s still pretty problematic. Because of working all night, Rocko is too
tired the next day and needs to sleep leaving uncomfortable unfairness for
missing out on a camping trip. I could question why he’d want to go camping
again, but the show isn’t meant to have strong continuity. Rocko trying to sleep does work in a fair
number of relatable instances exaggerated in a comedic sense. The ways he shuts up things like an unusually loud bird chirp or barricades the window from having sunlight shine through are
humorously staged and executed. They're the things people in real life wish they can do when getting
interrupted while sleeping.
It’s during
this moment where the cartoon stops being about Rocko and puts the focus on a
fly named Flecko. He’s a fly who treats
basically living his life like a full time job.
It’s not a bad idea for a premise, but while we’re sympathizing with
Rocko and his lack of sleep, it’s not fitting to suddenly shift focus to a
fly. Flecko makes it up to Rocko’s room
where his buzzing around keeps Rocko from getting the sleep he needs. Later, Flecko loses his fake eye in Rocko’s
nose and quite some time is spent on him getting it back. Again, the focus on Flecko makes it feel like
his plight deserves the most care when Rocko’s matters are far more
pressing. At least there’s some creative
imagery like bugs as prisoners forced to break blocks of Rocko’s hardened mucus
inside his nose. Eventually, Rocko finds
Flecko out, and the fly tries to weasel his way out of getting killed by
showing Rocko pictures of his millions of kids.
However, Rocko is left going on a rampage around his house after Flecko
proceeds to tell Rocko off for trying to kill him. We essentially end with Rocko still in bad
shape without knowing how to feel about Flecko.
It’s not clear if he was lying about his kids leaving it hard to say if
he’s a good character to follow.
There’s
some appeal in the creative take on getting tired and disturbed by things like
flies, but suddenly shifting focus and the general mean-spiritedness really
hold it back.
C-
The Ranking
- Rocko’s Modern Christmas
- Tickled Pinky
- Boob Tubed
- Gutter Balls
- Uniform Behavior
- Kiss Me I’m Foreign
- The Lounge Singer
- Road Rash
- I Have No Son
- Commuted Sentence
- Cruisin’
- Born to Spawn
- Down the Hatch
- Junk Junkies
- Pipe Dreams
- She’s the Toad
- Hair Licked
- Hut Sut Raw
- Day of the Flecko
The next Rocko's Modern Life review sends Rocko and Heffer to the ski slopes, and Mr. Bighead is at the mercy of Earl the dog who's taken in by his wife.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews we learn about "Launchpad's First Crash" in a DuckTales review.
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.
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