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Out
of Joe Murray stopping for Chinese food while out of town for a conference came
this cartoon where everything is driven by fortune cookies. Such a Chinese confection is often associated
with characters becoming suspicious of bad luck because of taking the fortunes
too seriously. This very cartoon ends up
falling into this trap and like in most instances of this, the results are
pretty mixed when it comes to suffering bad luck.
Going off of my own experience with fortune
cookies, they’re always positive to some extent. Real world logic, however, doesn’t apply to
this show, so it’s open to a typical blue collar worker half-heartedly writing
whatever he feels like for fortune cookies.
One of them is a totally foreboding negative fortune of bad luck and
misfortune. At the same time, Filburt is
deemed a sweepstakes winner and gets to compete on his favorite game show. Because of this, he’s named Mr. Lucky and
things couldn’t be better.
Then later
on, he just happens to get Chinese food with his buds and winds up with that
one fortune cookie with the bad luck fortune.
From there, it’s all downhill both for Filburt from here. He’s told that it’s not worth taking a
fortune cookie seriously, but he’s still put into a bad temper over it. Things would be truer to real life as fortune
cookies really never cause harm, but its nature in this cartoon is very
shallow. Because of the fortune cookie's existence,
nearly all bad luck circumstances happen around Filburt for no reason. Some of them play to old conventions like
being trailed by black cats or windows suddenly breaking.
At least one of the occurrences is highly
creative as well as remarkable for being allowed to air. There’s a scene where Really Really Big Man
is trying to get a fat pigeon to not do its business on a statue. He brings back his nipples of the future to
show the pigeon what will happen if he complies with him, and they go crazy
when Filburt comes. Apparently, all Joe
Murray had to do was talk to executive after executive to be allowed to put in
the scene, and luckily, they all found it funny enough to include. The result is a wild use of body parts that
doesn’t feel uncomfortable or vulgar for how much motion, funny imagery, and
voice acting goes into it.
In context of
the story, it further proves unfair to Filburt.
It feels like the universe is just being a jerk to him and no one
supports him. There could be some
relatability if these moments were in his head, but they’re very real making
for an unpleasant tone. It gets worse
when his mere presence is enough to cause harm to others such as when he shows
up at Rocko’s house and it somehow gets destroyed.
What’s worse is that the situation never
really gets better in the cartoon.
Filburt goes back to the Chinese restaurant to get a better cookie, and
they somehow say the same thing. Heffer
comes up with a decent idea of giving him good luck charms so he’ll at least be
ready for the game show. It’s already
ineffective when Filburt’s presence is enough to put out spotlights. At least when he spins a wheel, there’s a
funny montage of the audience running away from it as it rolls loose featuring
one unpredictable scene after another. Filburt
ultimately wins the spin, but it hardly means anything with the whole world
destroyed from that wheel. With the legitimacy of all
the other bad luck instances, this whole cartoon is just as depressing as it is
funny.
There are a good number of
memorable moments that keep it watchable, but with nothing going right because
of one cookie, it’s not an experience to best represent the series.
C
Whether
it’s for redecorating or fixing up after an unfortunate accident, home repairs
are some of the most stressful things to deal with in life. As a result, it’s a natural fit that this
show has a cartoon highlighting that.
Rocko
has a house party coming up, and it looks like it’s going to be a grand affair
with everyone saying they can make it.
Then his luck turns for the worst when not even one minute into the
story, a weather balloon that looks like a satellite falls from space right
onto the kitchen area of his house. As
an aside, unlike the last cartoon where bad luck happens for the sake of it,
this is an instance where it’s much more natural from a truly unpredictable
occurrence. Really that’s how any home
damage can happen. The challenges Rocko
faces when trying to get the kitchen fixed in time for his party are also much
more pleasing to watch. They’re
believable drawbacks that come from something like home repair, and don’t cause
harm to anyone innocent.
As he lacks a
lot of money in his insurance to get the landlord to fix it in a few days, the
easy option isn’t open. In fact, it’s
marked by the landlord laughing like crazy over thinking a lot of work can be
done in a short time with the money he has, since he’s a hyena. Then in the usual fashion of this show, Rocko
goes to more out-of-the-box methods in finding more suitable and affordable
home repair strategies. With the
dimwitted but supportive efforts of Heffer, Rocko finds a lot of options from a
local home renovation convention. The
very place is filled with humorous takes on how certain areas of these types of
conventions sell their products. Some of
them include background gags of salespeople demonstrating how great their
products are but become hurt by their drawbacks in the process.
As for Rocko, his efforts to get his kitchen
repaired or get a new kitchen have plenty of their own drawbacks for him to
deal with. There’s a catch to everything
he tries. He goes on a gameshow to win a
new kitchen, and even though he wins, he only gets a little bit of a kitchen at
a time, starting with one insignificant spoon.
Since he needs much less than a few weeks to get the kitchen fixed, he
then turns to an infomercial spokesman for a guide on fixing kitchens and
bathrooms. However, when he and Heffer
follow the steps, they just turn the kitchen into a bathroom, and all chapters
in the guide are all about bathrooms.
You’d think that getting the spokesperson himself to fix everything
would help, but think again. His
outrageous practices make for bathrooms all over Rocko’s house, as Rocko hilariously
discovers.
Fortunately, everything works
out for him in some way. His party is a
huge success as he makes the abundance of bathrooms work by having the affair
honor such a room, and everyone seems to visibly enjoy it. That said, is anything really resolved? Is Rocko going to have to deal with this
after the party? If so this is totally
making life harder for him than it already is.
Either way, it doesn’t change that this cartoon is a fairly entertaining
way of showing how home repair is never easy with catches and artistic
disagreements coming from anywhere.
A
The Ranking
1. Camera Shy
2. The Emperor’s New Joe
3. Ed is Dead: A Thriller
4. Bye Bye Birdie
5. Sugar Frosted Frights
6. I See London I See France
7. Nothing to Sneeze At
8. Schnit-Heads
9. Dear John
10. The Fat Lands
11. Belch of Destiny
12. Rocko’s Happy Vermin
13. Manic Mechanic
14. Old Fogey Frog
15. Fish-N-Chumps
16. Fortune Cookie
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