Rocko's Modern Life (1993)
First episode title: A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic / Canned
How familiar with the show am I?: I've never seen it before, but I was vaguely aware of it.
Is this the first episode?: Multiple sources seem to disagree on this one. There was a pilot episode that was later remade as an episode of the actual series, so that at least definitely doesn't count. Outside of that, I've gone with the one that Wikipedia says is first.
Rocko is a wallaby (you know, like a small kangaroo) from Australia who now lives in America - one of those cartoon animal types who wears a shirt but no trousers. He has a pet dog called Spunky and his best friend is a bull called Heffer, and they all get up to all kinds of surreal antics. In fact, a lot of the people involved here went on to work on SpongeBob SquarePants, and it shows.
The opening sequence seems to be an abstract representation of Rocko's life up to this point, showing him springing from the pouch of another wallaby, getting a book of "Knowledge" crammed into his brain, and meeting Spunky and Heffer. This episode of the show doesn't get quite as surreal as this opening.
Once again we have two segments in the episode, the first being "A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic". It opens with a dramatic shot of Rocko's house while lightning flashes in the sky. His mailbox reads "Rocko + Spunky". Since we're drawing attention to their names now, I have to ask any Australians reading this - is "Spunky" as weird of a name to you as it would be here in Britain? In America "spunk" is courage or spirit, but in Britain it means semen. Given that the main character is Australian and presumably named the dog, this makes a difference.
We see Heffer eating food on a couch while Rocko says some very threatening things, Rocko raises a hammer, and then we see a shot of Spunky cowering in the corner as the shadows cast over him indicate that Rocko is whacking Heffer repeatedly with the hammer. Of course, he is not beating his best friend to death - we soon see that he's actually whacking a vacuum cleaner that he's frustrated with. Rocko calls it a "good-for-nothing heap of rubbish", so here we have some definitely accurate Australian vocabulary ("rubbish" rather than "trash").
Heffer is just calmly watching TV while Rocko continues to rant about the trouble he's having with the vacuum, calling it "cockamamie" (oops, that one's very American). Spunky licks the extension cord, gets zapped, and the vacuum cleaner finally turns on! Then we get a very long pan across the living room to show us just how filthy the living room has gotten - seriously long, this next gif is nowhere near the whole thing. I particularly like the newspaper saying "Titanic sinks" to illustrate how long it's been since it was cleaned up. Also, we see that the bag of snacks Heffer is eating is "Pasture Puffies", the contents being something green that's getting all over the floor. Like, he's actually eating cow food!
While Rocko struggles to clean up with his shitty vacuum, Heffer flicks through the TV channels, some of which we overhear.
Reporting live from Washington D.C. The official motorcade is just coming round the corner now, and - [bang bang bang] - oh my God! There's a burst of gunfire!
Wow... I don't feel like you could get away with that currently. Anyway, we hear a bit of baseball and a bit of an alien invasion (a movie? Or also news?), before Heffer arrives on the "Lobot-o-Shop" channel, which appears to hypnotise its customers into buying things. It's advertising a "tape worm farm" for kids, which looks like a disembodied intestine in a cage... I should add that the people on the TV are also humanoid animals like Rocko and Heffer. I don't think I've seen any sign of humans in this show.
The vacuum cleaner starts coughing and falling on its back like it's dying - I like the little detail that its wheels are animated more like limbs when it's moving like a person. In Rocko's ear it whispers "Rosebud", and I'm sure you all get the reference, but Rocko hears it as "hose crud" and then the vacuum... expels a load of crud from its hose. Ah, well then.
Rocko: You know, Heffer, sometimes I think I was destined to exist in an endless world of filth.
TV host: Do you sometimes think you were destined to exist in an endless world of filth?
A man on the TV is advertising a new vacuum cleaner called the "Suck-O-Matic". Species-wise the host seems to be something like a crocodile, but he's purple, and he has stitches around the top of his head like a Frankenstein's monster. While he rambles about the ridiculous number of things this vacuum can apparently clean (and more), Heffer, Rocko, and Spunky are shown to be hypnotised by the screen, and then arms come out of the TV equipped with soap and literally brainwash them! I always love when shows mock the idea of advertising, especially because these shows are inevitably going to be broadcast with ads.
Rocko immediately picks up the phone and orders the Suck-O-Matic in a hypnotised robot voice, and then the product just arrives right away. I'm not sure what method of payment was used, since he didn't give any details on the phone and he doesn't appear to give the delivery guy anything!
Rocko starts unpacking the hoover from its gigantic box, searching through all the packing peanuts (which Spunky starts eating) to try and find the actual product. Heffer reads out the safety warnings from the instructions, which sound normal until he says that it emits "comparatively safe" levels of radiation! The pictures we see on that page look a lot more worrying - one shows a hand with what looks like acid being poured through it, making a hole, and the other shows someone's head coming off. Then all the packing peanuts expand inside Spunky, making him look more like a sheep.
Rocko presses something from inside the box, and the Suck-O-Matic sucks up the entire box and all the packaging, revealing it to us for the first time. It's a huge vacuum on wheels, big enough for Rocko to sit on with room to spare - Rocko comments that it doesn't look like the one they saw in the TV ad, which is true. The episode doesn't actually explain that fact, and it's not like it adds anything to the story for the TV to have portrayed it wrong, so I have a suspicion that the design discrepancy was originally a mistake and they covered it up by adding this line in rather than redrawing anything completely.
In fact, Rocko, Heffer, and Spunky all climb on to the Suck-O-Matic together for a ride. The control panel has all sorts of weird buttons for dealing with different things, more of which we'll see later, but here Rocko presses the "carpet" button and the vacuum starts sucking up all the accumulated rubbish. We zoom in to see a tiny city of mites being devastated by the vacuum, done as a parody of Godzilla, badly-dubbed voices and all. I love the amount of elaborate effort that must sometimes go into a gag like that that doesn't last more than a few seconds on screen.
They use the dog-cleaning feature, and point out that it also has a dog-neutering feature. The button for this shows a dog, then a minus sign, then some tennis balls. The things they get away with here! They use the couch-cleaning feature and a bunch of random objects buried in the couch fly into the vacuum's nozzle, including a bust of Freud, which tells you more about how the writers think about vacuum cleaners than anything else.
The fireplace-cleaning feature's icon shows an animal in a stereotypical Victorian chimney sweep's outfit, and a similarly odd collection of objects are retrieved from there, including Santa Claus and his reindeer! And then an entire plane, whose pilot announces that they are experiencing some turbulence! Yes, OK, this vacuum is just too powerful. Rocko turns to the camera, impressed, and says this vacuum is "certainly not a toy" - trying to make sure the kids watching this show don't start playing with vacuum cleaners?
The montage continues with Rocko cleaning his car, stripping away several layers of paint only to reach a layer of bricks; whizzing through a field full of fairies; and then zooming down the street sucking up trees and fire hydrants and such. But then they try to stop it for a break, and it won't stop! A brain in a jar pops up from the machine, and I love this play on words:
Brain: I am the Suck-O-Matic, the most helporific household device on the face of the Earth.
Rocko: It's got a mind of its own!!
Luckily the eject button still works, so they're able to get themselves off the thing. Rocko says they'll get a refund and reveals the receipt - which, predictably, is immediately sucked up by the hoover.
The three of them flee into Rocko's house, and the vacuum starts taking off huge chunks of it - they're cowering behind the door, and it's soon the only part of the front of the house that's left! Heffer gets out the manual and they start desperately reading through it while all sorts of things fly through the air towards the vacuum. Highlights: a heart, a witch, and a spaceship! The manual has a page for what to do in case the vacuum sucks up the manual: "Prepare to Die"!
The door finally goes and the three of them start getting dragged towards the Suck-O-Matic. It starts sucking out the contents of their stomachs. For some reason, Heffer, Rocko, and Spunky spew streams of red, white, and blue respectively, accidentally forming the flag of the Netherlands. But something in there makes the vacuum choke, and it keels over, "dead". Heffer goes to inspect it, and finds it's been jammed by a barbecue-flavoured crisp. Despite it being covered in vacuum crud, Heffer is just about to eat it... ew... when the vacuum comes back to life, sucking in Heffer, and finally Rocko and Spunky.
Cut to... all three of them inside the vacuum, surrounded by their stuff, watching Lobot-o-Shop on TV as before. We zoom out to learn that all of the houses in the neighbourhood have been replaced by Suck-O-Matics, while another Suck-O-Matic chases down one random survivor. And that's how the segment ends! This obviously isn't the sort of show that intends to put everything back to normal at the end of an episode!
So now we're on to the episode's other segment, "Canned". Rocko is at his job as a cashier at a giant comic book store called "Super Lot-O-Comics". You've probably noticed by now that companies with "-O-" in the name seem to be a recurring feature in this show. A nerdy turtle in glasses is complaining to him that ink comes off on his hands when he reads comic books, so he has to wash his hands every time he turns the page. What is Rocko supposed to do about that? The internet informs me this character is Filburt.
Filburt: You turn the page, you wash your hands. Turn the page, wash your hands.
An intercom next to Rocko tells him to come to the manager's office, somehow coughing all over him as it does so. Green stuff comes out. Ew. On Rocko's way there, he passes two more comic book nerds - one of them is saying that the elf women in the comic he's reading are so beautiful that no real person can compare, and the other nerd calls him an idiot. I don't know if the writers are parodying any particular nerds here, but the response does make a nice reaction gif.
Rocko's boss is something like a crocodile with glasses, and hair at the back to give him the appearance of being "balding", even though most of the animals don't have hair to start with. He's picking his nose the entire time too. He tells Rocko he's being promoted from job title 612 to job title 814... which he then explains means that he's fired. He pulls a chain, revealing the chair Rocko is sitting on to be a toilet, and Rocko gets flushed down it! Well, this is a world where something like the Suck-O-Matic exists. Except that segment probably didn't happen as far as this segment is concerned. Argh.
So the next thing we see is the house next door to Rocko's. This is where Mr and Mrs Bighead live. They are toads, but the way they're drawn I think we can see the evolution into how fish are portrayed in SpongeBob. Spunky the dog is chewing up salmon from the "salmon bushes" in the Bigheads' garden, and Ed Bighead runs out to tell him off. There's a chase around the garden with some oddly normal, Tom & Jerry type cartoon antics, culminating in Spunky inadvertently firing a bunch of lawn darts into a sunbathing Mrs Bighead, who doesn't even seem to notice!
Rocko arrives home and Spunky goes back into the house with him, leaving Bighead to seethe. Spunky goes over to his food bowl and drools so much in anticipation that the bowl fills with water, which he drinks. Well, we've seen him do worse. But Rocko doesn't have any food for him because he lost his job - yes, apparently he had nothing already in the house. And then a bunch of parking meter type things labelled Water, Phone, Oxygen, and Electric all flip to Expired one by one. Wait, Oxygen?! When the Electric one runs out, the lights also go out, and Rocko has to light a match, which he uses to look at the Want Ad section of a newspaper.
So we get a montage of him trying out all different jobs. Tattoo artist, where he has to put a picture of a can of beans that says "Gloria" on the roof of a rhino's mouth. Wh-what? Oh, and the rhino's name is Mr Horny, for a much more straightforward joke. Plumber's assistant, where his entire job seems to be lifting the plumber's trousers back up whenever his crack is showing. And then... "Specialty Phone Operator", or in other words, what is clearly a sex hotline. Rocko unenthusiastically says "Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby" down the line until he realises that the caller is Mrs Bighead, at which point they both slam the phone down in a panic! I'm certain I've seen that shot of Rocko at the hotline before, but I don't know where...
The only ad left in the paper is for "Conglom-O Corporation". There's that "-O-" again! Rocko arrives at their offices, a massive building bearing the slogan "We Own You". Rocko is in a proper shirt and tie but still no trousers, like any decent cartoon character. He walks through a big hallway filled with screens showing workers (turtles?) typing on typewriters, like all the employees are being constantly surveilled. And there's some kind of lizard in a suit and glasses scampering around, more like an animal than the other anthro animals for some reason.
Rocko reaches a big office and a giant screen descends, displaying the boss's head to tower over Rocko... and it's Ed Bighead! He is of course angry to see Rocko there asking for a job. The lizard thing scampers up past the screen, and the Bighead on screen is somehow able to use a flyswatter to smoosh it. Then Bighead gets an evil grin on his face and says he does have a job for him, and the screen moves out of the way to reveal the actual Bighead right behind it.
Bighead takes Rocko through a "Product Testing" room that already looks quite horrifying, with products including an "Electric Slippy Slide" that's filled with water and visibly has electricity running through the sides of it, with the warning "Do Not Touch Sides". A child slides down it and thankfully doesn't get hurt, but it's close! And it's easy to miss the "Jumper Jock", where someone's groin is connected up to jumper cables that are about to be used on a car... ow... And then, as if those weren't bad enough, Bighead takes Rocko into the "Rejected Products" room, which has even more warning signs all over it!
So Bighead has Rocko test a whole bunch of different products. The "Nosemaster Pocket Surgeon" remodels Rocko's nose into all different shapes, making him look like different animals and not actually seeming that bad - prompting Bighead to give it a try, only to realise too late that he doesn't have a nose, and it turns his eyes into noses instead! Disturbing.
The next item is "Gene-Enhancing Chewing Gum". It looks like there's a range of flavours because there all different coloured ones there. So Rocko eats one, and a tree grows on his head, which he's delighted with! You know, because it means you have your own source of shade and oxygen and such. Once again, Bighead then insists on trying it, emptying all the rest of the flavours into his own mouth, and somehow ending up with a beehive on his head, with bees flying out and stinging him all at once! It seems to me like all these projects got previously rejected because of the type of person they were being tested on, then...
The "Dial-a-Doo", the next invention, gives Rocko a different hairdo each time. Because Rocko's ears are on top of his head, he doesn't actually seem to have ears with most of these haircuts. They quickly get more bizarre, one hairstyle just being a bunch of lightbulbs and the final one being a juicer. He puts a bunch of fruits into the juicer (not sure where he's getting the fruits from), and a spider also climbs in - when it gets smushed into the juice, there's a shot of five flies trapped in a web saying "Hooray!" Since Rocko was yet again happy with everything the machine did, Bighead uses it on himself, and gets a buzzsaw on his head, which cuts up the whole room and somehow the scene itself!
The next scene is in Conglom-O's "Animal Testing Yard". Yes, even though the people are animals anyway. A platypus (person) sprays Rocko with the product, "Mad Giraffe Repellant", then gives him the kiss of death (illustrated with a skull and crossbones) and rushes away. Bighead pulls a lever that unleashes the "mad giraffes" (non-people animals, like Spunky) into the yard, but the product works of course, and the giraffes rush right past Rocko and burst into the room where Bighead is sitting, severely injuring him. And we cut to... the exact same shot of the five flies saying "Hooray!" as before! It was pretty unexpected to see them pop up again like that.
What's left of Bighead tells Rocko he's fired, and Rocko walks down the street dejectedly, only to happen to find... a new comic book shop, "Kind of A-Lot-O Comics", with a "Help Wanted" sign in the window! And so Rocko finds himself in exactly the same sort of job he started in. I mean, very much the same - Filburt is even there, saying the same stuff about turning the page and washing your hands!
And then the boss from the other comic store comes in, as a customer - not sure why the owner of a comic book store would need to buy from another one. Surely he'd be able to order comics into his own store and get them cheaper? And he pushes Filburt over onto his shell - obviously, he finds it hard to get back up, in case you didn't already dislike the boss enough. The boss asks for a comic series called Nuclear Swan and a pack of gum, and Rocko, with a sneaky look on his face, slips him one of the experimental packets of gum from before. So the boss, driving away from the store, eats all the gum at once and gets the same beehive Bighead got before! He swerves all over the road while getting stung! He jumps out of the car and starts getting chased by the mad giraffes!
Well, I think this is very well deserving of the flies showing up again and shouting "Hooray!", which they do. And then it turns into a weird meta thing where the director yells "Cut!" and the flies all just get out of the web, and one of them stops to ask if they need to do anything with the webbing and checks to make sure the director has his resume in case they need him in future. What on Earth gave the writers the idea for these fly characters?
I enjoyed this show a lot - it's pure silly cartoon antics of the sort the medium was made for. I'm definitely going to seek out some more of it.