It’s that time again! Time for the next installment of What The Funny with another breakdown one of my favorite Rocko’s Modern Life shorts.

Before we begin, I’d like to once again apologize for the wait. I know that the gaps between these segments tend to get kind of long, but that’s mainly because 1) there are other things that demand my attention, and 2) I’m a ruthless perfectionist when it comes to my own work. Some of you out there may (understandably) be a little annoyed by the wait, but if I churned out the WTF segments in an assembly line fashion in order to get them out daily or even weekly, they’d be really half-assed, I wouldn’t like them, and I don’t think that you would either. No, the more detailed stuff takes longer. I know that I’m not fast, but I like to think that the quality of my work speaks for itself. Plus, like I said earlier, I’m only doing a select few of these, and so I’d prefer to space them out.

Having said all of that, on with the fun!

Skid Marks

Synopsis: Rocko is pulled over by the police because of a missing gas cap and a squirrel hiding inside his car. With Rocko’s car impounded, he has to suffer the unspeakable torment of the Department of Motor Vehicles to retrieve it.

Highlights:

Brace yourself, for you are now entering a place where even the most rational person can be driven insane…the Department of Motor Vehicles!!

Rocko and Spunky walk to the DMV and Rocko asks Spunky to wait outside as he walks in the building. As he waits in a long line, the police officer announces through the loudspeaker that Spunky should be picked up at the security desk. Rocko picks up the dog and ties him up outside; though he reassures Spunky that he will be back for him, and immediately afterwards, we see another dog’s skeleton tied to a leash!

Rocko runs into Filburt (his first appearance in the series, btw) who says that the computers give off harmful radiation and that the metal plate in his head is vibrating. Filburt sounds a bit like Sol from the Jerky Boys here. Filburt then advises Rocko “When you take your driver’s test, don’t get the fat guy!”

Rocko makes his way to the eye exams room and sits on the chair to read the chart in front of him. When he reads the last line (“The doctor is sneaking behind you. He’s a Madman. Get out while you still can.”), he finds that the chair is really the doctor, a creepy guy with four wheels for feet. He becomes startled and stops in midair with his eyes enormously protruding. As he remains in his exaggerated display of fright, the doctor immediately gets him to hold his position; the scare tactic is revealed to be a rather efficient way of allowing him check his patient’s eyeballs.

After the doctor finishes Rocko’s eye exam, the doc warns Rocko “Don’t get the fat guy! (evil laugh)”.

Pig Driving Instructor: Don’t step on the white ones….Hhhhhhot lllaaaaaaaaavvaaaaaaaa….PINEAPPLES!!

Rocko then goes to room 101 to attend a driving class, which is being taught by a very loud German soldier cat (voiced by Tom Kenny)

The class is made to watch a drivers’ education film “Red Concrete” (a classic!) Where they learn the RULES OF THE ROAD! I love how even the instructional film warns “Don’t get the fat guy!”.

When Rocko falls asleep, he wakes up to find a diploma of traffic school taped to his face. He later waits outside for the driving instructor, who turns out to be a chubby elephant.He tests Rocko into driving vicariously through an obstacle course. When it doesn’t go as well, the instructor finally gives in and gives Rocko a form for his license. Rocko takes the form to the front desk to Chuck and Leon. He tells them that he had the fat guy, and then we get the payoff for this running gag:

The perfect payoff to a perfect gag.

Near the end of the short, we get this exchange between a young boy cat and his father, which parodies the conclusion of Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s A Wonderful Life:

Boy: Daddy, Daddy, teacher tells me every time someone drives with a gas cap on, an angel gets its wings!
Father: Your teacher’s full of snot!

Heh. You know that if this weren’t on Nickelodeon, he wouldn’t have said “snot”.

Thoughts:

This is another one of the great Rocko shorts. A short about the DMV is an unusual subject for a kids’ cartoon, as Nick’s target audience isn’t old enough to drive, but anyone who’s ever had to go to the DMV for any reason knows what a madhouse that building is and what a frustrating experience it can be. This short takes the drudgery and frustration of that experience and ramps it up to a comical level, which is what Rocko’s Modern Life does best.

My rating: 4 out of 5.

Next time: Who’s For Dinner? Stay funny.

It’s that time again!

First, I’d like to apologize for the delay. I didn’t intend to take this long to post here again. I’ve just been busy with work and so forth. Sometimes the wheels of creativity run in low gear. But I’m here now, so it’s time for another breakdown of one of my favorite Rocko’s Modern Life shorts:

Carnival Knowledge

Highlights:

Rocko and Heffer come across a carnival, which is owned and primarily operated by Slippy the Slug (who’s voiced by comedian Dom Irrera).

Yeah, that guy.

Slippy offers them food, rides, and games for thirty dollars. They think of which ride they should get on and choose The Mug-O-Whirl, only to find that it has already started.

Next, Rocko tries Slippy’s Games-O-Chance, a crane game machine in which the crane claw takes Rocko’s watch, as well as Heffer’s underpants. The two then get on the Ferris wheel, where they are stopped at the top. Subsequently, the ride operator (Slippy the Slug again) brings them down and stops them halfway, leaving them dangling, which causes their money to fall out of their pockets.

Rocko plays the Frog Flip, in which the player has to use a mallet to slam onto the plank with the frog on the other end and make sure it lands onto their lily pad in the pool behind. Heffer goes first and accidentally smashes his frog into a puddle of green goo. During Rocko’s turn, a frog wearing a derby hat and smoking a cigar taunts him (Ooh, such a strong man! Mr. Tough-Guy-With-A-Mallet!” “Easy on the bladder, meat!”) and the wallaby slams on the end of the plank (with a wrecking ball), sending the frog flying high in the sky (all the while shouting”LOSER!!”). This scene is punctuated perfectly as two of them are watching the frog fly off into the stratosphere, Heffer says plainly and dryly “That…was one rude frog!”

The two then get on the Bumper Cars, where Rocko unwillingly gets on a gimp bumper car and is crashed by the other bumper car riders. Rocko has finally had it and decides that he and Heffer should leave. But not before Heffer convinces him to stay so that they could ride the Nose Bleed, a precarious roller coaster. Unfortunately, for Rocko, he isn’t tall enough, but Heffer augments his height and the two ride on the roller coaster, which sends them to outer space, and they later crash down the ground. Rocko decides to leave, but not before the crane machine takes his money. Suddenly, the frog that taunted Rocko earlier in the Frog Flip game lands perfectly on the lily pad in the pool, winning Rocko a Chinese finger puzzle.

As they leave, Heffer says that he thought the rides were rigged and Rocko adds that not everyone is around to rip you off. After the episode ends (with Rocko breaking his Chinese finger puzzle off-screen), the frog attempts to open up the iris end, which closes on his head.

Thoughts:

Carnival Knowledge doesn’t offer much in the way of plot. It’s just a string of gags with a continuing theme, but the gags are hilarious. Slippy was an amusing one-off character and it’s too bad that he never appeared again (Well, techincally, Slippy was seen one more time in the season 3 short “Zanzibar”, but he only has one line and he’s not voiced by Dom Irrera here, so it’s debatable whether that’s actually Slippy or just a random character with Slippy’s recycled design).

My rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Next Time: Skid Marks (Here’s hoping that there won’t be as long a wait for the this one). Stay funny.

Nickelodeon recently revealed that the studio is working on an original hour long TV special based on one of it’s popular animated series, Rocko’s Modern Life. Series creator Joe Murray is involved in it’s production.

So to mark this occasion, I thought it might be fun to pay tribute to my favorite Nicktoon by covering some of my favorite Rocko shorts in a new mini series segment (inspired by Chris Stuckmann’s Hilariocity and Alison Pregler’s Baywatching) which I’m calling What The Funny. Here’s how it’ll work: Basically, I’m going to profile a short that I like, give a brief synopsis of said short and then break down the funniest moments from it.

Now, you’re probably asking me to yourself…

Not exactly. Cartoon Country is a grab bag; the cartoon that’s  presented on CC is something different every time. What The Funny, by contrast, only focuses on a single cartoon, studio or franchise and has more than a single post devoted to it. Before we begin, let me explain the rules here:

1. I’m not going to be covering the entire series! Rocko’s Modern Life ran for four seasons and doing every single episode would take up too much of my time. I don’t like every episode equally and if I were doing WTFs for the next couple of months, then it would start to feel like a job and I would hate it. I’m just doing this for fun.
2. I’m going to cover each short individually, rather than covering them by half hour episodes. Also, I won’t be  covering them in any particular order.
3. I’ll be doing this in addition to the other segments, not instead of them. I’ll still be writing Cartoon Country, The Cartoon Couch, The Retro Bin, Beyond the background, etc.
4. I won’t be doing these all in a row. There are only going to be about 3, 4 or at the most 5 of these and I’d prefer to spread them out. Variety is the spice of life.
5. When I say “the best” shorts, I’m not judging them in terms of popularity or critical acclaim; These are just my personal favorites. You may have some favorites that didn’t make my list…

…but since this is my blog,  we’re only going to focus on my personal pics.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here we go with What The Funny!:

Rocko’s Happy Sack

PREMISE

In this episode Rocko and Spunky hurry to the local grocery store to take advantage of a big 99% off everything sale.

The short starts with Rocko and Spunky at home with absolutely zero food in the house. Even the bugs are holding up “Will work for food” signs. There’s also a mouse skeleton that looks suspiciously like that of Mickey Mouse. Unfortunately, Rocko has only three dollars until pay day. Rocko and Spunky’s hunger sustains and they mope in depression. When Rocko views a 99% off everything sale at the Heap-O-Food market in the newspaper, he and Spunky hurry up and drive to the market before twelve o’clock (the time when the big sale ends).

HIGHLIGHTS

Spunky follows a (living) piece of liver into the meat packing room, where he’s wrapped up in put on display, and then promptly picked up by another customer (voiced by Charles Adler). Upon discovering this, Rocko tries to dissuade the guy from purchasing his dog.

Rocko: Dog meat?? Eeeww! Sir, do you know that dog meat causes you to be…irregular?

Customer: I’ll take my chances.

Rocko: But dog meat contains trace amounts of PCPs, CBCs and BVDs!

Customer: I like PCPs.

And that’s funny because PCP is a drug, CBC is the initials of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and BVD is popular brand of men’s underwear.

Rocko then explains that when fishermen hunt for dog meat, how the sea mammals accidentally get caught in the fishermen’s nets, and then we get the following exchange:

Rocko finally goes to the checkout line. The cashier is Filburt (who at this point in the series hasn’t yet been made into Rocko’s friend. Here, they act as if they don’t know each other). The clock literally ticks down to the final second (after Filburt  requests a price check on Frog Butter – “Is Frog Butter dairy or hygiene?”). The price is checked at $1.50, but then a second later, it changes to $150.00. Then Rocko becomes enraged and goes into one of my all time favorite meltdowns:

Filburt: And your total is…
(The cash register shows “$1.50”)
Rocko: Phew!
(The total suddenly increases)
Filburt: One hundred and fifty dollars. Gee, looks like you just missed our big sale. Have a nice day.

(Rocko grits his teeth and gets bombs in his eyes)
Rocko: YOU CHEAP LITTLE ROTTER!!!!!!! I have been run over by a car, made to drag around a gimp shopping cart, threatened by your Gestapo security guards, had me head set on fire, I was attacked by wild lobsters, beaten by a very LARGE woman, had me dog wrapped in plastic, nearly starved to death and I still made the twelve o’clock deadline! So if you don’t change that total back to a dollar fifty, I WILL DO SOMETHING NOT NICE!!!!!!!!!!!

Filburt: That’ll be one dollar and fifty cents please.

When Rocko loads the trunk of his car with the food he purchased, he tells Spunky that sometimes, marketing day can be a very dangerous day. After closing the trunk, he drives home and rides through a speed bump, the impact of which causes the food to fall out of the trunk as Rocko, oblivious to this, continues driving.

THOUGHTS

This is one of my all time favorite Rocko shorts. Rocko doesn’t lose it very often, so when he does, it usually hilarious. I can relate to Rocko’s situation and I was glad to see him force someone to follow his order for once.  I also love Heap-O-Food’s sale with everything being 99% of until noon. Cartoon logic is crazy, but great.

My rating: 5 out of 5.

Next time: Carnival Knowledge. Stay funny.