On the Tenth Day of Christmas...

On the Tenth Day of Christmas I saw on DVD… Rocko’s Modern Christmas.

Somewhere in the early to mid 90’s, a fourth Nicktoon was created to follow Doug, Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy. This show was Rocko’s Modern Life (or as Jonny Prophet likes to call it, the Prequel to Spongebob). Rocko was a mild mannered if not slightly naive anthropomorphic wallaby that was a perpetual fish out of water in a big world that would often walk all over him. He had a slightly dimwitted dog named Spunky and his best friends were an overweight bull named Heffer and a neurotic turtle named Filbert. Rocko’s biggest antagonist was his next door neighbor Mr. Bighead, a big mouthed frog that seemed to delight in other people’s misery. 

 So Rocko is bummed that there is no snow on Christmas Eve. To try to cheer himself up and rekindle his Christmas spirit, he decides to throw a party, which quickly balloons into a huge party with half the town invited. On his way to the mall to buy refreshments and decorations for the party, Rocko notices his new neighbors moving in across the street are elves. A tiny elf decides to follow Rocko but ends up getting captured by some bullies. Rocko helps the elf escape and takes the little guy home.

Upon getting the little elf safely home, Rocko meets the rest of the elves, who are busy doing various Christmas activities like decorating, toy building or creating a robot Santa with eyes that shoot disintegrating laser beams. Rocko decides to invite the elves to the party as well.

But Mr. Bighead is an asshole. Under the impression that he wasn’t invited to the party, he decides to spread a rumor that the elves coming to the party are diseased. Before you know it, everyone bails on poor Rocko, leaving him all alone at his party. His body is discovered days later from an apparent suicide by hanging. Okay, that last bit didn’t happen. That probably would have been more traumatic for children than a hundred Bambi’s moms mowed down by a firing squad and it would have certainly lacked the Christmas spirit.

I really enjoyed Rocko’s Modern Life, so much so that I bought the series. It was kind of bizarre in its humor. Even the Christmas episode had these weird jokes such as the aforementioned Santa robot or my personally favorite Fruitcake Man, a man at the mall made entirely out of fruitcake who invites children to sit on his lap and take a piece of him. I can see Jonny’s point that the show seemed like the prototype for Spongebob Squarepants. The two shows feature much the same humor and many of the characters can be paralleled; i.e. Patrick is like Heffer, Squidward is like a cross between Filbert and Mr. Bighead, etc.  

 

 

On the Merry Meter, I give Rocko’s Modern Christmas a 7 out of 10.

Tune in tomorrow for my review of one of the funniest Christmas episodes ever.