Nicktoon-cember Part 4: Rocko’s Modern Life

Before Joe Murray went on to create Camp Lazlo for Cartoon Network he created a racy show called Rocko’s Modern Life which was anything but modern. The show stars a wallaby named Rocko, who moved to America from Australia in a town called O-Town, USA. Rocko is a nice compassionate guy who works at the comic book store and wants to live the nice and quiet life but his ideal life keeps getting interrupted by his reckless friends and neighbors who keep putting him in turbulent, weird, and funny situations. For example, there’s this one episode where a fly sues Rocko for injuring him and as punishment the judge (who is a sock puppet mind you) turns Rocko into a fly. There’s another episode where Rocko’s best friend Heffer the steer gets talked into joining a Sausage cult (I’m talking about the food here) and another episode where his other friend Filbert the turtle wants to become a dentist and operates on Rocko’s teeth which results in one of Rocko’s teeth coming alive, growing to abnormal sizes and tries to destroy the city. Just crazy, fuuny, and turbulent stuff. Another funny thing is the town that Rocko lives in is owned by a major corporation called Conglam-O where we’re never really told what they do or make, all we know is that they own everyone and everything in town in fact that’s there slogan: We Own You. Way to predict the future Joe Murray.

Probably the one thing everyone remembers the most about the show was its racy humor. Surprisingly about 1/5 of the show’s audience was adults and the show had a lot of adult innuendos. There’s a scene where Rocko is a sex phone operator, a restaurant called the Chokey Chicken (which is a term for masturbation i.e choking the chicken) which was later renamed Chewy Chicken, and there’s a banned episode where Rocko’s next door neighbor’s wife tries to seduce Rocko because she feels unloved. In a way the show was like Ren and Stimpy only more controlled and clever in its innuendos like you really had to sit down and pay close attention to the show in order to catch these innuendos. When I was a kid I didn’t catch any of these innuendos except the sex phone operator scene the others just passed me by. Now that I’m older and I watch these episodes all I can say is wow, how did I miss that and how did they get away with these jokes. In the end the show was actually pretty good because of its racy humor, funny characters and stories, and its sense of putting Rocko in funny situations to see him lose his cool and just goes crazy on people. In my opinion Rocko’s Modern Life was a good show and one of Joe Murray’s best shows.

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