Wallaby Wednesday: Lessons from Rocko’s Heap-O-Food checkout tirade

Three years before The Simpsons gave us Ned Flanders after his house collapses (twice), Rocko’s Modern Life gave us the title character not letting the Heap-O-Food cheat him.

Both harangues are humorous for coming from fictional, ordinarily coolheaded characters. Each blowup follows a buildup sequence work sympathizing with. But in “Rocko’s Happy Sack,” the final slight is less forgiveable than the “good intentions” of the Springfieldians.

Shopping on a mere three-dollar budget, Rocko races through the final 15 minutes of the store’s generous 99-percent off sale. But his path to restocking his empty pantry packs peril and pain.

By the time he checks out, he lets the clerk know what he has gone through. Everything from a car striking him in the parking lot to two encounters with the Hippo Lady to misplacing Spunky.

The clerk, who is basically Filburt, but not firmly established as such in this first-season episode, hears this after making his contribution to the aggravation. He finishes ringing Rocko up seconds before the sale’s noon ending, only to swell the $1.50 total to $150.

For that, Filburt pays the steepest price of the day. He brooks the brunt of Rocko’s family-friendly answer to Neal Page’s car-rental rant in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Granted, Filburt alone does not deserve that much heat, although someone should call him out on his blatant dishonesty. Regardless, you can only push a cucumber of a wallaby so far before striking an imperfect nerve. Everyone has their frustrations, and those who suppress them pull a Vesuvius when they can no longer hold back.

In this episode, Rocko experiences Murphy’s Law on the same par as when Neal does. His quintessentially hangry display is the sum of desperate hunger, undue obstacles, down-to-the-wire nervewrack and pathetic disrespect.

From start to finish, his ensuing tirade offers no shortage of spontaneity. For a split-second, he is rightly convinced he qualifies for the sale under the buzzer. He knows he has earned his reprieve, only to have the mercy denied.

Rocko punctuates his explosion with his first of only two in-character head-inflating screams in the series. While under the influence of the green button, he erupts on Filburt in “Power Trip.” He is himself when he calls out an obnoxious bird for disturbing his sleep in “Day of the Flecko.”

In this case, his choice of words underscores the uniqueness of the situation and emboldens the forgiveability of his tone. Unless Filburt retracts the dodgy price-gouge, Rocko pledges to “do something NOT NIIIICE!”

The presence of “nice” alone leaks his inexperience making threats. He could have at least offered more intimidating diction, such as “something unpleasant.”

 

 

But even then, the lack of concrete detail renders his message verbally lacking, leaving the decibels to make the difference. Given the company that puts him in among fellow ’90s Nicktoons, it is a tribute to his remarkable morality.

The year of “Rocko’s Happy Sack” also witnessed the premiere of the Rugrats segments “Runaway Angelica” and “When Wishes Come True.” In those storylines, Angelica and Tommy threaten “something so bad” that they “don’t even know what it is yet” and “can’t even think of it,” respectively.

That dearth of detail is less surprising for a couple of toddlers. But for a humanoid wallaby implicitly in his twenties or thirties, a substantively weak threat in his most frustrating moment is spoken like a true dove.

Rocko himself later admits to Bev Bighead that he is “not good at confrontation” in Season 4’s “Wimp on the Barby.” That is because he prefers to let peace prevail whenever possible.

He generally lets his temper go when he is sleep-deprived, overworked or both. Or when one of his acquaintances fails to heed their share of calmer admonitions.

Look no further than when he is on the verge of going “crazy” over the sleepwalking Ed Bighead. Or when long hours and his colleagues’ petty feuding slows down their production of Wacky Delly. Those moments pale in comparison to the unfortunate bird, and even more so to the Heap-O-Food errand.

Compared to everything else, the stressful shopping sprint and unjust denial of a reward is worth the thoroughgoing fury. After all, besides all of the speed bumps he hit during his race, Rocko “nearly starved to death.” At the episode’s outset, he warns Spunky that their success determines whether they “eat for a week.”

The cashier has no way of knowing those details of Rocko’s desperation. With that said, his lack of knowledge is all the more reason why he is in the wrong. He does not have to draw the last straw by testing Rocko’s patience and attention to detail. When he does so anyway, he laces the insult with lukewarm, phony too-bad-so-sorry-for-the-inconvenience compassion.

Whether you are perfect strangers or encountering someone for the first time all day, you cannot know where they are coming from or what they are dealing with. It is best to avoid crossing them, even if they happen to be the least irascible personalities around.

If nothing else, honesty is the best policy, especially in customer service.