Wallaby Wednesday: What is driving the Sani-Tours guide?

The Sani-Tours bus driver on Rocko’s Modern Life sees (or chooses to see) nothing special about Paris. He will use his position to give his customers the same impression, and take any necessary risks to sustain that.

“If word of this gets out, I’ll be ruined,” he frets after Rocko, his only uncooperative customer in “I See London, I See France,” breaks off from the tour. He then claims he has a family depending on him, albeit while staring at a fruit-bowl painting.

Secondary stakeholders or not, the diver will not change his approach to his job. Whether he is doing what Sani-Tours higher-ups expect or trying to avoid exposing his subpar credentials as an international tour leader is unclear.

Either way, he eschews any uniquely Parisian attractions. He is equally strict about such insubordinate acts as talking out of turn or solo sightseeing.

By breaking both of those rules, if nothing else, Rocko threatens the guide’s sense of power. The driver’s job security aside, he exudes insecurity over his not-so-top-notch knowledge of Paris. No passenger is to demonstrate a deeper erudition, let alone encourage others to expand their own.

Based on his accent, the tour guide is American, and his customers implicitly share that nationality. That is except for Rocko, a born-and-raised Australian and naturalized U.S. citizen.

Based on their conduct, everyone else goes in with a tabula rasa for their familiarity with France and its capital. Having now crossed two oceans in his young life, Rocko is an understandable outlier. He has ample experience being the stranger in a given land, and is more open-minded for it.

But as the pre-tour dialogue confirms, the driver intends to fill his customers’ minds with empty calories. He dodges Rocko’s inquiry of when the Eiffel Tower falls on their itinerary, the only question anyone offers.

The ensuing “sightseeing” drive accentuates the unremarkable similarities between the French city and American suburbia.

Granted, some methods of showing how other locations are just like home can have a unifying effect. A Sani-Tours excursion, however, purposely defeats the purpose of flying across the Atlantic to experience Paris in person. In so doing, it dashes the hopes of one, if not two tour takers.

As Rocko and Heffer descend at the start of “I See London, I See France,” they plan to immerse themselves. Rocko cannot contain his excitement for every cultural aspect that sets the locale apart. While Heffer’s preparation is comparatively less enthused, he is at least trying to master French phrases.

The guide bursts both bubbles by muffling the majesty and keeping everyone on the bus for most of the journey. The only extraordinary sense he will allow is the empty aura everyday visuals acquire by being in a foreign location. Otherwise, he either selects “points of interest” that are on the same plane as common U.S. sites or subtly attempts to convey that America is still better.

To that point, he only lets his riders off the bus when they stop for lunch. Naturally, he treats them to a Paris-based Chokey Chicken restaurant. As he states over his bullhorn, the chain’s location has been in place for barely a decade by that time.

Regardless, he tries to pass off the spread as “authentic French cuisine,” and only Rocko sees through the fraud.

Apparently, for everybody else, anything they eat on the tour qualifies as French cuisine. The food at hand need only be made, served and consumed in France.

In addition, selecting a Parisian Chokey Chicken location denotes the guide’s hidden message of unconditional American supremacy. Why would the French want to bring a popular U.S. chain to their soil unless their own cookery was inferior?

To that point, earlier on the drive, the guide distinguishes the locals and tourists by claiming the former eat pigeons. When he delivers this nugget of information, he stresses the word “eat” with a hint of disgust.

Similarly, when he changes the subject to headgear, he opines that “they sure wear some crazy hats in Paris. They call it fashion. I call it stupid-looking.”

He is in the middle of that meaningless monologue when Rocko calls attention to the Eiffel Tower exit. In response, the driver furiously mocks “No. 11” for proposing “a big fat visit to the Eiffel Tower.”

With this flare-up, he stops short of calling his passenger pretentious for highlighting a genuine Parisian landmark. Even without that declaration, he reaffirms his restriction against learning or teaching anything compelling. That policy is pivotal toward his interest in sustaining his sense of control over his customers.

As such, his next eruption comes when the post-lunch roll call exposes Rocko’s defection. When Heffer makes his own break, the guide decides to “deviate our pre-established route,” the very proposal that earned “No. 11” the earlier tongue-lashing. At this point, chasing “No. 13” through the city is more important.

The driver goes so far as to follow Heffer through the halls of an art museum. As he does this, he scowls at the paintings that land on his windshield, wiping them aside like splattered bugs. Unfortunately for his agenda, the remaining passengers take photos of other works visible from the side windows.

On the whole, the driver is fighting a losing battle. He concedes as much to a medium extent by putting his perilous pursuit on hold.

How Heffer manages to outrun the bus before the driver loses him is the storyline’s greatest mystery. But when he and Rocko reunite at the Eiffel Tower, the guide’s absence is perfectly explicable.

If he did not want to go near the celebrated structure before, he will not want to go there now. There at least a dozen tourists still on his bus versus the two who have broken off. He is not inclined to corner the latter pair if doing so risks awakening the other riders’ intellectual curiosity.

With that said, he is not surrendering outright. He reappears at the episode’s ending, having resumed his chase and followed Rocko and Heffer to the airport.

The runway is no more of a deterrent to his bus than the museum’s halls. As long as the setting is not too cultured, he will go there to get tourists back in his anti-enrichment clutches.

Nothing doing this time. The two O-Townies are on their way back. Whether they spread the good word of in-person Paris or the not-so-good word of Sani-Tours, both specters will surely haunt the driver.