Wallaby Wednesday: Could Filburt be a volunteer for medical research?

Leave it to Turtystrol — the medication advertised during NickRewind (nee The Splat) programming — to defeat its own purpose.

The psychological toll and physical symptoms of chronic, overwhelming worry are Turtystrol’s target. Yet it is known to inflict “shellshock and extreme cases of hives,” which likewise signify flight when one wants to fight. It is also not advised for those who are prone to “wicked nightmares.”

Filburt is the unfortunate, natural poster child for all aspects of this fictitious prescription pill. As useful as it could be for him, it is ultimately liable to exacerbate his difficulties.

Odds are medical and pharmaceutical researchers know this because they tested it on him first. In the Rocko’s Modern Life chronicles, several signs point to a borderline career in clinical trials for the turtle.

Filburt’s trademark myriad of ailments could both stem from the studies and prompt him to participate in more. Multiple episodes bear evidence that he has become morbidly enthused by the idea of taking ill. If doing so spells an opportunity for a handy paycheck, such as attitude is at least somewhat understandable.

As Dr. Hutchison tells Filburt’s friends, he “got excited” when his symptoms of amphibial glottal bloaticitis emerged. She had previously been annoyed by Filburt’s insistence that his rash is more than minor skin irritation and reluctantly taken him to the hospital. He later returns to Rocko’s house with “terrible news” that “the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me.”

Granted, in both instances, it is possible that Filburt’s “excitement” is of the negative variety. It could be more along the lines of psychosomatic hysteria, and he may believe the “fools” at the hospital had misled him to pointless worry.

But further evidence points to desire rather than dread. When Rocko beholds Filburt’s stockpile of used soda cans in his trailer basement, he concludes, “So this is why he never works.”

If there is any truth to that theory, it is only partial. Sure, recycled soft-drink containers can fetch as many as 15 cents apiece in participating states. At the time of Rocko’s original run, Michigan was the gold standard at a 10-cent refund. And incidentally, the map showing the path from O-Town to Holl-o-wood vaguely suggests the series takes place in or around the Great Lakes State.

With all of that said, one generally needs to purchase the beverage before returning the can. The only way to make the refund program profitable is by emulating Kramer and Newman in an episode of Seinfeld. You had better believe some people have done that, only to be foiled on legal grounds.

Odds are Filburt is not inclined to engage in such state-crossing misdeeds. He lacks the means, let alone the intestines, to knowingly attempt anything illicit.

 

But that very characteristic susceptibility to nausea can explain his mass soda consumption. When one’s throat, stomach or both are that uncomfortable, few potables go down easier than ginger ale or a lemon-lime carbonated concoction.

Knowing him as well as they do, Filburt’s friends may occasionally gift him with those beverages. But Rocko clearly does not know the side of Filburt that accrued enough cans to make ends meet without regular employment.

The majority of the beverages must therefore be part of his compensation from the research labs. They are fundamentally free for him. Likewise, he is free to trade in the used cans at an O-Town depository.

For a trailer dweller, that could be a crucial way of supplementing the checks he gets for his troubles at the lab. When he vaguely says he gets the cans “here and there,” he is most likely circumventing the subject due to a sense of stigma.

Just because Barney Gumble volunteers his volunteerism does not mean everyone in that field is comfortable doing so. Filburt would just as soon have his friends believe he does not have regular gigs of any kind. He furthers this notion when he and Heffer are filming the Kind-Of-A-Lot-O-Comics portion of Rocko’s video to his parents, jokingly suggesting that they “shoot some videos of where we work every day.”

That is as far as he will push the envelope on his employment status. As “The High Five of Doom” reveals, he will not even jot down accounts of his lab experiences to himself. As therapeutic as that could be, there is too much chance someone will read it. That potentiality comes to fruition when Rocko and Heffer discover the science-fiction novel he fills his notebook with instead.

Then again, the plot and details of that story may draw inspiration from the lab. In another money-saving move, Filburt substitutes complimentary restaurant mustard for expensive cologne. He could have inside knowledge ahead of the general public from participating in a promising experiment.

For his sake, one would hope Filburt can find a more enjoyable career, one that comes with less pressure, anxiety or uncertainty. But maybe his own attentiveness and resourcefulness could make his attachment to clinical trials his eventual ticket out.

Who needs Turtystrol when you can make yourself confident with aromatic mustard-based cologne? If everyone did what Filburt does at the Chewey Chicken, odds are mustard would not stay free for long. But since this is his discovery, it would only be fair if he could capitalize if and when the practice becomes profitable.

He has certainly paid his dues, even while getting paid to serve as a reptilian lab rat.