Who Give$ a Buck

Well, my memory told me to buck off yesterday, and it wasn't until I noticed K.K. Slider visiting today that I realized today was Saturday. So let me get this post done with and then I'll go and buck myself.

Our episode starts off as the previous one left, with Rocko and Heffer watching television. Rocko's lava lamp only picks up the 24-hour bagpipe channel, which is a relief, considering they could've ended up watching Sex and the City or Friends or Dawson's Creek instead if they were particularly unlucky, which is putting it mildly. Unfortunately this takes place in the early 90s, so as far as I know it's too early for their Scottish television to pick up a David Tennant biopic. What with the explosion of Mt. Pinatubo, volcanoes were on the forefront of the American consciousness. The lava lamp explodes, destroying Rocko's furniture. Heffer suggests they go purchase better furniture instead. Pokey the Penguin's suggestion would likely be to get "BETTER BOXES!!!!!"

This being only the second storyline of the pilot episode, we're not sure who this mysterious "Spunky" character is who, according to Rocko, first spat-up on the underside of the couch. So they decide they need new things in the proper capitalist fashion. Before you lost-in-time communists start popping up, perhaps you should make yourself acquainted with feelings of malaise or ennui at not having personal effects with which to project one's good emotions onto, just to keep one remembering they HAD good emotions at one point. We are then abruptly introduced to Spunky's food bowl which has melted.

Rocko laments being unable to afford purchasing new items. Apparently he didn't think he couldn't afford them ENOUGH, as he is tricked into thinking a credit card is an object which has some form of function. Heffer is quick to obliviously point out the inherent flaw in credit cards: "You can charge now and pay later!" This is one cow that will be making a call to Clark Howard pretty soon. The key word here is "later". "Later" indicates the future. Do YOU know what will happen in the future? NO you do NOT. They do not know if they will even have the money to DO the paying "later". The major flaw with dumb people today is that they confuse "later" with "never".

Rocko is skeptical at first, but Heffer then lunges into the basic sales routine: Keep talking until the schmuck you're advertising to gets so fed up that they think they can just ignore you since they already bought whatever crap you're selling. If you notice, advertisers, also known as street urchins, pushers, or underside shoedung, won't leave you the fuck alone until you buy their worthless crap. I remember some illegal trying to get me to buy some nail crap to make your fingernails shiny in the mall. She GRABBED me by the arm and wouldn't let go until I LOOKED her in the eyes and told her I didn't want it. She didn't understand I'm not part of the ignorant masses, but such is the idiocy of those who ARE the filthy crawling pestilence that inhabit this radioactive dungheap of a planet. Oh, sorry, where was I?

Rocko gives in to the fact that it would be unconventional for Spunky to eat off of the floor, since Spunky's not tall enough to sit at the table (but then we never figure out what Garfield's balancing on). The O-Town mall (admittedly an odd name when going for the "Thing-O-Matic" genre of nomenclature) has a vast parking lot, though usually what I've encountered with malls is parking lots that are just menacing to navigate through, with weird curving roads of vague direction and disproportionate parking lots whose routes to the mall itself are obscure. The next scene involves Rocko and the kibbitzing Heffer stalking some wanderer through the lot in hopes of stealing his space, a rather creepy and unsettling practice for anyone who's been followed. Ever read Christine? Turns out the oddly-tailed dog they're following was abandoned by his mother, and if you're familiar with O-Town, that's not surprising. Surprisingly the story isn't half-over by the time they finally do find a parking lot on the level with Jetsons noises. Some old woman asks her unseen son if he's found the car yet, but I couldn't see a familial relation with the lost kid downstairs. Since fiction likes to wrap itself up from time to time, it may be safe to lean towards the assumption that these are indeed a mother-and-son pair, separated.

Taking all the fun out of mallwalking, Rocko and company are whisked away via conveyer belt past a variety of stores which include "Just Gauche" and "Just Kimchi". Kimchi is a type of Korean boiled cabbage which tastes like anything else in Korea: spicy. This is, of course, a cover up for the lack of noteworthy cuisine, but let's move on. The salesweasel of "Just Dogbowls" is a cross between Crazy Redd and Stan from Monkey's Island, though with a clearly menacing ambiance about him. The salesperson says some stuff about inverse parabolas caressing a canine's snout, and if he means a concave shape then I guess nothing else comes to mind offhand.

Moment of the episode: the Doggy-Style Bowl Ride.

The sales pitch pretty much speaks for itself, with a doggy-style bowl ride, everybody on their hands and knees, as is the usual double or quadruple entendre that helped this show stand out from being like its insipid counterparts by not being insulting to the viewer's intelligence. Spunky is apparently a very short whippet as is the salesperson's guess, but Rocko merely responds that his dog's name is Spunky. I would've guessed a beagle, since he resembles much in the way of other classic cartoon dogs with spots on their backs. The salesperson forgets Spunky's name almost as soon as he was told what it was, but even if he had guessed right it wouldn't change the insight into the interchangeable manner in which salespeople assault customers with their stalker-esque tactics when doing their proselytizing. Spunky chooses a fire hydrant rather than a bowl, which is rather unsettling to think he would eat from something generally regarded as a canine's toilet. Yet people still eat from McDonald's and Chinese buffets, so what'll you do.

Rocko gives in, and soon the gluttonous spiel of thrift spending begins. Rocko is then trapped in a whirlwind of consumerist slavery, ending up with a crapload of stuff that's neither useful nor necessary. Such is the good lesson for young children watching cartoons to learn: The importance of proper credit card spending. I don't even know what a credit card is exactly to this day. Of course, to assume that cartoons are for children is yet another fault of modern society designed to promote senseless conformity and boredom.

The creditors are not swayed by Heffer's initial defiance, as their tight psychological grip on their suckers is more important than the...do they even make a profit? What do credit companies get out of it? Some kind of perverse pleasure? Heffer grabs a mysterious hat and coat and abandons Rocko on the spot, the sight of magazine-clipping letters too much for the cow--I mean, steer. Rocko dismantles the credit card, but like an ouijia board its curse is unspurned, although lacking the dark magics of Parker Brothers (or as one nutter put it before getting added to my block list, the very IDEA is what makes it evil). In the fashion of the Wizard's Apprentice (you know, with the dancing brooms with buckets of water I guess), the plastic shards form into new credit cards which like an angry mob hurl Rocko into the fires of greedful Hades.

In the morning, all his crap has been reposessed, a remarkably light punishment for monetary fraud. Heffer comes by to deliver a replacement doggy bowl like the one Rocko just lost, claiming that he paid for it by selling his second stomach to the Scottish bagpipe show seen at the previous episode. He even shows Rocko (and us) his gastroectomy scar. And you thought the all-bagpipe station was just a red herring, didn't you? The episode ends with the heart-warming (in the Rocko's Modern Life sense) image of a Scotsman (he's wearing a skirt, so we can assume this is true) playing Heffer's stomach like bagpipes.

Perhaps I should've looked ahead to the credits last week, but they claim that the aerobics instructor from "No Pain, No Gain" was played by Richard Simmons. Cool work for the pilot.