Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling

Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling drops wallaby Rocko and pals Heffer and Filburt back into O-Town after a wild 20-year space odyssey, crash-landing into a neon jungle of auto-updating smartphones, radioactive energy drinks, food trucks clogging every corner, and coffee shops on overdrive. While Heffer and Filburt dive into the tech-fueled chaos, Rocko holes up when he learns his beloved ’90s show, The Fatheads, is off the air. As Conglom-O teeters on bankruptcy due to Ed Bighead’s blunder, threatening his home with demolition, Rocko hatches a daring plan to resurrect The Fatheads. Teaming up with Ed, they navigate O-Town’s dizzying new world to pitch the revival to exec Mr. Dupette, racing against time to save the day.

Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling Mini-Review

The first half of ‘Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling’ is a funny, if not particularly sophisticated, satire commenting on many of the changes to our world over the last twenty years. Fans of the original will no doubt thoroughly enjoy it, right up until it becomes unwatchable trash (See below).

                   

PARENTAL NOTES

TV-Y7

• TV-Y7 means that a show is considered safe for 7 and up. Yet, this show (aside from all of the rot from the WOKE REPORT below) has some easily omitted gags that have no place in children’s programming.
  • Mrs. Bighead pulls a stack of postcards from her prominently displayed cleavage, and the animators give them an exaggerated bounce.
    • Mrs. Bighead and Rocko cycle through the postcards with each one depicting famous landmarks and iconic images from whatever country from which they were sent. The one from Italy has the real statue of David with a cartoon piece of pizza covering his junk. Why draw attention? Why David?
      • A naked picture of Mr. Bighead is accidentally mixed in. It’s him posing suggestively with his big naked butt up in the air and his crack clearly visible.
  • In one scene, a monkey is scrubbing a girl elephant’s butt with a long-handled scrub brush in the reflecting pond outside of the Taj Mahal. At first, she is underwater with only the anatomically accurate tush prominently sticking out from the water.
  • In another scene, an elderly woman is violently electrocuted and dies—all on screen.
  • A character says, “My nipples sure are tired.”

WOKE REPORT

I Am Become Trans, Destroyer of Children

• Ralph Bighead is now a deeply mentally disturbed man who genuinely believes that dressing like a woman makes him one. The entire second half of the show revolves around his delusion.
  • When he reveals it to Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt, they couldn’t be happier, saying things like, “Wow, cool,” and “That is awesome.”  Mind you, they’ve been in space for 20 years, disappearing at a time when men in skirts earned sniggering and trips to the rubber rooms.
  • Mr. Bighead’s character arc becomes about his struggle with accepting his son’s lunacy. Once he does, everything begins to go his way once again.
    • When Ralph, who has been AWOL for decades, first reveals his mental illness to his father, he says, “I’m not your son. I’m your daughter, and I’m finally happy.” Of course, his father freaks out, and it is tonally treated as though he is in the wrong.
    • In the scene following Mr. Bighead’s negative response, he and his wife are talking. She says, “I think it’s great what Rachael has done. I’m sure she’s much more comfortable with herself.”

Karl Would Be Proud

• The show ends with the headquarters of a giant, greedy, and heartless corporation getting jettisoned into space. When it does, money falls out and rains over a crowd of people, being redistributed to the masses. Think that’s a stretch?
  • A random character who is amongst the crowd and grabbing cash yells, “The fruit of capitalist redundancy.”

Antifa Would Be Proud

• During the money-grab scene, Rocko asks, “Isn’t this looting illegal?” Heffer responds, “Who cares? Everyone is happy.”
  • This show came out seven months before the George Floyd riots. The cultural rot was already there.