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Rocko's Modern Life is an American animated television series created by Joe Murray for Nickelodeon. It premiered on September 18, 1993, and ended on November 24, 1996, totaling four seasons and 52 episodes. It's the fourth Nicktoon chronologically released.

The show generally received positive reviews during its original broadcast run and in recent years has seen renewed praise for sophisticated and subversive humor, similar to The Ren & Stimpy Show. The series has also developed a devoted following of fans over time, making many commentators deem it a cult television show.

A revival special, Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling, was announced on August 2016,[1] and was released on Netflix on August 9, 2019.[2]

Summary[]

The series follows the surreal, parodic adventures of an anthropomorphic wallaby named Rocko, and his life in the fictional city of O-Town. Originally from Australia, the show explores his American life as well as the lives of his friends and neighbors: Rocko's faithful dog, Spunky, the gluttonous steer Heffer Wolfe, the neurotic turtle Filburt Shellbach, his grouchy neighbor Ed Bighead, and Ed's friendly and sensible wife Bev Bighead. The show is laden with adult humor, including double ententes, innuendos, and satirical social commentary.

Cast[]

Main article: Characters in Rocko's Modern Life

Development history[]

Conception[]

Murray developed the character of Rocko after visiting a zoo in the Bay Area and encountering a wallaby who seemed oblivious to the chaos around him.[3] He originally appeared in an unpublished comic book titled Travis, which was meant to be his name. Murray tried to sell the comic in the late 1980s, but failed to get it into production. Many other characters appeared in various sketchbooks. Murray, who had never worked in television before and needed financing for his independent film My Dog Zero, took the series to Nickelodeon to pre-buy the television rights. He submitted a pencil proof to the network, who ended up being interested in buying and financing the series.[4] Murray felt that the industry was coming out of a "difficult period," and wanted to "shake things up a bit."[3] After the head of animation development at Nickelodeon, Linda Simensky, described the Nicktoons lineup and concept to Murray, he was skeptical of the idea of creating a Nicktoon, since he didn't like TV cartoons, but Simensky told him that Nicktoons was different from other cartoons, and he told her he thought My Dog Zero wouldn't work as a cartoon. Murray began an investigation into Nickelodeon and saw that the channel's attitude was different from the rest.[4] He even declared to executives that it "didn't write for kids," which was fine with them. Murray was still unsure, but was inspired by the independent animation around him and gave the network a chance.[5] At the time, Nickelodeon was selling itself as a network based on both edge and children's entertainment, and its goal was to appeal to teens and parents as much as kids.[6]

Production[]

Murray dug through his sketchbooks and developed the concept for Rocko's Modern Life, presenting it to Nickelodeon believing that the concept would likely be rejected. Murray figured they wouldn't like the concept and he would just collect his fee and start financing his next independent film. According to Murray, about three or four months later, he forgot about the concept and was working on My Dog Zero, when Simensky called him and informed him that Nickelodeon wanted a pilot episode.[4] He said he was glad to have gotten financing for My Dog Zero, describing it on his website as "that movie Linda Simensky saw that led me to Rocko."[7] The episode "A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic" was originally written as a pilot, but executives felt that Heffer Wolfe, one of the main characters, would be "a little too weird for the test audience." Murray then decided to write "Trash-O-Madness" as a pilot episode instead.[4] The series was titled The Rocko Show when it was in development before the first episode premiered.[8]

Old-rocko

Rocko in his original yellow color in an early concept, c. 1991.

In the original pilot, Rocko was yellow. However, Murray ended up changing Rocko's color to beige when a toy marketing company informed Nickelodeon that they were interested in marketing toys for the series, but did not want to market Rocko because "they already had a very popular yellow character." However, after the pilot aired, the company gave up on producing toys for the series, and the color change ended up being useless.[4]

Two months before production began on the first season in November 1992, Murray's first wife committed suicide.[9] Murray blamed the show's pickup as the reason for his wife's suicide, saying: "It was always a horrible connection because I see Rocko as such a positive thing in my life." Murray felt he had "unresolved issues" emotionally and physically when he moved to Los Angeles for the show's production, and hoped only to create one season and return to the San Francisco Bay Area to "clean up the loose ends he had left hanging." Murray was surprised when Nickelodeon had greenlit new seasons.[4]

After incidents with The Ren & Stimpy Show creator John Kricfalusi, Nickelodeon began to not trust its creators as much and started to form its own studio, Games Animation.[5] Producer Mary Harrington moved from New York to Los Angeles to create Games Animation to produce Rocko's Modern Life. Murray, however, recalls that they were still able to do a lot of things independently. Production on the series began in January 1993, jointly by Games Animation and Joe Murray Productions. Rocko's Modern Life was Nickelodeon's first in-house animated production.

Murray's departure and cancellation[]

After the third season, Murray decided to hand over creative direction and production to Stephen Hillenburg and Ken Kessell respectively, but he continued to manage the series. Murray planned to leave the series completely after the fourth season, and even encouraged Nickelodeon to continue the series, but the network ultimately decided to cancel the series.[4] Production of the series ended in 1996.

Murray described the 52 episodes as "top notch," and in his opinion, the quality of a television show can diminish as production continues "when it's volume";[4] on his website he said: "In some ways it succeeded and in some ways failed. All I know it developed its own flavor and an equally original legion of fans."[10]

Writing and themes[]

The screenwriters were intent on creating stories they describe as "strong" and "funny." Some of them, including George Maestri and Martin Olson, used to pitch their ideas to Murray over burgers at Rocky's, a restaurant in Lankershim in the North Hollywood section of the San Fernando Valley. Murray would take his team members on "writing trips" to places like Rocky's, the La Brea Tar Pits, and the nature. If he liked the story premises, the writers would work out complete outlines from them, and outlines approved by him and Nickelodeon would become full episodes. Maestri described some stories as originating from "real life" and others from "on the air." Murray stated that each episode of the series grew out of the personal experiences of himself and/or one or more of the directors or writers. He also stated that he did not intend to use the formulaic writing seen in other cartoons, but wanted content that "broke new ground" and "did things that pushed the envelope", and could be described as "unexpected." When hiring writers, he did not hire those with previous cartoon writing experience, but instead hired writers who worked outside of animation, including improv actors and comic artists. He said that a story concept that "approached some formulaic idea we'd all seen before" received an immediate rejection.

Storyboard writer Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh, said the show's writers wanted to address both children and adults, citing Rocky and Bullwinkle as an example of another series containing references indecipherable to children and understandable to adults, but he described the process as "hard work." According to him, when Nickelodeon censors questioned proposed material, sometimes the team disagreed with the censors' opinions, and other times they agreed with the censors' rationale. He claims that "many people" told him that the team "succeeded in this endeavor" and that "many parents I know really enjoyed watching the series with their children for precisely this reason." Marsh believes the material written by Doug Lawrence is an example of a "unique sense of humor," crediting Lawrence for the "pineapple references" and adds that Lawrence thought the pineapples looked funny. The crew relied extensively on vintage Looney Tunes and Fleischer Studios cartoons to appeal to a broad demographic: with a certain adult sensibility, but also enjoyable to children.

Spiritual successors[]

Many people consider the extremely popular Nickelodeon show SpongeBob SquarePants to be a spiritual successor since many of the writers and voice actors (Derek Drymon, Tom Kenny, Doug Lawrence) also worked on Rocko, and many plotlines and character archetypes from the latter show were reused in the prior. Joe Murray's next series, Camp Lazlo, is also considered a spiritual successor - particularly to the episode Belch of Destiny - for similar reasons. Joe Murray's most recent program, Let's Go Luna!, is highly tonally dissonant from Rocko as an educational preschool program, but shares an art style, retains certain character concepts, and has a similar - yet much less cynically handled - theme of discovering a new culture. Additionally, the Disney Channel series Phineas & Ferb was created by Rocko writers Dan Povenmire and Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh, and contained a lot of elements explored in episodes of Rocko's Modern Life - in particular the musical format of Zanzibar!, the A-plot-and-B-plot format of Bloaty and Squirmy episodes, and the character name "Ferb" which was used as a running gag in Rocko.

Broadcasters[]

Aside from airing on Nickelodeon in most countries, Rocko's Modern Life was aired on many other private channels around the world:

Trivia[]

  • All of the characters in the show are anthropomorphic animals of different species, the vast majority being mentally unstable.
    • Murray said during a press for Camp Lazlo that he matched the personalities of the characters to the various animals in the series to form a social caricature.[11]
  • In the show, many of the locations have the letter "O" in their names. When Murray was asked about that use of "O" in locations, he said: "I always got a big kick out of the businesses that were 'House-O-Paint', or 'Ton-O-Noodles', because their names seemed to homogenize what they sold, and strip the products of true individuality and stress volume ... and we all know, the American dream is volume! So what better company to create volume than 'Conglom-O', and since a majority of the town worked at Conglom-O, it should be called 'O' Town. I also wanted the town to be 'anytown' USA, and I used to love sports players with a big ZERO on their back. It was funny to me."[4]
  • Heffer first appeared in an ID commercial from MTV in 1989, four years before the show's premiere. In it, Heffer is seen flying out of a television with the MTV logo branded on his butt.[4]

References[]

  1. Otterson, Joe (August 11, 2016). "New ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’ One-Hour Special to Air on Nickelodeon". The Wrap.
  2. Lovett, Jamie (July 16, 2019). "Rocko's Modern Life Netflix Special Poster and Release Date Revealed". Comic Book.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Zahed, Ramin (July 12, 2011). "Joe Murray Looks Back at ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’". Animation Magazine.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 Trainor, Lisa (September 17, 1997). "Lisa (Kiczuk) Trainor interviews Joe Murray, creator of Rocko's Modern Life". The Rocko's Modern Life FAQ.
  5. 5.0 5.1 Racine, Tom (July 9, 2011). "Episode 124 – Joe Murray".
  6. VanDerWerff, Emily (July 6, 2011). "Rocko's Modern Life: Season One". The A.V. Club..
  7. "Independent Filmwork". Joe Murray Studio.
  8. Trainor, Lisa. "A Bit of Trivia From Paul Sumares". The Rocko's Modern Life FAQ.
  9. "June 16, 2008". Joe Murray Studio..
  10. "Rocko's Modern Life". Joe Murray Studio.
  11. Q & A with Joe Murray Creator of Camp Lazlo. Turner Pressroom. Archived from the original on 2008-01-31.

External links[]

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