wait remember Rocco's Modern Life it was a Nickelodeon cartoon that featured a wallaby
a steer a turtle and a really really big man yeah it'll make more sense soon if you've never seen it
this show was pretty important for its role in the Slate of classic Nicktoons in the 90s while
it itself fits in it always felt like the tone of the comedy was firing on different cylinders from
the other neighboring cartoon sure there was still slapstick and more common funny hahas but it was
all about the delivery of our main cast and how they said their lines as well as why this show
Just Hits different is these characters they're so different and unique and truly helped make
what this show was so I figured we'd take a look at this show as it became a launching pad for so
many things if you enjoy this video you better subscribe let's dig into Rocco's Modern Life
welcome back to the 25 days of Fringe Miss where there's going to be brand new videos
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Rocco's modern life is about an immigrant wallaby named Rocco voiced by Carlos alazraki life is
anything but normal I don't even think modern quite describes it either him and his dog spunky
deal with their life of weird friends annoying neighbors and a bunch of odd situations that they
find themselves in why is he a wallaby well the creator of the show Joe Murray was just looking at
one on a trip to the zoo and noticed its nature being on its own not looking for anything from
anyone just wanting to mind its own business while all of the other animals were yelling
and screaming looking for some sort of attention this idea manifested in the main character of the
show Rocco being this Central vessel into the weirdness of everything and everyone else he
isn't too special but he also isn't boring but because of that it allows the world around him
to shine that's why the Creator took notice and liked this wallaby so much while at the zoo and
that's why the show truly has a great focus on the things places and people around Rocco with
some episodes not even featuring him at all when we need family drama we have suffer when
we need marital problems we have the neighbors when we need literally anything there is always
a character to fit that story as Rocco well he's just Rocco mostly trying to mind his own business
a lot of the things Rocco gets into are because of his friends and his neighbors but first let's talk
about heifer the steer voiced by Tom Kenny he's the comic relief not super smart heavyset friend
who may love food most over anything in the world while he himself doesn't truly change much from
when we first meet him despite the multiple things he has to go through throughout the series we do
get some pretty interesting family Dynamics from him where his family are literally all walls and
how his relationship as someone in his mid-20s deals with the pressures of his family there is
also filbert voiced by Mr Lauren who is a turtle that can only be described as mostly cowardly
towards anything all around all the time he's extremely cautious germaphobic and is not one
for great excitement his character probably has the most character changing Dynamics throughout
the series as most of his state people traits stay true he does eventually have a romantic Arc with
another character Dr Paula voiced by Linda wallum who was a jack of all trades in the doctor field
from pharmacist to surgeon to dentist she's a cat with a hook for a hand and the reason why
is actually pretty interesting itself Murray was asked to add in a quote unquote professional woman
someone with a good hook and he took that all too literally creating a character that holds
a bunch of professional jobs and has a hook for one of her hands and all of them ended up really
liking the character they came up with of course you also have the big heads Rocco's neighbors Ed
big head voiced by Charlie Adler who is a toad is an easy to anger working man who has enough
to deal with with his regular day-to-day life that anything involving Rocco and his friends
just helps heat those things up to a boiling point he's just a curmudgeon who sometimes
very rarely finds peace but everything usually comes crashing down around him to ruin that his
wife Beth big head also voiced by Charlie Adler and who is also a toad she's pretty
chummy with Rocco and has the fair amount of of awkward tension building moments with him while
constantly having relationship struggles with Ed she serves up a lot of the comedic and downright
pretty line pushing moments throughout the series and is one of my favorite characters oh you know I
have to give some love to really really big man who has the signature power as a superhero to
have others gaze into his nipples of the future yeah see I told you we'd mention that really
really big man and his pectoral Powers you're welcome at least I'll have my dignity Rondo will
be right back he just realized he isn't wearing pants are you ready for more Rocco you better be
Rocco's Modern Life premiered on Nickelodeon on September 18 1993 and ran for a total of
four seasons the character of Rocco originated from the creator of the show Joe Murray's comic
titled Travis which was Rocco's original name he tried pitching it around in the 1980s but
unfortunately it remained unpublished he would later be looking for some funding specifically
for his independent film titled my dog zero sitting down with Nickelodeon to strike a
deal with them to pre-purchase the TV ride giving them exclusivity to show it on their Network and
it would give him the money up front to make it a reality Nickelodeon would end up liking Murray's
style and wanted to purchase it and finance it but in the interest of turning it into a series Linda
simenski who at the time was the head of Animation development at Nickelodeon gave him a call to kind
of go over the concept of what a Nicktoon was as at the time the original Three Nicktoons had not
been finished and released on their Network she explained that their cartoons were different as
Murray didn't really have too much of an interest in cartoon TV shows mainly based on what was on TV
at that time he knew that his concept for my dog zero wouldn't really fit the mold of a cartoon
TV show but told Linda that he would think on something else possibly spending his time after
that researching all he could about Nickelodeon and started to notice that their attitude towards
their programming wasn't like other networks at the time this caught his attention more than
anything and went looking back at his sketches and ideas from the past and would start formulating an
idea that he would want to see not something he thought the network would want to see but after
coming up with this weird and different idea and submitting it months had gone by with no
word from the network until Linda finally reached back out saying they wanted to move forward with a
pilot which caught him by surprise while creating the pilot it was becoming clearer and clearer to
him that there is no way the exacts at Nick would be into this it was too weird it was too gross to
everything that a network probably wouldn't want in a cartoon but despite all that the pilot went
over really well the only thing they ended up not liking was heifer claiming he was just a bit too
weird so rather than just remove him he went and made a different pilot to present to them
and once again surprised they wanted to officially green light the pilot into a full series of course
though so many complications presented themselves throughout the process of developing everything
Rocco was originally going to be yellow instead of the beige color he is now and the title of
the show at this point was the Rocco show Murray while excited he's making an actual
show still had plenty reserves about doing it knowing his passions aren't particularly in this
field thinking that this would be a one season type of deal but by December of 1993 after the
series had begun airing the show was renewed for another season and then another one after that but
by the Time season 4 was ordered Murray felt that his time there was done passing the production to
Stephen hillenberg yes that Stephen hillenberg I will touch back on this in just a bit while Murray
would still oversee a lot of the show he was always one foot out the door and by the end of
that season he was done but he did tell Nick that it would be great if he wanted to keep with it
seeing the show go beyond him Unfortunately they ended up canceling the series it was bittersweet
as he truly believes in all 52 episodes made being of top-notch quality but he also knew how
difficult it was to make that much in such a short amount of time as well as dealing with some awful
personal life stuff at the same time very early on into the production and putting other goals on
the back burner but what made Rocco's Modern Life even more special was everything that came from it
really being this Melting Pot of incredible people and great talent just starting their careers
foreign I mentioned moments ago that Stephen hillenberg was part of the process for making
this show a reality eventually taking charge for its final season I have a video that goes a bit
more in depth from the perspective of hillenberg coming out later this month but on this production
is where he was making the connections and building the ideas for what would become SpongeBob
SquarePants both Tom Kenny and Mr Lawrence were working their first voice roles for Rocco and
hit things off well with Hillenburg playing a huge part in developing certain characters that
would go on to be SpongeBob for Tom Kenny and then plankton for Mr Lawrence these connections
made here were crucial in the early development for SpongeBob in addition to that both Tom Kenny
and Carlos alazraki would also both end up voicing Spyro the Dragon with Carlos voicing him in the
first game and Tom Kenny doing the voice for the second and third for the original trilogy and has
went on to voice him in a couple other iterations including the reignited trilogy remakes but also
several other well-known shows and people who worked on those shows all stem from Rocco's modern
life as well well Joe may not have always wanted to get into this field the workplace he was able
to curate with the people involved turned into the Catalyst of so many great Ventures
Beyond it thanks to this show Rocco's Modern Life something as crazy as SpongeBob never
being the way that it is or a thing at all may not have been possible without it and I
think something that Murray can take away from all this is that his creative Endeavors helped
facilitate other future endeavors which is pretty amazing and something that he should be proud
of he would eventually come back to the world of animation with his show Camp Laszlo and in
the end of that series we get a cheeky little surprise visit from heifer I made a video All
About That if you want to learn more but beyond this he would eventually be brought back into
the world of Rocco thanks to Nickelodeon's interest in some of their Legacy Media and
wanting to develop a few movie continuations that would premiere on Netflix one of them
being Rocco's Modern Life static cling which would come out in 2019. it was a 45 minute
special rather than a movie but it truly felt that everything that made the original series
special was still here it was a solid fun adventure bringing the show into modern times
and gotta make sure the branding stays accurate right it would be more of what made Rocco's Modern
Life so good and for fans of the original show it brought this sense of nostalgia in just the
fact that over two decades later this show was still as good as you remember these characters
are just as fun as you remember truly it was a treat to even get something like this made
Rocco's not going away so either should you
it's that twister tune Rocco's Modern Life
on their Channel That's home of the Nicktoons Nickelodeon
personally I love Rocco's Modern Life it was this show all about the daily random struggles and over
exaggeration of the adult things that as a kid I couldn't relate to but the more I got older the
more I appreciated how this cartoon was structured for both young Watchers and adults I'm watching a
wallaby deal with jobs or try to get groceries and yet I'm invested in the Ridiculousness crafted in
the normal Rocco's Modern Life is a great look into society that captures the truisms of the
time it came out in and you can even apply a lot of that to today as well it's a satirical
look into everyday struggles and dealing with the fact that we live in a consumerist culture
adding on to the constant nudging of trying to get you to conform to societal expectations it's an
adult show that was made from the experiences and moments from the people creating it always adding
a bit of themselves into the show the DNA of the show and what makes it special is that it truly
is a modern life from a base premise you and I can relate to a lot of these everyday things this show
just emphasizes how we can view a lot of these moments in an over-the-top way and Through The
Eyes of animal based characters because of that no matter if I was watching this as a kid or now
watching as an adult I can relate or at the bare minimum understand these characters their actions
where they're coming from and how they can view the world I find it pretty special that there are
two ways to view this show it was made this way on purpose thanks to Murray's want to not make
a show under the guise of trying to make a kids show but something he would want to see what are
his frustrations what are his views on the world and through that made Rocco's Modern Life a very
special experience while it may not have been my favorite show as a kid the appreciation for
it that I have now has definitely shifted where I hold this cartoon in my personal rankings but the
other side of making a cartoon that can also be this adult is just that to adult the show faced
a number of censorship moments that led to plenty being changed altered and cut altogether I mean
when your audience has a large enough fraction that are adults during its original run it
makes sense based on the amount of innuendos and moments that are definitely not the most
brand safe for Nickelodeon despite how edgy they claim to be in the 90s there's an episode of the
show that was completely removed after airing and not shown again on the Nickelodeon main Channel
as there were a lot of complaints from parents coming in regarding some risque humor in the
episode LeapFrog but the phone operator episode was completely fine it could be small things in
some episodes that needed to be altered or changed while other things seemed completely okay the show
already had a good portion of a tumor coming from some pretty impressive animation-wise gross out
humor that usually stems from body parts getting harmed or eyes popping out of their socket and
it all for the most part was allowed through no problem which honestly makes sense because Ren and
Stimpy was on the air at the same time and I think that show goes way more out of its way to truly
gross out the audience seems like one featuring a no-tell motel and one featuring mistaking berries
for a bear's berries would be clipped out of episodes with the no-tel motel one implying a lot
of intimate situations between Rocco and heifer and the other is self-explanatory for the berries
there were minor Cuts here and there to various episodes down to stuff like 10 seconds of footage
being clipped out but also things in the world of Rocco were changed as well like the name of the
main fast food establishment going from the choki chicken to the chewy chicken both sound just awful
to eat at but sometimes because of the limits of what they could or couldn't do we get stuff
like one of my favorite episodes where heifer essentially dies spending time reflecting on
his life with the Grim Reaper and the whole joke being that they can't say sensors see just like
that playing into having to call this place that they are in as heck it's my favorite little bit
but you can tell that even when facing censorship issues it was taken in stride in something to make
jokes about while we may not see more of Rocco it was still nice to get the static cling movie a few
years back and hey Rocco has been featured as DLC for both of the video games Smite and Nickelodeon
All-Star brawl which was really cool to see more of this wallaby having anything but a Modern Life
how do you feel about Rocco's Modern Life have you given this show a chance to the lens of an
adult let me know in the comments thanks so much for watching like And subscribe later
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