Original air date: 10/10/1993
The fourth episode of the first season of Rocko's Modern Life.
Rocko's Happy Sack
Rocko hurries to Heap-O-Food's 99% off sale to spend the $3.00 he has left until his next payday, but has to deal with a faulty shopping cart, Spunky being packed like meat, and a near-sighted cashier (Filburt, no less).
Flu-in-U-Enza
Rocko gets sick and a trio of regurgitated food known as the Enchanted Upchucks help him get better in time for a wrestling match.
"Rocko's Happy Sack" provides examples of:
- Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: Rocko tries to convince a guy who's unknowingly buying Spunky to not buy dog meat, and lists off the various ingredients in such a thing, including PCBs, MSGs and BVDsnote .
- Beggar with a Signboard: When Rocko searches his kitchen for food, he finds a bug in his freezer, holding up a sign that says, "WILL WORK FOR FOOD".
- Beware the Nice Ones: Rocko manages to get all of his groceries scanned one second before the sale ends. When Filburt charges him the full price of $150.00, Rocko snaps, gives him an angry speech, and threatens to "do something not nice" to him unless he changes the total back to $1.50.
- Black Comedy: Early in the episode, as Rocko is searching his kitchen for food, a starving insect finds a crumb. He jubilantly declares "It's Thanksgiving", but ends up falling over dead before he can eat the crumb.
- Butt Sticker: While Rocko is shopping, he gets crushed by Gladys the Hippo Lady's butt and gets stuck there.
- Fantastic Racism: A customer mentions to Rocko how he believes the country would be a better place without sea mammals, and that they should round them all up, put them on a boat in the middle of the ocean and sink it halfwaynote . Then the guy next to him, an ape, angrily states, "Hey, buddy, my WIFE'S a sea mammal!" His wife, a manatee, is crying her eyes out before the ape drags the guy off-screen. Cue Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: Happens to Rocko when he eats a free sample for a Lava Puffs pastry at Heap-O-Food. He puts out the fire by drinking from a lobster tank, leading to the lobsters inside it attacking him.
- Grocery Store Episode: When Rocko and Spunky are hungry, out of food, and down to their last $3.00 until Rocko's payday next week, Rocko finds an ad in the newspaper that the Heap-O-Food grocery store is having a 99% off sale until 12:00 noon.
- Growling Gut: Rocko and Spunky both suffer from this as a result of not having anything to eat for days.
- Humiliation Conga: Rocko describes every bad thing that happened to him in this episode best in his angry speech to Filburt when the latter charges him full price for his groceries:"I've been run over by a car, made to drag around a gimp shopping cart, threatened by your Gestapo security guards, had me head set on fire, I was attacked by wild lobsters, beaten by a very LARGE woman, had me dog wrapped in plastic, nearly starved to death and I still made the twelve o'clock deadline!"
- Instant Wristwatch: Rocko looks impatiently at one as Filburt scans his groceries very slowly.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: A mouse in red shorts appears in the ice cream aisle, complaining that Heap-O-Food never sells his favorite flavor of ice cream; head cheese and berries.
- Meat-O-Vision: When a hungry Rocko sees Spunky sitting in his oven, he visualizes Spunky as a roast turkey.
- Mood Whiplash: The grocery store butcher wallows in a pool of self-loathing as he evaluates how sucky his life is: he's fat, he's ugly, he's a pig, he's never been married, etc. Then a liver somehow comes to life, crawls out of its packaging, and finds its way to him, which actually breaks him out of his misery, and then believes he's actually got a pretty good life as it is.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: Filburt gets a job as a cashier at Heap-O-Food in this episode.
- Noodle Incident: In Rocko's rant, one of the things he mentions happen to him is getting "threatened by your gestapo security guards". However, no such event is depicted, indicating this event may have been cut for time.
- Race Against the Clock: Upon reading the ad for the 99% off sale at Heap-O-Food until 12:00 Noon, Rocko finds out that he only has fifteen minutes until the sale ends, and is determined to beat the clock.
- Rage Breaking Point: Rocko takes his typical abuse with his usual lack of reaction. But when Filburt charges him the full for his groceries because the sale ended just before he scanned the last item, Rocko loses it and launches into the above speech.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: At the end of the episode, as Rocko is on his way back home, he drives over a speed bump which causes the trunk of his car to pop open and all of his groceries to spill out.
- Vocal Evolution: Filburt's voice is incredibly deep and deadpan in this episode, compared to the higher voice he has in other first season episodes. Regardless, both voices are still very different from how he'd sound for the rest of the series.
- Wingding Eyes: Rocko's pupils turn into bombs that explode when Filburt charges him full price for his groceries.
- Your Head Asplode: A man's head explodes when he hears Rocko's cart with three missing wheels dragging across the floor.
"Flu-In-U-Enza" provides examples of:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Rocko has tickets for the Wild World of Wacky Wrestling Federation.
- Anthropomorphic Food: The Enchanted Upchucks are all half-eaten pieces of food. Wretch is a hot dog, Hurl is a piece of cheese, and Spew is a slice of pizza.
- Ass Shove: Discussed. After Rocko swallows a pill to cure the flu, he reads the label on the jar that says, "WARNING! NOT TO BE TAKEN ORALLY."
- Ate the Spoon: The spicy concoction that the Enchanted Upchucks make for Rocko melt the spoon that Wretch stirs with.
- Black Comedy: While Rocko and Heffer are sitting at a waiting room in the doctor's office, a bird sitting adjacent to Rocko is shown coughing and hacking and eventually coughs out his heart, which prompts him to fall to the floor dead.
- Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: The Enchanted Upchucks prepare a spicy concoction for Rocko to help him get better, and it works.
- It's very likely that it works purely because of how spicy it is. Capsaicin (the chemical that gives spicy food its "kick") used to be given as a treatment for colds because it clears up the nasal passages.
- Brick Joke: Dr. Bendova is absent from the second half of the episode; he then reappears at the very end as one of the wrestlers in the wrestling match Heffer and the nurse are attending. The nurse then jumps into the ring to fight him.
- Dinner Deformation: The pill that Rocko takes leaves a bulge in his neck that he has to whack with a hammer to get it to go down.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: Rocko does this when he tastes the spicy concoction that the Enchanted Upchucks make for him, melting a chair as a result.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Just before Rocko chases the Enchanted Upchucks, his nose is seen its regular color instead of the sickly red it's been most of the episode. This is actually a sign that Rocko has been cured.
- Here We Go Again!: By the time Rocko recovers from the flu at the end of the episode, Spunky now has it.
- Hot Drink Cure: The Enchanted Upchucks make Rocko "Toe Jam Tea", consisting of hot water mixed with gunk scraped from between their toes. Luckily for Rocko, Spunky drinks it instead of him.
- Mad Doctor: Dr. Bendova might actually not be a real doctor but a mental patient, if the nurse's dialogue is anything to hint at...Nurse: HEY! I THOUGHT I STRAPPED YOU TO THE BED!
- Metronomic Man Mashing: The nurse does this to Dr. Bendova at the end of the episode.
- Mushroom Samba: Happens when Rocko swallows a pill to cure his flu that was not meant to be taken orally.
- Now You Tell Me: After swallowing the pill the doctor had prescribed for him, Rocko sees a warning on the bottle that says it's not an oral medicine. A second later, he has an Oh, Crap! moment followed by a Mushroom Samba.
- Punny Name: The name of the doctor that looks over Rocko is Dr. Bendova.
- Quack Doctor: Rocko gets a cold and goes to see a doctor. During the examination, Dr. Bendova asks him to bend over as he does a Glove Snap, and it cuts to the exam being done. Rocko seems quite traumatized by the whole ordeal, making it easy to fill in the blanks. Turns out that Bendova is not a doctor at all, and instead, is an escaped mental patient.
- Rage Breaking Point: After having enough of the Enchanted Upchucks' painful and unpleasant remedies, Rocko snaps and chases them. He calms down when he realizes the treatment worked and he's better.
- Ship Tease: The bovine nurse who works at the hospital that Heffer takes Rocko to develops a crush on Heffer. At the end of the episode, when Spunky is sick with the flu, Rocko gives Heffer the tickets to the wrestling match, and Heffer gives the second ticket to the nurse.
- Sick Episode: Rocko comes down with the flu in this episode.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: The bird sitting next to Rocko in the waiting room is seen smoking a cigarette. He then literally coughs his heart out and falls to the floor dead.
- Theme Naming: The enchanted upchucks are named Wretch, Hurl, and Spew, which are all synonyms for throwing up.
- Turn Your Head and Cough: Dr. Bendova asks Rocko to do this several times.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Happens with Rocko after he swallows a pill that was not meant to be taken orally. He gets a wavy and disorienting Mushroom Samba view of everything that makes him nauseous, leading to him racing to the bathroom, to which we hear him puke out of view. Then parts of his vomit come to life as the Enchanted Upchucks to help treat his flu.
