The eighth episode of the third season of Rocko's Modern Life.
Fortune Cookie
When Filburt gets an ominous fortune cookie, his life takes a turn for the worse.
Dear John
Rocko needs his kitchen fixed, but every attempt turns it into a bathroom.
"Fortune Cookie" provides examples of:
- The Jinx: Ever since getting his Misfortune Cookie, Filburt seems to cause disaster to everyone around him.
- Misfortune Cookie: "Bad luck and extreme misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity".
- Overly Long Gag: The wheel comes off as a result of Filburt's bad luck, and starts wrecking everyone and everything in the whole world. It eventually comes back to where Filburt's been standing in hope that he'll win... and he does.
- Opening Shout-Out: When Filburt spins the wheel, it goes off its hinges and starts to go on a rolling rampage of destruction, running over various scenes, including the last part of the opening sequence (where everybody's chasing Rocko), cutting off the theme song as it does so.
- Superstition Episode: In this episode, Filburt is selected to appear on a game show for a chance to win a new house. When he goes to a Chinese restaurant, he receives a fortune cookie saying "BAD LUCK AND MISFORTUNE WILL INFEST YOUR PATHETIC SOUL FOR ALL ETERNITY". The rest of the episode is centered on the poor turtle attracting a horde of black cats, walking under ladders, breaking an entire store worth of mirrors, and repeatedly receiving the same horrible fortune after opening an entire bag of fortune cookies. When he actually makes it onto the game show, his bad luck causes the giant wheel to unbolt and lay waste to half of O-Town...but then it rolls back to the studio and lands on 'WINNER'.
"Dear John" provides examples of:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Heffer suggests Rocko's bathroom-themed house party is a "baño bash" and a "johnny jamboree".
- Bookends: The incident that incites the episode's conflict is when a satellite falls on Rocko's kitchen. At the end of the episode, the satellite falls on Bucky.
- Buffy Speak: Bucky calls a hammer a "smacky hitty poundy thing".
- Crippling Overspecialization: Bucky's only specialty is building bathrooms.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "Even my bathroom's a bathroom!"
- D.I.Y. Disaster: Rocko and Heffer's attempts to fix the kitchen have them accidentally turn the kitchen into a bathroom.
- From Bad to Worse: After he and Heffer accidentally turn his kitchen into a bathroom, Rocko calls Bucky to fix it. Instead, Bucky turns the rest of the rooms in his house into bathrooms. Rocko isn't happy about it in the slightest.
- The Hyena: The contractor, who is literally a hyena.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Bucky's actually clueless when it comes to fixing things. His assistant is the one who does all the actual work.
- Laughing Mad: When the contractor sees Rocko's destroyed kitchen, he bursts into manic laughter.
- Moose and Maple Syrup: The handyman (Bucky) on "I Can Probably Fix That!" is a beaver with a thick Canadian accent.
- Shaped Like Itself: This line from Rocko when he discovers that every room in his house has been turned into a bathroom:Rocko: My living room, it's a bathroom. My closet is a bathroom. My basement is a bathroom! My ballroom is a bathroom! EVEN MY BATHROOM IS A BATHROOM! Well, I guess that's okay.
- Sound-Effect Bleep: Played with. While reading Bucky's book, Heffer reads a part about what to say when a wrench falls on your foot, only for a bunch of sounds to come out of his month. Confused, Rocko looks at the book, and sees that the sound effects are actually written on the page.
- Toilet Humor: Perhaps a literal example; when Rocko's kitchen gets destroyed by a satellite, he and Heffer follow instructions from a DIY book on how to repair it, only to turn it into a bathroom. Rocko calls upon the author's services to help out, then comes back later to discover that every room in his house has been converted into a bathroom, except of course, the bathroom itself, as it's always been that way.
- Undesirable Prize: Rocko gets on a game show in hopes of winning a new kitchen, but he wins a stainless steel spoon instead. In order to get the whole kitchen he'd have to win every game for the rest of the summer.
