LogFAQs > #970084208

#4: Wacky Delly
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Show: Rocko's Modern Life
Original airdate: January 21, 1996

"I am the Cheese! I am the best character on the show! I am better than both the salami and the bologna COMBINED!"

This episode begins as a biting satire of the animation industry, and if that's all it was it would've been a great Rocko's Modern Life episode, in which Joe Murray and his brilliant writers skewer an industry rife with corporate greed and corruption. But that's not all that Wacky Delly is. Like Homer Badman one entry ago, Wacky Delly saw into the future, and for a minute and a half in the middle of this episode, you get to see that future, and it is glorious and side-splittingly funny. The moment that the first Wacky Delly "episode" began, I was SCREAMING with laughter. Tears were coming down my face, and I was absolutely delirious from lack of oxygen. There's just something about an innocent bologna lady answering the phone, only to get immediately bashed over the head by a homicidal salami for no reason, and then, some cheese guy comes on the screen and declares that he's better than both of them COMBINED. It's the way that Mr. Lawrence delivered the word "combined" that had me hyperventilating. Why Filburt was so passionate about his cheese character I'll never know, but just the combination of Rocko, sweet as he is, just trying to do a good job for his friend, while Heffer and Filburt go utterly crazy in the background just made this episode for me, and later on, as I matured, I'd actually come to appreciate the other side of this episode and all the animation industry stuff and everything poor Ralph (who would later transition to Rachel in the excellent Static Cling special) was put through just trying to get out of his animation contract. And of course, once he starts taking Wacky Delly seriously, the show gets canceled. Because of course it does. Throw in Ed Bighead, who for some reason has a heat ray that melts the polar ice caps, and this is an absolute first ballot Hall of Fame animation episode, my favorite Nicktoon episode of all time, and a masterpiece of satire. And it predicted Youtube Poop and Adult Swim years before they both became a thing.