What a fantastic short!
I would not have picked up on Dr. Awkward being a palindrome without the help of other reviewers, so I wanted to add some thoughts to the theme as well. Did anybody notice that the shoulder bag strap that the human/rat wears is labeled with the infinity sign? That's when it occurred to me that the character isn't being referred to box 181, it's a call to return the character to the same struggle, over and over again, for infinity - the infinity sign is in between two parallel lines on the box key.
Same DVD, same run, same message, and this snatch of time starts over again.
What I enjoy about the theme is that the cycle continues only as long as the character lets it continue.
There's some really interesting post-modern theology in this short: humanity's view of God, of time, of the "important" things in life.