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Remember two years ago? Remember the program guides we published then? Remember "Stimpy's Invention" and "Space Madness?" Remember wide sideburns, polyester leisure suits, John Travolta and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER? (Whoops, sorry, overshot.)
Remember when THE REN AND STIMPY SHOW was so good that we could actually give it a rating system in which there was no such thing a bad cartoon? Well, forget about that. There's a new crew in control, one that brings with it its own strengths and weaknesses. And while one of those strengths is that, when these people invest the effort, a Ren and Stimpy cartoon can still be pretty damn good, a definite weakness is that when these cartoons hit bottom, they really hit bottom. Given that unfortunate development, it is with regret that we go back to our standard rating system:
(OPEN STAR) Poor
(ONE STAR) Mediocre
(TWO STARS) Good
(THREE STARS) Excellent
(FOUR STARS) Must see
One further note: given the evidence now before us (see the capsule of "It's a Dog's Life" for further details), we are forced to assume that John Kricfalusi's hilarious "Man's Best Friend" is being held hostage solely due to bad blood between the network and John K. Nickelodeon, when will you free the prisoner?
"Oh, honey, there you are. I'm glad you're home, 'cause it's your turn to be mauled by the baboon."
-- the fragile balance of the suburban eco-system is maintained in "A Yard Too Far."
TWO STARS
Directed by: Bob Camp
TWO STARS
Directed by: Bob Camp
11/93
The season begins late and indifferently with two cartoons originally developed at Spumco. In "To Salve and Salve Not," Ren and Stimpy, once itinerant rubber nipple salesmen themselves, find their home under siege by an aggressive gent who seems determined to sell the pair a tin of salve. Stimpy, trusting, big-hearted jerk that he is, is ready to fold immediately. Ren though, fails to see the benefits of big, heaping gobs of salve piled on his partner's head as the perfect hair-do, or slathered on toast as a low-cholesterol jam substitute.
"A Yard Too Far," another Spumco-spawned story, has the starving duo facing a dilemma that wouldn't seem out of place in a Yogi Bear cartoon (not surprising, since the whole thing was actually based on the first Yogi episode, "Pie Pirates"): how do you gain access to a plate of yummy hog jowls when the suburban yard separating you from your goal is guarded by every homeowner's best friend, the attack baboon? In Ren and Stimpy's case, the options include stealing a few pages from the Book of Clampett and trying such gambits as disguising themselves as the beast's owner -- Ren tottering unsteadily on Stimpy's shoulders -- or luring the creature away with the ol' sexy baboon hand-puppet gag. The results are both as expected -- Ren's left hand wins a hot night in the baboon's boudoir (at least the creature has the decency to marry the puppet first) -- and not: the cartoon wraps with R&S cheerily munching away on hog jowls. Since when does a comedy of acquisition end with the protagonists actually getting what they seek?
A mixed bag to be sure, the premiere cartoons of the third season each offer their own mix of strengths and weaknesses. "To Salve and Salve Not" gets off to a good start, with Stimpy demonstrating the mighty sucking power of a vacuum whose price runs somewhere north of Arnold Schwarzenegger's annual income. Once the salve salesman appears, though, things quickly deteriorate. There's no build to the gags -- the salesman's first appearance, spewing overblown promises about his product ("How do you think George Washington fit into his party dress? It was saaaaaalve!") is no less outlandish than the last, when he pops out of a toilet to sell Ren on the proposition that salve is fabulous substitute for toilet paper. It's hardly a help that the cartoon at that point doesn't so much end as just stop, as if the animators decided that, having hit the eleven minute mark, there was nothing left to do but fade to the commercial.
Conversely, "A Yard Too Far" starts weak (the revelation of the baboon -- a variation on the old, PINK PANTHER "Does your dog bite?" gag -- is pretty fairly botched) and gets stronger as it goes along. The sequence with R&S pretending to be Mrs. Baboon Owner offers good animation in the pair flopping around in their disguise, and a nice resolution. The hand-puppet sequence is a clever variation on an old Loony Tunes gambit, taken just further to an extreme than Clampett & Co. were able to manage back in the forties (though the Termite Terrace guys no doubt would have tried if they could). Nice, vicious rendering of a baboon by Bob Camp.
"Are we clowns to you, is that it? Do we look like clowns?"
-- Joe Pesci's terrifying lines from GOODFELLAS lose a fair amount of sting when spoken by actual clowns, from "Circus Midgets"
TWO STARS
Directed by Bob Camp and Jim Gomez
ONE STAR
Directed by Bill Wray and Bob Camp
11/93
Out hitchhiking in the middle of the desert, Ren and Stimpy take on more than they can handle when a pair of bad-news "Circus Midgets" decide to take the duo for a ride in their Tardis-like clown car. It's Bonnie and Clyde meet Barnum and Bailey from that point on: our heroes are forced to dress up as clowns and participate in gas station hold-ups, highway shoot-outs, and sperm whale high-jackings. Ends with the duo, hardly chastened for their ordeal, hitching a ride with "Fire Dogs'" fire chief, the human viciously eyeing the duo as he moans, "Circussssss midgetssssss!" You can imagine the rest. This actually had a better title while still in production: "Two Midget Warning."
In "No Pants Today," Stimpy develops an irrational horror of his own nudity. Unmoved by Ren's arguments that a fur-covered cat has no need for pants, Stimpy is subsequently tormented by horrified neighbors, "Letter from Anthony's" bully Victor, and a forest-full of blue-nosed animals. Another story originally developed at Spumco, the Games folks decided to kick in an appearance by the Kricfalusi-developed, MIGHTY MOUSE bad-guy, the Cow. Too bad they didn't bother to play up the bizarreness of a society that takes moral offense at the sight of a naked animal.
The first Games-developed cartoon of the season, "Circus Midgets" features interesting, UPA-style artwork and backgrounds, but also exhibits what will become a growing, and unfortunate, trend throughout the season: the reduction of the Ren and Stimpy's roles to that of passive victims. "Having Ren and Stimpy abused by the circus midgets was not in the end as good as it could have been," said producer Jim Ballantine. "I think it was a much funnier original idea than the actual development turned out to be. Definitely they were foils instead of instigators."
"C'mon, dolls, let's go play Perquacky"
-- Surefire, beachside pick-up line, per "Ren's Pecs."
TWO STARS
Directed by Ron Hughart
THREE STARS
Directed by Jim Gomez
12/93
Tired of being persecuted by beachside bullies, Ren seeks the counsel of famed body-builder Charles Globe in "Ren's Pecs." The Chihuahua's wish for those long-coveted, "huge pectoral muscles" is granted finally via the medical miracle of chest implants, with Stimpy generously providing copious amounts of butt flab to serve as stuffing. Nicely handled by Ron Hughart, the cartoon -- originally developed as a half-hour episode at Spumco -- was trimmed to eleven minutes, losing in the process a poignant reunion for its finale and settling instead for a bitter wrap-up in which a now-prosperous Ren snubs his old buddy. Features the last, direct Kirk Douglas reference in a shot of Ren starring in a gladiator film.
Was it two years ago that Nickelodeon panicked over the ending of "Powdered Toast Man," in which the super-hero blithely incinerates the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights? Then, the network promptly and unceremoniously lopped off the offending gag. Seems they've gotten over the crisis, if "An Abe Divided" is any indication. Having heard that the head of the Lincoln Memorial contains a fabulous treasure, Ren and Stimpy first pulverize the monument, then struggle to find a suitable replacement. Vanessa Coffey claims that no protests were logged over this cartoon; I guess the sight of Lincoln's head being replaced with a flaming dumpster doesn't push anyone's hot-buttons. A funny and impertinent cartoon, with a feature that the memorial's proprietors should seriously consider: "See Abe Lincoln Pick His Nose -- 5 Cents."
"We spent hundreds of millions of hours and dollars on that film, and it was a lotta, buncha cra... a, a whole buncha cr... a lotta..."
"Of crap?"
"No! Walter Lantz! No-account sonnuva bus-driver!"
-- Caught mid-reminiscence, Wilbur Cobb delivers an impromptu tribute to an animation contemporary, from "Stimpy's Cartoon Show."
THREE STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
1/94
Fired by admiration for the work of animation great Wilbur Cobb, Stimpy resolves to make his own cartoon show. Ren's pissed off because he's been left out of the process, but Stimpy carefully weighs the Chihuahua's skills -- no aptitude in drawing, writing, or photography -- and realizes his friend would make the perfect producer. The first half of this thirty minute episode focuses on inside gags about the process of making a cartoon (maybe too inside -- at one point, producer Ren shows up dressed in Kricfalusian shirt, tie, and horn-rims), the second half concerns a screening before Stimpy's idol, Wilbur Cobb (who was first named Raymond Spum when this show was under development at Spumco, and who now carries a handle that takes-off on the name of R&S story editor, Will McRobb).
Show closes with a commercial for Flod, "the most perfect cube of fat, ever." An obvious spin-off of the old Log spoofs, it's nowhere near as funny.
"It may be a little bit inside for everybody else," said Jim Ballantine of "Stimpy's Cartoon Show." That it is, but that turns out to be a problem only during the first half, where the hardships of the humble animation artist and the cushy world of the producer are dramatized without any build to the gags. The pay-offs, fortunately, come after the commercial, when Ren and Stimpy have to endure the senile ramblings of Wilbur Cobb, a decrepit old coot (voiced by comedian Jack Carter) whose bodily appendages have an unfortunate habit of flying off in random directions. Mixing macabre sight-gags with peculiar inside references, the sequence is a sterling visualization of the dangers of unquestioning hero-worship.
The capper is the cartoon itself. "Explodey the Pup in 'I Like Pink'" features a stream-of-consciousness narrative and a visual style that could best be described as embryonic Terrytoon, and is worth everything that leads up to it. According to the show's co-boarder (along with Chris Reccardi) and layout supervisor Mike Kim, the boarding process for the film-within-the-film was rather unusual: "We gave that to one of the writers, actually: Ron Hauge. He always did these really great little pen drawings, these rough pen drawings, and we thought that would be the perfect style for a cartoon like that. That was actually the easiest stuff to layout, too, because we just took his drawings from the storyboard, blew them up, put fields on 'em, sent 'em over, and hoped for the best. There were many surprises [when the footage came back], but it was perfect. That bit of the cartoon was foolproof, because if anything turned out bad, or the animation didn't look right, it was right anyway. That was what it was about, was a bad cartoon."
"When you wish upon a side of beef,
Soon will come an end to all your grief.
But if you've been mean or kinda bad,
I will knock out all your teeth."
-- uplifting song, from "Jimminy Lummox."
TWO STARS
Directed by Ron Hughart
ONE STAR
Directed by Bob Camp
2/94
Ren just can't stop being cruel, so Stimpy lends him his "conscience," a magical lout by the name of "Jimminy Lummox." Any time Ren tries to express his natural urges -- by torturing flies, say, or larding the city reservoir with weak-bladdered beavers -- Jimminy moves in to provide aversive therapy, Tex Avery style. This boils down to a sting of the Jimminy Lummox theme, and some bit of heavy hardware dropping from out of frame to clout the Chihuahua on the noggin. Those Avery shots are funny, but the cartoon takes so long to set up -- no fewer than five sequences are used to establish Ren's depravity -- that the thing's over before it's even begun. Pretty good psychotic episode for Ren, though.
"Bass Masters" starts out as a take-off on fishing shows, and promptly loses its way. It's not just that many of the gags were old when THE FLINTSTONES were doing them, it's that the thing doesn't build to any sort of finale, plus the fact that, for no productive reason, Wilbur Cobb has been included as a stowaway. No great shakes, in any way.
Were the Nickelodeon execs especially nervous about this episode? Twice during "Jimminy Lummox" -- with the beaver gag, and again after Ren plants nitroglycerin under Stimpy's ass -- the sequence abruptly fades out, as if something's been excised. Meanwhile, the object of "Bass Masters'" quest, the foul-mouthed bass, fails to be foul-mouthed in any sense of the term. Methinks a bit too much caution was being exercised by the executive suite here.
"Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't live like a king."
-- Motto of the Interno Grande DeLuxe 3000 line of coffins, from "Ren's Retirement."
TWO STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
TWO STARS
Directed by Lynne Naylor
4/94
A six-week absence for debut episodes ends with a not-quite-triumphant return. At Ren's tenth birthday party, Stimpy makes the mistake of pointing out that his friend is actually seventy in dog years. That's all the short-tempered Chihuahua needs to hear: in seconds his skin sallows, his ear-hair grows, and liver spots bloom across his body. It isn't long before the once spry Ren is getting winded on the golf course and going price-shopping for coffins. A decently handled episode, with some good gags, the thing seriously loses its way at the end, when a funeral sequence and Ren's premature burial fail to come to any dynamic conclusion.
Is it me, or is Wilbur Cobb, who here delivers a truncated eulogy at Ren's funeral, becoming just a bit tedious?
"Ren's Retirement" stretches across the commercial break, but is actually not long enough to constitute a full, half-hour episode. The rest of the time is taken up with two bumpers. One, a mock-ad for a truly disgusting product, "Dog Water" (saliva, not that other stuff), introduces the next unfortunate trend in the series: bumpers extended to lengths far longer than their concepts can support (a tedious two minutes in this case). The other bumper, Lynne Naylor's "You Are What You Eat," also starts off as an ad spoof, but becomes something stranger, as Billy the Beef Tallow Boy fries every household object in sight and stuffs them down Dad's all-too-willing gullet, all to a jazzy theme song. The unique artwork and bouncy tone make this an interesting cartoon in and of itself. It's just not REN AND STIMPY.
"Look, man, I'm warnin' ya: I saw this kind of thing in the sixties. You could go insane, or worse!"
-- Haight survivor Ren warning Stimpy about the dangers of playing with one's own belly button, from "Jerry, the Belly Button Elf."
OPEN CIRCLE
Directed by Ron Hughart
NO STARS
Directed by Howard E. Baker (Who?!)
4/94
This is the REN AND STIMPY show that they run in Hell's waiting room. In "Jerry the Belly Button Elf," Stimpy fails to heed Ren's warning about the dangers of auto-naval-eroticism, and ends up being sucked into a neo-sixties realm where he becomes slave to Jerry the Belly Button Elf. Aside from an interesting musical interlude that has the rock group Masters of Reality waxing Morrisonian to the song Climb into My Belly Button World, this is a total waste, with neither a genuine laugh nor a coherent idea evident throughout its entire length. Jerry Lewis was originally tapped for the role of the elf. He wisely backed down and Gilbert Gottfried was unfortunate enough to have his unique talents wasted in the part.
There's absolutely no difference between "Road Apples" and "The Big Baby Scam," except for "Road Apples'" total lack of wit, intelligence, skilled writing or deft animation. Ren and Stimpy here manage to get themselves aboard an RV piloted by "Scam's" suburban couple, and whatever comic potential was inherent in the idea is instead squandered with endless, unfunny gags about blood-sucking sand snails and skunk milk. About the best that producer Jim Ballantine could say of this entry was that it was "well timed." Timing, Jim, should have been the least of your worries with this cartoon.
Oh, and Wilbur Cobb shows up... again. Look, the guy was funny enough in "Stimpy's Cartoon Show," where his senile ramblings were used to make a point. Ever since, he's become a tedious annoyance, a character who appears to be tossed in whenever the writers can't think of anything else to do. "I think Mr. Cobb has been played out," said Ballantine when asked about the character's future. "I think we'll probably try to invent something new."
P.S.: Cobb shows up in at least three, fourth season cartoons.
"It's yer turn ta do the cryin', yer weasely rat-baggers."
-- Or something like that; the Scotsman's suitably incoherent oath of vengeance, from "Hard Times for Haggis"
#
ONE STAR
Directed by Chris Reccardi
4/94
#
Where are Ren and Stimpy? They're barely present in this episode, which actually focuses on the hardships endured by one Haggis MacHaggis, TV star and the man promptly ruined when his show is canceled in favor of R&S episodes. No doubt about it: this is one beautiful cartoon. Reccardi tends to favor a flatter, more angular drawing style, but it's an attractive look, nicely accented by good backgrounds and a bold color palette. Too bad events are so sketchily traced out that we're never sure whether Haggis should be reviled or pitied. Part of the problem seems to stem from a bit of network-imposed restraint: the idea of a show called THE SCOTSMAN BEATS HIS DOG holds all kinds of potential, but when it comes to the payoff what we see on the screen is the guy giving his pet a single, inconsequential clunk on the head. It certainly doesn't explain numerous shots of the dog cowering at his master's feet at home, or the pet's violent quest for revenge later on in the episode. MacHaggis, by the way, is voiced by Alan Young. Between his work on THE TIME MACHINE, DUCK TALES, and this show, the guy is vying with James Doohan for the title of genre media's most beloved Scotsman.
The bold coloring of "Hard Times for Haggis" can be credited to a digitized ink-and-paint system employed for the episode. "That was actually digitally inked and painted here in town by USAnimation," said Ballantine. "It was, I think, very successful. We'd worked with them before on a couple of other shows -- it gives the director a chance to go down and have a lot of control, as opposed to just receiving the film from overseas. He had a lot to say about how things were composited and how the colors match up; actually go in and color-key the backgrounds and do a lot of work in that process."
Because of overwhelming, public demand, the Dog Water commercial is repeated in this episode. Ewwwwwwwww.
"Eh, so what?"
-- Indifferent Ren's stock response to the events of "Ren's Bitter Half."
TWO STARS
Directed by Ron Hughart
FOUR STARS
Directed by Michael Kim
6/94
Yeah, Ren and Stimpy are at the mercy of a trio of punkish Barrette Baret Girl Scouts in "Eat My Cookies," but at least the gags are good enough that the victimization loses most of its sting. All the standard campsite humiliations are covered: hawking cookies in the Mojave desert, hunting for snipes (Stimpy finds one!), striving for progressively more meaningless achievement badges. Rosie O'Donnell (who's obviously overworking her agent) shows up as head Barrette Baret Girl. Even the ending is funny -- what took 'em so long?
All involved deny that "Ren's Bitter Half" was Games' attempt to prove they could do "Stimpy's Invention." Still, there's a killer transformation scene, beautiful artwork, and Ren again at the mercy of science as his inadvertent toying with Stimpy's genetic engineering set clones him into Evil Ren and Indifferent Ren. Mike Kim pulls the stops out, models two radically different looks for the cloned Chihuahua, and manages a clever send-up of old anti-Nazi propaganda cartoons as Evil Ren unveils his plan for worldwide conquest. Starting strong and building to a superb finish, "Ren's Bitter Half" isn't quite "Stimpy's Invention" -- it doesn't have anything as sublime as the notion of someone being driven to insanity by a surfeit of joy -- but it's an impressive cartoon, nonetheless.
Rough Draft Korea outdid themselves on "Ren's Bitter Half," delivering fine animation. Determined to keep as much control over the film as possible, director Mike Kim laid most of the episode out himself. "The way I did the layouts, it was so limited," he explained. "It was a layout show; basically I did all the posing I could possibly do, so it didn't leave anything up to the animators overseas. That's the only way I know how to keep the quality of the show: provide them with as much information as possible, so what they do is in-between between my poses. That seems to really keep the quality of the drawings up."
"Our kidneys quiver in anticipation!"
-- Ren can barely contain himself (but let's hope he tries) as he observes the approach of the majestic lummox, from "Lair of the Lummox."
FOUR STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
7/94
"Lair of the Lummox" was originally developed by Spumco for the close of the second season (and is further held-up by a near two-month gap in third season debuts). What caused the delay is unclear, but it definitely was worth the wait. Formatted as an episode of "Untamed World" -- the nature show that previously revealed the existence of the rare crocostimpy -- "Lummox" takes a page from GORILLAS IN THE MIST while exploring the habits of everyone's favorite, all-Amurrican lout. Camp handles Jim Smith's boards marvelously -- standout moments include Ren and Stimpy gaining the trust of the wily Booger Red lummox by mimicking its actions, and a rivalry between two males for mating rights to the sole lummox cow. The season ends early (short three episodes), but on a strong note.
The main cartoon, which plays across the commercial break, is bookended by two mock ads. The problem with the opening ad for Chalky Cheese Fist is simple: it's too damn long for its not-especially-strong concept (the thing goes on (and on, and on) for at least three minutes!). The closing ad, for Colonel Backwash's Chicken in a Drawer restaurants, is also too long, but it works its gags much better, and manages a successful bit of black humor as the cadaver of Colonel Backwash repeatedly shows up in the most unappealing of places (including on the griddle). Very good animation by Toon-Us-In, a consortia of former Games animators.
"Now that I'm finally alone, I'm going to do all the things I've always wanted to do. Like writing that novel, clip my toenails, build a gelding gin..."
-- "Hermit Ren" has big plans.
OPEN STAR
Directed by Chris Reccardi
OPEN STAR
Directed by Bob Camp
10/94
Driven to the edge by Stimpy's idiocies, Ren opts for a life of solitude and contemplation in "Hermit Ren." Prior to this, the season openers could hardly be called strong entries, but this one comes very close to touching bottom. Starts well with the details of Ren's deteriorating home-life, but immediately goes south once Ren gets sealed in his cave. Instead of "Space Madness II," we get the usual, endless gags about bodily effluences (bat guano chief amongst them) and a psychotic episode so completely botched that it serves to underline what was lost when John K was fired. Even a truly inspired notion, Ren hallucinating a card game between himself and the fracturing portions of his psyche, is ruined and discarded before it's barely begun. No wonder Reccardi abandoned the characters after this.
"Hermit Ren" runs over the commercial break, but is not long enough to fill the half-hour. The untitled "Field Guide" takes up the rest of the time. It's another "Untamed World" segment, this time with Stimpy going solo to track the "Wily Tree Geezer." The set-up's essentially the same as "Lair of the Lummox," but the gags have a sour aftertaste to them -- the lummoxes, for all of their oafishness, were still pretty lovable; that cannot be said for the old fogies sighted here (including (ugh) Wilbur Cobb). Most unsettling: ends with a shot of Stimpy practicing taxidermy on Ren's carcass. I'm usually the first to take the get-a-life approach to those who become too involved in television "reality," but I can't put this any other way: STIMPY WOULD NEVER DO THIS!! What was Camp thinking of?
"That toilet seat is colder than a well-digger's chicken!"
-- What? From "House of Next Tuesday."
TWO STARS
Directed by Ron Hughart
NO STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
10/94
Ren and Stimpy get a free, ten-day trial in the "House of Next Tuesday," and live to regret it. Lots of good spot-gags here -- though the demonstration of the Jerky 2000 runs a bit long (and doesn't need Stimpy reading out-loud every legend displayed on the computer monitor), the bits with the bathroom of the future and a virtual reality helmet are much more successful. By the way, the title references a Tex Avery series of cartoons, while the set-up of two goofs at the mercy of tomorrow's technology suggests Chuck Jones (the visit by a coat-rack-like robot salesman is a tip-off), and the whole thing seems to have been inspired by the Experimental Prototype Community of Next Tuesday from John Kricfalusi's projected RIPPING FRIENDS project.
In "A Friend in Your Face," Stimpy's brain is infected with a friendly head parasite, who immediately invites his hillbilly (they have yet to discover white trash in the R&S universe) cousin into the "vacant apartment" in Ren's head next door. You're at a disadvantage building a plot around head parasites to begin with, but there were things that could have been done with this set-up to make it work (how about if the two parasites start controlling R&S in opposition to their normal habits, for starters?). Unfortunately, what we get is more footage of Ren suffering as victim and, yes, even more shit jokes. Sample dialogue: "Ren, is that steer manure cologne you're wearing?" Yeah, while we're on the subject, please excuse me while I go pray to the great porcelain god, thank you.
"Nature can be cruel, but I can be crueler."
-- Ren's ecologically incorrect thought for the day, from "Lumber Jerks."
TWO STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
ONE STAR
Directed by Bob Camp and Bill Wray
10/94
Stimpy starts acting even weirder than usual, so Ren takes him to ultra-genius infant Dr. Brainchild for treatment in "Blazing Entrails." The upshot is a sort of inverse FANTASTIC VOYAGE, with the Stimpster inflated to gargantuan size and Ren traveling the ol' colon road up to the cat's noggin (and for once, things aren't as disgusting as they could be). More conceptually interesting than out-and-out funny, the cartoon does have some neat moments, such as Ren enduring heckles from an ear of corn and a Lincoln-head penny jealous over the Chihuahua's ability to be digested. Camp, however, misses out on a good bet by not devoting more time to Dr. Brainchild, the highly-intelligent, generally benevolent, mutant infant twisting spastically at the end of a butt-mounted unicycle (whose name just so happens to be that of a character originally developed for John Kricfalusi's proposed YOUR GANG series, and who is voiced by Bill Mumy). If the character sounds exceedingly weird, he is -- enough so that he probably should have been introduced with his own episode, rather than being thrown in as a supporting player in an already overcrowded story.
In "Lumber Jerks," Ren and Stimpy try to become -- guess what? -- lumberjacks. The rest of the episode is about as predictable as that punning title -- it's not bad, understand, just not special in any way. Best moment comes at the beginning, with a few glimpses of Fifi, the pumped-up, female lumberjack. The series manages to strike a sort of balance with Stimpy's Larry Fine-like voice by introducing a dread tree lobster who happens to sound like Moe Howard.
P.S.: Near the end of "Blazing Entrails," Ren witnesses an altercation between rival organs and shouts, "Hey, you big dope, let go of that little dope." Maybe Camp thinks no one watching has seen a movie made before 1977. Me, I think Groucho's line from NIGHT AT THE OPERA, "Hey, you big bully, let go of that little bully," was funnier.
"Congratulations! You needn't suffer from non-productive loins any longer, for it is we who are your children. Well, when do we eat?"
-- Ren displays a characteristic set of priorities, from "Farm Hands."
ONE STAR
Directed by Bob Camp
TWO STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
11/94
Nickelodeon seems to be backing off of Wilbur Cobb the way Newt Gingrich is backing off the Democrats. Cobb narrates "Prehistoric Stimpy," a set of spot-gags in which Ren and Stimpy have little to do but sit and listen to the old wind-bag yammer. There are a few tentative stabs at Rites of Spring-like satire, but the thing bogs down midway through with an extended gag centering on the myriad theories forwarded to explain how dinosaurs became extinct. Just plain dull.
Abner and Ewalt, last seen in the second season's "Out West," turn up again in "Farm Hands" as farmers seeking to round up some young 'uns to do the chores for them. A package of dehydrated offspring spits up, of course, Ren and Stimpy, who find themselves impressed into such duties as cleaning out the horse litter and milking the gorilla. Aside from the opening, which doesn't do much more than repeat gags from "Out West," this is a fairly clever outing. Even the gross-out gags exhibit a bit more invention than we've been seeing of late.
"Thou dost possess a great wealth of ignorance."
-- The man-eating Village Idiot heaps high praise upon humble peasant Stimpleton, in "Magical Golden Singing Cheeses."
OPEN CIRCLE
Directed by Michael Kim
TWO STARS
Directed by Chris Reccardi
11/94
Michael Kim's second directing outing for the show comes nowhere near the quality of his debut, "Ren's Bitter Half." Actually, the most interesting thing about "Magical Golden Singing Cheeses" -- a sort-of take-off on Jack and the Beanstalk, but actually not -- is the fact that this story was originally rejected as a first-season entry for "Stimpy's Storybook Land." In giving it a new, fourth-season life, someone decided to leave off the framing device that shows Stimpy trying to lull himself to sleep by making up his own fairy-tale. Without that wrap-around to establish that this is literally "a tale told by an idiot," what's left is eleven minutes of near-incoherence.
"A Hard Days [sic] Luck" is also a fairy tale, but somewhat more successful. "Chris Reccardi is allowed to go his own way," layout supervisor Steve Loter told us, and that direction seems to be away from Ren and Stimpy. This episode stars Haggis MacHaggis in a quest to win a full head of hair from an obstinate leprechaun. R&S show up nowhere in the scenario, but Reccardi introduces a new style of storytelling to the show -- it's lighter, not quite as brutal. If one were of a mind, it would, in fact, be very tempting to call the whole exercise... cute. That's not as bad as it sounds, since the director seems much more comfortable with this approach than he has with anything else. Maybe Nick should just give in and let the guy cut loose on his own show.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice the stuffing on your collar at night? The drippings on the carpet? The gravy on the couch?"
-- Ren suspects Stimpy is getting a little on the side(dish), in "I Love Chicken."
THREE STARS
Directed by Ron Hughart
TWO STARS
Directed by Chris Reccardi
11/94
A season that could otherwise be charitably called lackluster gets a significant boost from "I Love Chicken," a love triangle in which one of the participants is just two steps away from being a main course. Ren wants chicken for dinner, but Stimpy's fallen in love with the carcass, tumbling so hard that he allows the denuded bird to cart him off to Vegas for a quickie wedding. The rest of the cartoon is a war of wills, as Ren, overwhelmed by both jealousy and hunger, tries to get Stimpy's beloved away long enough to fix a yummy repast. Nicely conceived and developed, this is the closest anyone's come to the true Ren and Stimpy spirit all season.
In "Powdered Toast Man vs[stet] Waffle Woman," the super-hero in briefs faces off against Vicki Velcro, embittered waffle magnate turned batter-encrusted super-villain. Again, Chris Reccardi forsakes R&S, but does well with the super-hero histrionics, letting his combatants decimate the Earth with flying butter-pats and irradiated strawberries. An okay "B" cartoon.
"He's a pinata, you eediot."
-- Ren, reminding Stimpy that the freeze-dried pet he's trying to make friends with is not going to respond, from "It's a Dog's Life."
STARS WITHHELD
Directed by Ken Bruce
TWO STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
12/94
In "It's a Dog's Life," Ren and Stimpy are adopted by an ostensibly loving master, only to discover that their new owner has some very specific, and very strange, ideas about obedience. Does this sound familiar? Don't be surprised if it doesn't -- it's the set-up for "Man's Best Friend," the only Ren and Stimpy cartoon to be withheld from airing (and the one that allegedly served as significant motivation for John Kricfalusi's firing). With the broadcast of "Dog's Life," Nickelodeon has pretty much declared that the only reason for "Best Friend's" absence is pure spite. After all, for all his threats, the owner in "Best Friend", George Liquor, never actually harmed Ren and Stimpy, and frequently bore the brunt of the gags himself. By comparison, "Dog's Life's" old biddy of an owner deliberately breaks R&S' wrists, scares them half to death by forcing them to sleep in a cemetery, and in the end has them killed and freeze dried. Vanessa Coffey, do you still want us to believe that "Man's Best Friend" can't be aired because it's too cruel? Well and good, but for serving up this rehash while suppressing the far superior original, we've decided to abstain from passing out a rating.
A more successful fairy-tale than "Magical Golden Singing Cheeses," "Egg Yolkeo" takes-off effectively on PINOCCHIO, with Renwaldo and his friend Stimpleton sculpting a son out of scrambled egg and teaching him all the tricks of being a real boy, like eating with a spoon and driving a car. Strong start, but loses a bit of momentum when Egg Yolkeo falls under the influence of a delinquent bacon strip and his white-toast companion. Even though it winds up with virtually the same ending as "I Love Chicken," we're just grateful at this point for a cartoon that doesn't make us physically wince. The concept of the Egg Yolkeo character is practically indistinguishable from Pulpy, a similar egg-yolk creature developed by John K. in 1979.
"Somebody get a plastic bag!"
-- The bus driver displays his keen grasp of first aid techniques after running over Ren and Stimpy, from "Double Header."
THREE STARS
Directed by Michael Kim
ONE STAR
Directed by Bob Camp
1/95
The return from Christmas re-runs explores both extremes of quality. Director Kim recovers handsomely from "Magical Golden Singing Cheeses" with "Double Header," a manic satire that takes its cue from THE THING WITH TWO HEADS, with dashes of NIGHTMARE ALLEY thrown in for kicks. R&S get run over by a bus -- the non-stop kind to Ursa Minor that Ren wants to pack Stimpy onto with a one-way ticket -- and wind up victims of miracle surgery: Chihuahua and cat grafted permanently together. It's no surprise that Stimpy then becomes the bane of Ren's life: promptly losing the Chihuahua his top-secret job at the defense factory, and leaving them with no choice but to become the world's only hairball-spewing, siamese geeks at the local carnival. What is pleasantly surprising is the deft handling of the material by Kim, who not only samples concepts from multiple sources (although he somehow misses the "We accept you, one of us" take from FREAKS -- maybe he thinks that's Matt Groening's property), but also manages to tie the episode together with several callbacks to the cartoon's beginning, a stylistic trope that seems to have been otherwise lost in the transition from Spumco to Games.
After a two-year hiatus, space explorers Commander Hoek and Cadet Stimpy return in "The Scotsman in Space," and provide ample reason why they should disappear for another couple of years. The duo encounter Haggis MacHaggis floating in space, and treat him to the full, first-contact repertoire: the universal translator, culinary exchange, and, of course, dissection. We're left with two impressions: Camp should leave the psycho-drama to John K. -- his direct lift of sections of "Space Madness" is nowhere near as artful in its animation, writing, or pacing -- and should leave Haggis MacHaggis to Chris Reccardi, whose artwork is precise enough to give the character some snap. Those universal translators are funny, though.
"Yes, I accept you. I even love you. Because you are a part of me, an extension of myself."
-- The Big Kahuna is tremendously impressed with Stimpy's plea for help, from "Aloha Hoek."
ONE STAR
Directed by Ron Hughart
OPEN CIRCLE
Directed by Bill Wray
1/95
Maybe the Gamesians should replace their coffee-maker with a Geritol dispenser -- seems everyone is suffering from a severe case of iron-poor blood if these two, wan cartoons are any indication. PIXIE KING is a fairy tale in which blue-collar worker elf Ren seeks to elevate himself to the position of Pixie King, with the help of buddy Stimpy. The scenes of elves cheerily kissing the dewdrops then expiring are pretty funny, but then comes the gags about scraping pollen off bees' butts, the gags about mining snot from giants' noses, the inevitable walk-on by Wilbur Cobb, yadda-yadda-yadda, blah-blah-blah. Major innovation: the framing device has Ren reading Stimpy a fairytale so the cat can use the litter box. Guess they thought anything was better than recycling the "Stimpy Storybook Land" wrap-around. The tale's ending is especially gross.
It would be nice to say that Bill Wray has come into his own with his first solo directing effort. Sadly, ALOHA HOEK turns out to be no cause for celebration. Ren and Stimpy are castaways on a desert island, the Chihuahua taking up householding in a decaying whale carcass, the cat being adopted by the Marlon Brando-like Big Kahuna (the one, clever notion in the entire cartoon). Forget about story development; this messy little cartoon starts bad and lunges towards the disastrous by the time a trio of crabs enter the carcass and start playing "Who's been sleeping in my guts" with Ren. The only thing really worth mentioning is that -- if we can go by the poses Wray uses for Ren's tantrums -- the director must be a big fan of Peter Bagge's Hate comics. The ending was funnier when it was used in "Eat My Cookies."
#
TWO STARS
Directed by Steve Loter
ONE STAR
Directed by Bill Wray
1/95
Layout supervisor Steve Loter has previously done uncreditted co-directing work on some of Bob Camp's titles. In INSOMNIAC REN, he gets his first solo directing opportunity, and pulls off his debut quite well. You can guess the set-up from the title: Ren's having trouble getting to sleep, and Stimpy's efforts to help his friend only make the situation worse. The best stuff comes in the cartoon's opening minutes, as Loter is detailing the tortures Ren endures while trying to get some shut-eye. Once the cat rouses and starts proposing remedies, though, the quality of the humor takes a significant dip. Still, this has some great moments in it (high point is a peek into Stimpy's strangely maternal dreamworld), and the best punchline in the whole series. A promising debut.
Bill Wray, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be acquiring any more taste for the director's chair. "My Shiny Friend," his second helming effort, has a great set-up: Stimpy's hooked on TV, and it's up to Ren to try to break him of the habit. It's a couch-potato re-write of THE LOST WEEKEND from that point on, but Wray doesn't seem able to get a grip on his material -- there's a lot going on in the span of eleven minutes, yet nothing manages to grab hold emotionally. The artwork is great, but that's about all that's left in this hollow effort.
"Abandon pig!"
-- Ren and Stimpy, foundering upon the moat of baked beans that surrounds Canada, take a fateful step; from WEINER BARONS.
OPEN CIRCLE
Directed by Kirk Field
TWO STARS
Directed by Bob Camp
2/95
Two cartoons attempting essentially the same satirical approach demonstrate both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Games crew. "Cheese Rush Days" casts R&S as a pair of prospectors enduring hardships as they struggle for wealth in the depths of a bleu cheese mine. We've hit the depths of the Games predilection towards silliness for silliness' sake: gags in which cheese substitutes for gold are funny for about ten seconds, and then become verrry tedious. Add in repeated buffalo chip jokes and an attack by a tribe of renegade French chefs (the fact that no Native Americans were offended by the characterization is, of course, just coincidence), and you've got as persuasive an argument against free-form story development as you're going to see on TV.
In "Weiner Barons," Ren and Stimpy hear of the fortunes to be made in the burgeoning Canadian weiner markets, and attempt to claim some of that wealth for themselves. A silly idea again, but Bob Camp manages to spin the concept into a wealth of nicely inventive gags, filling every inch of the frame with weiner puns and surrounding Canada with a moat of baked beans (since only pork-fat floats on such a substance, R&S attempt a crossing in a hollowed-out pig). Not a break-out cartoon by any stretch, but solid work nevertheless.
Bad programming error: Nickelodeon fills in the extra time at the end of the show with a repeat of the Happy Happy, Joy Joy sequence from "Stimpy's Invention." Seeing some of the first season's work after looking at what the show has devolved into is like giving someone living on a diet of oatmeal one bite of filet mignon. Cruelty indeed.
"Gentlemen, start your embolisms."
-- Anarchist Ren, exorting his looney-bin companions to revel in their dementia; from REN NEEDS HELP.
OPEN CIRCLE
Directed by Craig Bartlett
ONE STAR
Directed by Bob Camp
3/95
A month's hiatus (at least partially unplanned, since one scheduled episode was unexpectedly replaced by a "special" repeat of ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?) doesn't seem to have done much good. Thirty minutes, two cartoons, and not a single laugh in all that time. GALOOT WRANGLERS is Craig Bartlett's debut on R&S -- he's better known for his clay animated work on Pee-Wee Herman's PENNY cartoons and his own ARNOLD series (which is now being spun-off into a Nickelodeon show). There's not much he can do with this undistinguished effort, another episode where R&S take back-seat to Wilbur Cobb as he narrates the history of the lummox in the Wild West. It's a fall-of-the-buffalo sort of thing, and pretty tedious at that; the best part is a shot of voluptuous, Viking females riding their galoots off the boat. God, I wish the Games guys would stay off the prairie.
REN NEEDS HELP has an interesting idea: the Chihuahua goes totally nuts and gets carted off to the Shady Brain Farm for some less-than-productive group therapy and electro-shock treatment. Bob Camp handles psychosis a little better here than in SCOTSMAN IN SPACE, but he's still got a way to go before he can match John K. Best for the group therapy session in which characters from the R&S stock company exhibit some VERY weird personality tics, and for its strange, creepy ending.
In interview, Steve Loter stated that he would be credited with the direction of "Ren Needs Help." According to Nickelodeon, the schedule was changed and Bob Camp took over on the episode, while Loter went on to "Space Dogged."
OPEN CIRCLE
Directed by Bob Camp
OPEN CIRCLE
Directed by Arthur Filloy
Wanna know why the show's been canceled? Watch this episode. Even the functional titles are beginning to look less like the fruit of post-modernist thinking and more like the work of people who just don't give a damn anymore. Almost a half-century ago, Tex Avery created BAD-LUCK BLACKY and managed in its few short minutes to torture its unfortunate protagonist with an astounding variety of misfortunes. The most "Superstitious Stimpy" can scrape together in its eleven minute span is to have Ren struck twice by lightning. This is cutting edge? At least in "Travelogue" there's a tantalizing moment when it appears director Filloy is going to capitalize on a genuine idea: showing R&S trying to do a bland, touristy documentary while their subjects exhibit overt hostility toward the duo. He loses the momentum almost immediately, though, and it's back to poached monkey-brains and pointless Elvis jokes for the duration of the episode. Where's this show going? Are even kids being entertained by this stuff? (Maybe not -- anecdotal research indicates that most kids have abandoned the show in frustration.)
And the fun's just begun! (Yeah, right.) Here are the episodes that will run after our deadline, as listed and described on the Internet by Games staffers.
Directed by Steve Loter
Real-life haggling with Sinatra's lawyers delayed this cartoon, in which Stimpy becomes "Snotra" and wows the world with his renditions of songs composed and arranged by Shawn Patterson. Voice actor Billy West wrote this one, though the concept has at least a superficial resemblance to Spumco's unproduced "Cellulettes" concept.
Directed by Tom McGrath
This cartoon was kicked back and forth between McGrath and Bob Camp. It ended up in McGrath's yard, who will receive the credit. Laid out mostly overseas.
A non-Games episode farmed out to an independent producer.
Directed by Craig Bartlett
Laid out mostly overseas. Rumors hold that Bartlett was in production on this when informed that the Reverend was a thinly-veiled take-off on John Kricfalusi. As if that wasn't enough, the character's name was lifted from a non-liturgical creation that John K. had dreamed up back in the seventies.
Directed by Craig Bartlett and Tom Owens
Billy West does Jack Palance in an episode boarded by Mike Kim.
Directed by Ken Bruce
Ohio's newest export? Storyboards. This episode was boarded by Character Builders, an independent company located in a state better known for truck parts and cinnamon-laced chili.
Directed by Steve Loter
Phil Hartman guest-voices.
Directed by Ron Hughart
The return of Abner and Ewalt. Spumco had proposed a "Hillbilly Ren" for the second season -- guest-starring George Liquor and featuring feudin' and courtin' and a shot-gun wedding -- but dropped the title when Nickelodeon restrictions sucked most of the humor out of it. Hard to say whether the Game's effort will bear any resemblance to its unproduced predecessor; hillbilly gags are pretty-much a cartoon staple.
Directed by Ken Bruce
The ROCKO gang want in, too. Two of them boarded the original version of this; Tom McGrath subsequently re-worked it.
Non-Games episode farmed out to an independent producer.
Non-Games episode farmed out to an independent producer.
Directed by Bill Wray
LIVING COLOR's Tommy Davidson guest-voices.
Non-Games episode farmed out to an independent producer.
Non-Games episode farmed out to an independent producer.
Directed by Steve Loter
The circus midgets return! (Phil Hartman voices.) Loter re-worked a board out of Ohio's Character Builders.
Directed by Bob Camp
Directed by Steve Loter
Another re-working by Loter of a Character Builders' board. All lay-out and animation will be done in Australia, likely by Mr. Big.
Directed by Chris Reccardi
Stimpy's playing mad scientist again, this time removing Ren's gray matter and plopping it into a bell-jar. Not surprisingly, the lunk-headed cat finds his friend far more agreeable in his new condition. This story has been knocking around since the second season, when it was created by John K. and Rich Pursel, and marks Chris Reccardi's return to the show's title characters.
Directed by Tom McGrath
Directed by Mike Kim
Orginal title: "Twist of Chemistry."
Directed by Ken Bruce
The very last R&S bumper.
Directed by Bob Camp.
The R&S Christmas special. A half-hour episode that obviously has more than a kissing acquaintance with the "Yak-Shaving Day" bumper from the first season.
At deadline, THE REN AND STIMPY SHOW's fourth season was more than halfway through its ambitious, twenty-episode schedule. At this point, the third season had more than its share of decently-handled cartoons, and a couple of bona-fide standouts. By comparison, the fourth has mostly logged wan knock-offs of concepts better handled in the first and second seasons, and original concepts that were better-off not attempted at all.
Can we say it now? This is not the REN AND STIMPY that fans remember from the first and second seasons. Though the Games folk struggle mightily, they all too often fail either to match the brilliance of the original cartoons, or come up with suitable substitutes. Lack of talent isn't the problem -- we suspect that, if given their heads on their own (ideally more adult) material, Camp and cohorts would create something as bracing and radical as REN AND STIMPY used to be. Here, they're forced to work a concept that no one seems fully comfortable with. In two years, Nick has succeeded in taking a show that many expected to become heir to the Looney Tunes mantle, and turned it into a repetitive mess. Congrats, guys, and best of luck. I'm outa here.
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