If it wasn’t Stimpy’s hairballs making you gag, it was the close-up still shots of characters like the fat lady from “Fire Dogs.” These hyper-detailed, unanimated sights, were another unique feature of the show often utilized to show just how ugly the world of Ren & Stimpy was. The gross humor is probably what the show is remembered for best over 20 years since its debut. There was also plenty of gross gags throughout the show. The show also delighted in poking fun at its audience by creating parody commercials for children’s products that really weren’t that far off from the real thing (I bet 90% of the viewing audience wanted some powdered toast). Violence was a staple of the program with Ren often getting irritated with Stimpy and resorting to slapping him across the face while berating him for being a “fat, bloated, eeeediot!” Even the characters would react to a situation in a violent fashion with their eyes bugging out impossibly far and their brain smashing through their skull. Whether it was by design or to keep costs down, I’m not sure, but it added a unique dimension to the show.īackgrounds weren’t always clearly defined and often used to evoke a certain emotion.Īside form the presentation aspects, The Ren & Stimpy Show differentiated itself from other programs of its day and past with its own brand of humor. The pilot, “Big House Blues,” is probably the best example of this. The backgrounds often lacked form and were more interested in surrealism. and his characters often exhibited new and interesting expressions, with Kricfalusi allegedly demanding his animators not repeat expressions in subsequent cartoons. Ren, in particular, seemed to lack a definite form as his face and body would constantly change shape to suit the scene. The Ren & Stimpy show shunned such rules. There were different rules for physics, and firearms certainly never functioned as intended, but there did seem to be clearly defined rules. Save for perhaps Marvin The Martian, most Loony Tunes shorts occurred in reality with anthropomorphic characters. Spumco’s addition to the genre was more gross-out humor, more surrealist imagery, and just out and out lunacy. Sometimes they lived in a house, sometimes a trailer, sometimes a tree, though usually they were poor and sometimes even homeless (as was the case in the pilot). There was no continuity from one short to the next allowing Ren and Stimpy to hold-down whatever kind of job fit the mood of the short, live in any part of the world, or just plain exist in a more ridiculous version of reality than the next. The two were designed to play off each other with Ren being the smart, cunning, and less conscionable one, and Stimpy the dim-witted, good-natured character. Ren & Stimpy was another take on the venerable cat and dog genre of comics and cartoons. Kricfalusi’s right-hand man, Bob Camp, remained onboard with Nickelodeon and there were some good episodes released in season 3 and beyond, but the best was definitely contained in the first two seasons. The show would last another 34 episodes after John K’s firing and would eventually be revived in the new millennium when the rights reverted back to Kricfalusi as the short-lived Adult Party Cartoon. Because of this, seasons 1 and 2 of The Ren & Stimpy Show are easily the seasons held in the highest regard by cartoon fans as they’re the only two series creator John K. was constantly fighting with the censors at Nick over the content of his show, eventually leading to his firing with Nickelodeon/Viacom still holding the rights to the characters. Beyond the format, there were numerous controversies behind the scenes as well as Spumco was slow to deliver new episodes and John K. Conceived by John Kricfalusi and his team of writers/animators at Spumco, The Ren & Stimpy show was a throwback to the days of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones when cartoons didn’t need a message or contain any sort of educational content. It’s probably safe to say that there has never been a more controversial Nickelodeon show than Ren & Stimpy.
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