Ren and Stimpy Discussion

[Mr. Trampopoline]

I must be one of the few people on the Internet that likes a fair amount of Games episodes. Yes, there's some truly awful ones ("Cheese Rush Days" for example), and the animation at times was pretty ugly, but it all wasn't that horrible.

[jordan]

I can't remember any that I liked, but they all made me feel so awful. Just in principle, it felt terrible to watch them. Seeing somebody's babies be raped like that.

[Dark Homer]

the only difference i noticed as a kid was that weird old guy being in like all of them

[jordan]

If it wasn't for an incredibly passionate and intense article in a Cartoon magazine I had read, I'm not sure how fast I would have picked up on things being different. Even before reading the article I instantly could tell Ren's voice was awful, and things weren't really hitting me anymore.

[Walter Pembroke the Third]

the only difference i noticed as a kid was that weird old guy being in like all of them

[jordan]

Bleh, yeah.

For anyone who thinks John K does gross stuff in his cartoons, they can not possibly compare with the putrid disgusting shit that happened in all the Games episodes of Ren and Stimpy. Blood and maggots and bones and a lot of really morbid, awful stuff.

John K maintains that the gross out stuff in his episodes were basically kid-friendly - stuff kids find funny (boogers, etc.) Not like horror movie stuff like Games constantly did.

[Walter Pembroke the Third]

Agreed.

However, John having Ren go insane was worse than Games having Ren go insane simply because in the Spumco era Ren was likable and you actually CARED about him. You didn't want to see him have a mental breakdown. In the Games episode "Ren Needs Help!", though, you cheered when Ren was going to commit suicide.

And by "you" I mean "I".

[jordan]

Yeah basically what John K goes on about in the commentary is that Ren has to go insane for a reason. He needs to be driven to it because of extreme stress, and you have to care about the situation. You have to see him go through all these awful things so that when he snaps you feel it.

In the Games episodes he's just a psychopath for no reason whatsoever and it feels completely like pandering to what Nick thought people loved about the show. It's just amazing how they got everything wrong.

[Walter Pembroke the Third]

Having a mentally ill father, I can relate to what happens to Ren. Games ruined the best thing about his character.

[iambobdole1]

It was a great show until Nickelodeon wrecked it. That being said, there were a couple of episodes in the post John K. era that weren't completely horrible.

"Space Madness" is probably my all time favourite.

[tristar]

Ren & Stimpy is really good, it had the best animation on TV during the 90s.

I prefer the original Spumco episodes (seasons 1-2), but I really like season 3, even though it gets lots of criticism.

My favourite episodes from the original series are "Big House Blues", "Space Madness", "Stimpy's Invention", "Fire Dogs", "Man's Best Friend", "Powdered Toast Man", "Sven Hoek" (my no. 1), "Son of Stimpy", "Stimpy's Fan Club", "A Visit To Anthony", and "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen".

As for APC, I've only seen "Ren Seeks Help", and I really liked it even though there were some things I didn't. However, I'm not going anywhere near the other APC episodes, I hear they're horrible.

[jordan]

There are lots of justifiable criticisms to be sure, but they still kind of blew my mind. Try em out. I especially love Fire Dogs 2.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

So I watched a few of these on Netflix streaming. They were pretty okay.

[Lance.Uppercut]

I grew up with the show although, looking back at how gruesome and emotionally intense some of the scenes of anger are (the final scene in "Sven Hoek" still gives me the willies), I'm surprised I was allowed to watch it. Heck; my parents liked the "Happy Happy Joy Joy" song. I look back at the animation and find how surprisingly smooth and expressive the characters' movement is. That's perhaps the most lasting factor for me these days as opposed to the gags, which had more of an impact on me when I was a child. Many episodes from the classic era remain freshly imprinted in my memory, and the show's whole irreverence gave it a strange aura unlike other animated programming at the time.

Not all the episodes from Games are bad; they're a bit more sitcommy and the animation is a bit more typical of 90's schlock, but I still laugh at "Salve or Salve Not", "Eat My Cookies", "I Love Chicken" and some others. The episodes focusing on secondary characters like Haggis McHaggis or the ones with extensive cameos of that old man (Cobb?) just came off as awkward to me. The Games episodes take a very different turn, thematically and stylistically, but it's not completely for naught. However, I can only imagine how it feels to lose creative control over characters one has created; John K. had a right to be bitter.

Adult Party Cartoon is... all over the place. I was excited about the show, as I thought it would be a return to form; however, what I saw was likely what John K. would have liked to see in his original product all along. While the animation in Adult Party Cartoon had never been better - meticulous, detailed and highly expressive - the jokes seemed to go way too far, some episodes ran too long on premises too thin and... ugh... the sex jokes. I cringe thinking about them.

Oh, the "Ren and Stimpy are a couple" jokes. It's a new interpretation of my old favorites (a perfectly safe and fair one, as the original creator was back at the helm), but it didn't settle with me. John K.'s new Ren voice sounds too much like Peter Lorre, and, while it takes a whlie, Eric Bauza ends up doing a fair imitation of Stimpy.

The only episode I'd recommend out of the few I've seen is "Ren Seeks Help", an episode which functions not only as an intense character study of Ren but as a fine piece of animation. You want to watch, but you don't know if you should look away, as Ren, this clearly disturbed little dog, hurts that frog and attempts to talk about love. It's bizarre and has a whomper of an ending.

[The Duke of Insomnia]

Ive been watching a lot of R&S on netflix recently but they don't all the episodes from the second season, which really sucks. But I ive seen a few season 3 episodes that I thought were pretty good like Stimpy's Cartoon Show and Lair of the the Lummox. But for the most part there just very mediocre but not terrible in my opinion. And Adult Party Cartoon was just to disturbing and to gross for me, although I loved Mr.Horse's reaction to Rens insanity in Ren Seeks help, the episode on the other hand I really don't know if I liked it or not. It really felt like an old R&S episode but way to dark and violent.
On the 30th Im planning on picking up the 1st and 2nd season set when I go to best buy.

[Shaunbadia]

I've been recording episodes on Sky+ recently. Last night I watched the episode where they were dust farmers trying to make it in the big city.

Ren and Stimpy may have seemed a little loopy back in the day, but it's shit like that Adventure Time show that will truly make your child a retard.

[The Duke of Insomnia]

Dude adventure time is awesome. Its really become more mature

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Never liked Adventure Time. Has no appeal for me, though it is a step in the right direction for cartoon network.

[The Duke of Insomnia]

Yeah I didn't like it a first but I started really watching it from the premeire of season 3 and It just became much better, and season 4 was fantastic.
But I can see why some people wouldn't like it especially from watching season 1 episodes.

[Matlock]

Man, John Kricfalusi is quite a cartoon character himself. A few months ago on another place we had this big talk about him and his notoriety (IE: He's known as a pretty notorious dick in animation circles.) but he does know his stuff a lot...even if the idea of different artists having different styles is completely lost on him I think.

I do think people give John a little too much credit for Ren and Stimpy's early greatness though, because if the Ripping Friends are any indication while he's a great animator and does pretty cool designs, he doesn't seem to be able to write too well on his own. I dunno though...when he was um, let go it started to drop too. Maybe it was all sorts of things, Ren and Stimpy just seems destined to be animation's distorted bastard child who had a moment of perfect clarity, but inevitably ended up going insane.

Yes the behind the scenes story of Ren and Stimpy is as interesting as the cartoon itself, check out the facebook page for the upcoming book on the whole thinghttp://www.facebook.com/SickLittleMonkeys?fref=ts
.There were a lot of people who worked on the first two seasons who made it a lot funnier and charming than it otherwise would have been that never really got any credit,I think about 50 people left after John.K got fired.And John K did the initial designs for the characters while in college, but 3 other people were kind of co creators and developed the characters into what they became, Lynne Naylor,Felix Forte and Jim Gomez.Not trying to downplay John.K's involvement, the whole thing was steered by him, but there were a lot of talented artists who helped make it into the great cartoon it was, it wasn't J.K in a room by himself.

[comeau]

Is that Thad K's book? He's been working on that for quite a while now, glad to see its finally coming out.

[Matlock]

Is that Thad K's book? He's been working on that for quite a while now, glad to see its finally coming out.

Yeah it is, it's finally coming out early 2013 I think, can't wait to read it