No, Sir, I Don't Like It: The Misfire That Was 'Ren and Stimpy's Adult Party Cartoon'

[TMC]

http://splitsider.com/2013/06/no-sir-i-dont-like-it-the-misfire-that-was-ren-and-stimpys-adult-party-cartoon/

by Matt Schimkowitz | June 3rd, 2013

Sometimes TV shows drag their funny, interesting, and highly-rated
feet across our living rooms for years. “Thank god this happened!” we
cry in glee. Other times, the powers that be cancel those shows and
then resurrect them to diminishing returns. That’s where “Brilliantly
Canceled” comes in, looking at the shows that had a healthy, original
run only to come back in a new, inferior form.

When The Ren & Stimpy Show first aired in 1991, it was a revelation, a
revolting, occasionally terrifying revelation. Being one of the few
shows on children’s television to reflect the actual humor of a child,
Ren & Stimpy acted as a softened Garbage Pail Kids, complete with
boundless toilet humor and excessive violence. Surprisingly, Ren &
Stimpy was to be one of the Nickelodeon’s flagship shows and was
included in both the network’s new Nicktoon and Snick initiatives, not
only covering the network’s two key demographics, teens and pre-teens,
but also grabbing some adults.

The show, in spite of itself, worked. Ren & Stimpy squeaked by censors
time and time again, managing to keep a main character that talked to
the ghosts of his own farts and be really, really funny. That’s not to
say the production wasn’t troubled. Much like the show’s spiritual
stepbrother, MTV’s Beavis and Butt-head, Ren & Stimpy remained a
target for censors and parent groups. The show’s creator, John
Kricfalusi, had to work under close scrutiny, balancing network
concerns and his own intense interest in naturalistic poo-poo jokes.

But much like all great art that undergoes the gift of hardship, The
Ren & Stimpy Show prevailed, stamping a sizable impression on a
generation of soda-fueled youngsters during its five-year run. All
great art requires some sort of setback to attain greatness, and just
like how George Lucas thrived when people like Sir Alec Guinness
called Star Wars “fairytale rubbish,” Kricfalusi brought an edge to
Nickelodeon, and later, went over it.

In September 1993, Kricfalusi was fired from The Ren & Stimpy Show.
Citing late delivery of episodes and creative differences as the
cause, Nickelodeon let the show continue under the watchful eye of
their gaming division for the next three years.

Kricfalusi’s Ren & Stimpy legacy, however, wasn’t cemented for another
decade, when Spike TV revived the show, airing previously banned and
several brand new Ren and Stimpy cartoons without fear of censorship,
a chance to see Ren really open up that butt of his and give Stimpy
the business. Spike wasn’t looking for Nickelodeon’s watered-down,
near flatulence-free show. This was a new version that required a new
name: Ren & Stimpy’s Adult Party Cartoon. And by adults, they mean the
16-year-olds who grew up on the show and are ready to handle such
hilarious topics as spousal abuse and eating boogers.

The first episode of Ren & Stimpy’s Adult Party Cartoon, “Onward and
Upward,” is a perfect summation of the revival. Now living inside the
nose of a homeless person, Ren and Stimpy awake in their marital,
though sexless, bliss to the snores of the nose’s proprietor. Fed up
with eking by, Ren pines for a better life, so the couple moves into
the spittoon of a local dive. No longer a sexually ambiguous cat and
dog duo, Adult Party transforms them into a homosexual couple,
altering their dynamic dramatically. For instance, a major motivator
for Stimpy in “Onward and Upward” is sexual. He’s like Peg Bundy,
begging his disinterested husband for sex.

But what really makes the show hard to swallow is Ren. His dominating
role in their relationship turns him into an abuser, tricking Stimpy
into kissing the anus of a rat in one scene, smacking him constantly,
and repeatedly calling the cat a “bitch” in the episode “Stimpy’s
Pregnant.” Even for cartoon characters, this all comes off as pretty
harsh and never funny. This is a theme that runs throughout the show,
but it’s also something the show doesn’t do particularly well. It’s
hard to tell why the decision was made to make the Ren and Stimpy
lovers, but in almost every occurrence of them acting as such, Ren
makes sure to physically abuse Stimpy, something that just seems
wrong, especially for cartoon characters that are having a hard enough
time being funny.

The relationship of Ren and Stimpy becomes the absolute focus of these
new episodes, and when placed next to older episodes, the new show's
warts become all the more apparent. Comparing the show's satire of
American culture, Spike gave watchers a crash course in what does not
work on TV. Comparatively, when looking at another episode from the
season, like the infamous “Man’s Best Friend,” which was actually
banned by Nickelodeon in 1991, you can see these two engaging with
American culture and mocking it. Adopted by George Liquor, Ren and
Stimpy get a lesson in obedience by the over-stimulated American
consumer. The George C. Scott-inspired Liquor is hilarious because his
overt chauvinism is undone by his own actions. Ren the abuser simply
gets to keep abusing. He's not the butt of the joke, which he should
be.

Adult Party Cartoon seemed doomed from the start. Spike forced John
Kricfalusi into making the show’s humor more obvious. Kricfalusi
claims, "I wasn’t 'given license', I was kind of forced to. I just
wanted to make it the way I always did. The stories even came from the
first 2 seasons of the show, but we added stuff hat the executives
thought would be more like South Park. There are a few scenes that I
would take out if I had my own way. And I never try to be merely
'crass' – certainly nowhere near as crass as modern prime-time
cartoons." But the show really does come off as crass for crassness’s
sake.

On Nickelodeon, the show found new and creative ways to test censors
and their audience, and part of that fun was being in on the joke.
With everything being so explicit and so loud in Adult Party Cartoon,
the show comes off as annoying and trying. In the end, Billy West, the
original voice of Stimpy, had a good head about the project, refusing
to do it because it didn’t sound funny. Boy, was he right.

[Dave Van Domelen]

Agreed. I got a DVD set of some post-Nick R&S ten years ago or so (not
sure if it's the same series this post talks about or something in between),
but it just wasn't funny. The original series was much loved by drunk
college students, but the new cartoons felt like they were *written* by drunk
college students. :/

Dave Van Domelen, sometimes you shouldn't go back to the well.