The Ren & Stimpy Show is quite a notable cartoon, one that defined a generation of children. Starting on the beginnings of the early 1990's at August 11, 1991 (along with Doug and Rugrats), this show spanned 5 seasons with 52 episodes (93 segments if you wanna get technical here). Many artists such as Bob Camp, Bill Wray, Jim Gomez, Jim Smith, Vincent Waller, Chris Reccardi, and Lynne Naylor had their reputation grow in the animation field due to this show.
However, things didn't seem to go so well in the production of this said show. Many people had heard of the things that the show creator John Kricfalusi had done to his artists and voice actors. For many people, he was seen as a toxic individual and was hard to work with. It is no secret about this either. Many people refer to these events in reference to John K.'s douchebaggery. Thad Komorowski's book Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story goes into detail on this issue. I don't have the book on me, but from what I heard about it, it's a good one. That being said, let's delve into what John had done.
First things first, there's the perfectionist attitude that John K. has had toward his work. If things aren't done in a certain way for John, as in the design of characters and their expressions, he would go nuts and would have the artist redo it. Now normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but John would keep on making the artists do revisions of their work a lot, as if he was a control freak, which he was.
The perfectionist attitude doesn't end with the artists though, as the voice actors of the show had been abused. One of the most notable voice actors of Ren & Stimpy, Billy West, had described incidents where he was abused by John by doing the same scream for about a HUNDRED times (it may be exaggerated, but you get the idea).You can see what he says in detail on this post from his defunct forum:
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| The post made by Billy West in question. |
In this blog post, he describes working with John K as terrible and that the "new" Ren & Stimpy Show is a trainwreck. However, it wasn't all bad, as John K. was fired during the production of Season 2 of The Ren & Stimpy Show, with co-creator Bob Camp being the new head of the series. The animation companies were also changed from Spumco to Games Animation.
Now on getting to the next topic at hand, you may be asking "What's this new Ren & Stimpy cartoon that Billy West was talking about?" To answer this question, let me show you the Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon.
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| The title card of "Ren & Stimpy 'Adult Party Cartoon'". Gotta show how edgy we are with the wine, cigarettes, and condom! |
Hoo boy, where to start with this travesty of a show. For one thing, it only lasted around six episodes, half of which were aired on it's home channel, Spike TV (now Paramount Network). Eight other episodes were planned for this series, but were immediately shelved when the show bombed. One of which would be based on John and one of his victims, which would be talked about later on.
There are many claims on why this show turned out the way it did. One was that Spike had forced John to make the series more mature in order to compete with South Park. Another claim was that John had gone with the immature ideas as "requests by the fans of the original show". However, the most likely theory is that John did whatever the hell he wanted, meaning that all of the crap this show had was all his idea. This is the most likely answer, because the advertisements of the show had stated that John had all control of the show. Along with that, much of the cartoons made by John had the humor from the Adult Party Cartoon. Make of that what you will.
Onto the show itself. The subtle humor and witty ways to get past the censors are all gone, now replacing it are more bodily functions and swears. Ren and Stimpy themselves are now a couple (that itself I don't have a problem with, I ain't no homophobic), with Ren being bisexual and Stimpy being "madly in love with Ren" (coming from John himself). The show became an anomaly, since the original show was somewhat made for children. Consider this the television equivalent of Conker's Bad Fur Day (since the child friendly game Conker's Pocket Tales came first), only that Bad Fur Day was a good game.
The reason why it's a bad show was that it took away the charm of the original series and replaced it with discount South Park humor, only without the class and well meaning behind it. It also had a huge uncanny feeling to it, as if something was very wrong with the show. This is due to "personal stuff" that John had injected to the show.
One of the episodes of the show "Naked Beach Frenzy" was one of the reasons why Adult Party Cartoon got yanked out of Spike TV, since it was basically porn. By that point, John should've worked for Drawn Sex if he wants to draw cartoon porn. I heard they make a killing off of Flintstones smut, and you all know that John loves his early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. He would be the type of guy who would like the infamous "Get out Bart! I'm piss" comic for scarier reasons than just the poorly drawn artwork.
Speaking of Naked Beach Frenzy, the opening of the episode on the DVD provides some uncomfortable feelings. Here is the intro here:
Remember this, as it would be relevant in later posts, since it's about one of John's victims, Katie Rice.
New talent had also came from this show, such as Robertryan Corey (the guy who had drawn the Basil Wolverton-esque faces of Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs in the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Face Freeze"), Kali Fontecchio, and the previously mentioned Katie Rice. These artists and souls who were innocent (aka the people who were back from the original Ren & Stimpy who aren't John K. sycophants) are the only good parts of the show, as they don't represent the sad state of it.
There are people who weren't involved, such as the previously mentioned Billy West, and Bob Camp and Bill Wray. At this point, Bob was unfairly scapegoated as the Judas who had "wrongfully" hurt John, and Bill had retired to become a painter for a time due to John's abuse putting him off from animation. These people did the right choice, because it would all go down hill in Spumco (I'm not trying to say that the victims were wrong for staying and being in John's hands. They were manipulated by him and made them think that out there is worse).
With this all said, I say that the Adult Party Cartoon had killed Ren & Stimpy. Through John's bitterness towards Nickelodeon for firing him, he had created a drastically terrible reboot that would kill of any chances of Ren and Stimpy to ever come back to television. And why wouldn't this happen in the first place? Concerned parents would complain due to the Adult Party Cartoon, and a rehash of it would just repeat the cycle of problems of the show. It is sad to see the manx cat and asthma-hound chihuahua go, but there wouldn't be any other way around it without backfire
And you can blame John for that.
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