The Ren & Stimpy Show
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in the Rice Thresher, October 2, 1992

Off-campus students are suddenly realizing that they have the power that everybody else doesn't have: they can get cable. It's a good thing, too, because over the summer, a huge number of students realized what they were missing. Whether we stumbled upon it or had a friend point it out, over the summer, we all discovered The Ren & Stimpy Show.

At 8:00 PM Saturdays and 10:00 AM Sundays, Ren & Stimpy is not exactly the most accessible television show, but most fans will find the time. Since it's on Nickelodeon, the "children's network," some may even be ashamed to admit watching it. Most aren't, however. Whether proudly wearing T-shirts with the characters on it, displaying posters in their rooms, or just randomly screaming lines from the show, Ren & Stimpy fans usually are a proud bunch.

For those unclear on the concept, an explanation is in order. Ren is a dog. Stimpy is a cat. Ren is a power freak. Stimpy is an idiot. Both are ugly. They're best friends, although Ren constantly beats on Stimpy. In the great tradition of Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, they have no fixed home or job, instead being placed wherever and whenever the animators want. Sometimes they'll be homeless, sometimes they'll live in a trailer in the desert. In their world, continuity is not a right, it's a luxury.

And they're disgusting. Bodily functions that folks have been told to repress since the third grade occur frequently. From flatulating to nosepicking to vomiting hairballs to pointing out Powdered Toast Man's butt crack, the characters in the show perform their duties with a barely controlled glee. That's exactly what the creators of the show are trying to do, push their audience to the very limits of taste without going so far as to no longer amuse. Which is why they'll fade out on a line of dogs waiting to urinate on Our Heroes' fire hydrant-shaped helmets. Because it's funny.

Still, the humor is by no means restricted to making us ill. The show pokes fun of children's toys (as beautifully demonstrated by their remarkably enticing packaging of a log), reminds us of (not-so-) long-gone memories of childhood (Stimpy explains how to get the toy surprise without eating the cereal while Ren yells at him, "Do you know how lucky we were to even have cereal? Why, in my day, we had to eat wood and rocks!"), and adds random madness (telling us how to celebrate the sacred Yak Shaving Day).

Unlike other ostensible kid's shows like The Simpsons and Pee-Wee's Playhouse, which have just as much, if not more, material for adults, Ren & Stimpy just tries to make its viewers laugh, regardless of age. You'll see none of the sly double entendres that made Pee-Wee's pretty damn funny, none of the political or social humor that The Simpsons gives the public on a fairly frequent basis. What Ren & Stimpy does is just takes a lot of jokes and throws them at its viewers. Some don't work, but more than enough do that the show is consistantly and repeatably enjoyable.

All of which would mean nothing if the show was put together in an unappealing package. Lucky for us, however, John Kricfalusi, voice of Ren and the show's creator, made sure that this couldn't be an issue. Walking the (very) thin line where pastoral and psychotic meet, the drawings contain the joy and madness of Ren & Stimpy's world. The image will switch from Stimpy looking out the window at a beautiful day to Ren's grotesque facial features, made even more foul because he is sick. Reminiscent of Basil Wolverton's drawings in the early days of MAD Magazine, these images are plentiful and do the impossible: they make the ugly even uglier.

Elsewhere, the drawings are fairly abstract. Chances are that most people thought at first that Ren was a rabbit and Stimpy was a dog, which is an easy mistake. Ren's elongated ears don't make people think "asthma-hound chihuahua" right away, and Stimpy's shapelessness and oft-dangling tongue don't make analysis of him any easier, but once given the facts, folks can accept what they are and quit asking questions.

As with that of The Simpsons, the animation of Ren & Stimpy cuts no corners. While most cartoons nowadays choose to let its audience fill in the gaps between frames, the animators of the show make sure that the people who watch don't have to do that. The movements are fluid and surprisingly lifelike, even if we have never seen anyone's eyeballs pop out of their head and start talking to one another. It's so real that we pretend that we have.

The music is also an important factor in the show. Like the old Warner Bros. cartoons, Ren & Stimpy uses classical music to great effect. To provide a sonic backdrop for the story of "The Littlest Giant," the writers chose to use Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" throughout. Even when there is a pressing need for more modern music, the writers allow us to breathe a sigh of relief by choosing the terrific rockabilly/jazz/bebop soundtrack that bookends the show in the opening and closing sequences. Compared to the pseudo-rock drivel that many cartoons now use to underscore their stories, this is a welcome change of pace.

Many people have been put off by the show's constant reminder that humans (and cats and chihuahuas) have certain bodily functions. Aside from the occasional fart or belch, however, everything else is left entirely up to the viewer. When Stimpy shows us his collection of Magic Nose Goblins ("I picked them all myself!"), we are left to assume just what he means. When Stimpy asks a horse to demonstrate just how absorbant Gritty Kitty Cat Litter is, we can only guess what is happening when Mr. Horse goes into a curtained booth, at which point we hear a loud zip. Granted, it's not too hard to figure these things out, and if it were, the show's popularity among kids would plummet. Still, the show is about finding the limit and pushing it, not stepping brazenly over it.

Now entering its second season, Ren & Stimpy was blessed with only six half-hour shows last year, all of which were kept in constant rotation. Of course, most fans didn't mind this as much as they could have; it merely gave them opportunities to find jokes they missed previously and to memorize the jokes they didn't. Still, with the new season underway, residents of the college will have to wait for new episodes, while those of us who are OC can enjoy them right away. Happy happy.

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