02.06
As we continue down the rabbit hole, we now arrive at the infamous Games episodes. The Games era, at the time, was considered a huge affront to the concept of Ren & Stimpy. It leaned far heavier on gross-out gags than any other kind of humor, and episodes themselves frequently devolved into nothing more than a contest to see if the next joke could out gross the previous. To fans, this was seen as sacrilege, but in reality… it was already heading in this direction. Sven Hoek already showed that the writers were willing to throw out coherency at the expense of the same thing being repeated for the entirety of the episode, and Son Of Stimpy proved that they could linger on a stupid unfunny joke for 20 minutes straight. The Games episodes all but ignored any potential the early episodes showed and simply continued on the path John K had set forward for them before he, ahem, left when season 2 was wrapping up.
The Games episodes in summary is the exact same thing as it was before only with someone new in charge, basically Bob Camp instead of John K. The real difference? The Games episodes are the same as the early episodes except worse in every aspect. It’s not that every episode is especially terrible or anything, but there is literally nothing here that even attempts to outdo the better material from season 1 or 2, and the show simply seemed content with chugging out the same basic thing over and over again. So, it’s basically more Ren & Stimpy. Nothing new, and nothing original. For 3 seasons.
But the worst problem with these episodes is that they’re REALLY, REALLY boring. While episodes like ‘Black Hole’ were gross, at least they tried to be interesting about it. Watching an episode like ‘An Abe Divided’ or ‘Aloha Hoek’ that offer nothing but tired gag after tired gross out gag is just painful. It feels as if the writers were merely writing what people expected from Ren & Stimpy instead of doing what they wanted to and it shows. The Games episodes are just a long boring slog of watching an already fading show slowly falling off a cliff like so much stupid coyote, and just like said coyote the staff never learned a damn thing.
The best way to describe it is that it’s almost like that guy at the party who gets drunk and hits on every girl he sees, and tried to pick fights with all the guys there. You’d figure that guest would just leave and save everyone from the embarrassment, right? But no, Ren & Stimpy’s Games episodes lasted 3 painfully brutal seasons of slow death while everyone watched it with a disgusted look on their faces.
Slow death.What did Ren & Stimpy fans get for sticking with the show? A Pinocchio parody with eggs instead of puppets and gross out gags instead of charm. That’s right, the episode ‘Egg Yolkeo’ consists of nothing but tired joke after tired joke based on the old Disney film. It’s not like it isn’t the easiest parody to do already, but throw in the safest gross jokes you can think of and you start to feel bad for Ren & Stimpy fans. For a show that prided itself on being crazy and edgy, this is really embarrassing material. The “Fat Elvis” comparison works really well to describe the quality dip in these episodes, the only difference is that Elvis knew when to hang it up.
Not only is the writing atrocious, but so is the general animation and direction. ‘Aloha Hoek’ for instance, has extremely terrible pacing where nothing really happens for the entire first 2/3 of the episode until a crab family shows up, Ren walks a fly, he rides the fly and drowns, then Ren & Stimpy turn into Barney and Fred dressed as soviet spies who escape in a sub. Within three minutes. The other nine minutes consist of nothing but standard ‘survival’ jokes that you are probably already forming in your head as you read this. Not only is this extremely uneven in pacing, the pay off doesn’t make any sense in the context of the plot and the ending is simply designed to be confusing adding nothing to the episode.
The animation of these seasons is also “sub-Ren & Stimpy” quality, feeling a lot less loose and almost like someone trying to “do” Ren & Stimpy, and it hurts the episodes tremendously. At least as bad as some of the early episodes could get, the animation was more smooth and decent to look at, this is just ugly and flat. For a show that was pretty much all about the animation this is a pretty big deal. While the direction tried its hardest to hide it, it just couldn’t escape the fact that it was simply not up to par with the early material.
The way that you can tell that the writers and animators just didn’t care anymore is in how little anything changes between the three Games seasons. There was no effort to improve the show at all during these seasons. You can literally watch any episode and they will all be completely indistinguishable from each other, not just in quality, but in how similar the episodes start to become, it’s almost like a reheated meal. Take a bite, put it in fridge, reheat it, take a bite, and so on. Not only does it all taste the same, but it starts to feel less and less worth the hassle of taking out of the fridge with every bite and the longer it stays in the fridge the worse it’s going to get. You’ve got episodes like ‘My Shiny Friend’ which could literally be from any other show out there and offers nothing memorable whatsoever about it, and dross like ‘Who’s Stupid Now?’ which is little more than a “role swap” episode. Truly riveting ideas. I can’t stop yawning thinking about it.
The typical Games experience! (Not from a Games episode, but it sure fits)While I may have criticized material like ‘Son Of Stimpy’ at least it tried to be original. When you’ve got a team that just doesn’t care, a lack of direction due to missing creative staff, and animation that is inferior in every way to what came before, it’s not hard to see why no one noticed when this show ended despite just years prior everyone itching to watch the newest episode. It was a long, boring, and painful death for a show that really didn’t deserve it, but unfortunately, these episodes really took their toll on the series.
Not to say there aren’t any bright spots overall, some episodes like ‘Stimpy’s Cartoon Show’ and ‘Dinner Party’ bring it back to the earlier style of episodes and don’t rely as heavily on only gross humor but visual gags, verbal jokes, and cleverly placed crude gags to carry the cartoon. It’s not quite as good as the early material in execution and still feels like off-brand Ren & Stimpy, but it is yet another reminder of the direction the show should have gone, but simply refused to go in.
It’s no coincidence how during this era, the show went from being one of the hottest cartoons of the decade to a niche novelty that fell behind the times as it was outright eclipsed by up and coming shows. Let’s not forget that the early 90s was absolutely packed with quality cartoons, and while the landscape was exploding in quality and quantity offering much better options for cartoons, Ren & Stimpy quietly faded away into obscurity when just mere years prior it was set to be a juggernaut. Destined to remembered as an “almost was” and “wasted potential”, Ren & Stimpy is now only remembered by the nostalgia-tinted goggles of 90s kids and little else as… well, it really doesn’t have much else to offer that any other show didn’t do better.
That should have been the end of the Ren & Stimpy story, but in the early 2000s John K himself was given the key to the treasure chest of the Ren & Stimpy franchise and was given a chance to bring the series to its roots. There was much rejoicing among the animation community, finally the show would be returned to its early days! Space Madness! Big House Blues! Fire Dogs! With the show’s original creator, things were looking better than they had in a decade for Ren & Stimpy. Surely things would be alright for this legendary duo now, right? Surely John K would save us from mediocrity and being back the classic R&S style, right? Surely the show would finally fulfill all the missed potential from the show’s original 5 season run and bring it up to par, right? This is bound to be great, right?
Right?
Up next: ‘Suicide’ or ‘How I Learned To Hate The Human Race’
Originally posted on Sunday, March 20, 2011.