They just revived the series with new episodes. I was looking forward to it because I remember the one on Nickolodeon as being pretty funny. (Around here, the new series is on TNN Thursday nights.) Well, it premiered last night, and boy was I disappointed. They started right out with Ren & Stimpy discussing who was the pitcher and who was the catcher. In the old ones, there was a lot of implied homosexuality but nothing blatant, which was what made it funny. It was a cartoon on a kid’s channel that coyly approached some adult topics without saying right out what was going on. The one I saw last night just seemed as if it was trying to gross people out. (Not with homosexuality. With snot, rat poop, etc.) Anyway, I didn’t bother to watch the whole thing, as it didn’t seem to be going anywhere but down. What did y’all think?
The series pretty much had 12 episodes in it, at which point John Kricfalusi got fired and that was it (although the post-Kricfalusi episodes in the original run did have their moments.)
As with any comedy show, the heart and soul of Ren and Stimpy was JOKES. Gross-out stuff is funny, and it was a central theme of R&S, but what makes any show funny is having a lot of good jokes. Why is “That 70’s Show” funny? Because it has lots of jokes, not because of anything to do with the 70s. Why is “Frasier” funny? Because it has lots of jokes, not because it’s about Seattle or psychiatrists. Why was Richard Pryor’s standup act funny? Because he told a lot of funny jokes.
R&S had a lot of hilarious jokes in the original run, took a lot of potshots at advertising, had funny one-liners, pop references, and hysterically funny visual jokes (“I always use your steenky old litter! Look how I love it!”) The new series, IMHO, is trying to make people laugh by upping the gross-out ante, which totally misses the point. Without good JOKES, nothing is funny for long.
I missed it by accident (damn you, Raymond Feist!) last night, but judging from my coworker’s reaction, I’m glad I did. This is a guy who really enjoys Jerry Bruckheimer movies…when he finds the show devoid of humor and offensive…well…
The story itself was interesting (and by “interesting” I mean “strange” as most Ren and Stimpies are), but it would have made a better 7-minute short than a 30-minute show. I think this fact is what ruined the show. Some of the gross humor started out funny, but went on too long. How many jokes can you make about the effects of living in the mouth of a bum who snores? Or folks acting like upper-crust eating boogers of bar patrons? (Although I do like the reference to the old running gag about their favorite denomination of money-five bucks.) Two gags were very funny in my opinion. Ren whipping the potatoes, and the realization that critters are living in a spitoon (especially the pickled eggs going back into the chicken). See? That shows my point. They were short.
Although you didn’t ask for them, my thoughts on the other shows on “The Strip:”
Gary the Rat: This is a so-so show. The premise is good, and it made me laugh a few times. It’s more on the good than the bad, but it needs some work.
Stripperella: This is, in my opinion, the funniest of the shows. It’s a shame it’s not going to be renewed due to creative differences. Really strange plots (In this one, an evil doctor plans to make all supermodels fat), very funny gags (“This things are hard to control. Thank God I’m not crippled!”), and other strangeness make this a keeper. The obvious T&A is in there. It’s funny and interesting when interspersed with strip club patrons’ reactions, but later on, it serves no purpose. Still, a good show all-around.
Ren & Stimpy Classics: What can I say? Shorter is funnier. The seven-minute classics that aired tonight, Space Madness and The Boy Who Cried Rat, are classic wacky adventures with just the right amount of grossness. (Rat features a cameo by George Liquor, one of the main points in the John K.-Nick struggle.) Space Madness, especially, is one of the most well known of the Original Six (not the hockey teams), and for good reason. It’s so absurd, it’s funny. Ren in the anti-gravity bathtub, showing some signs of “Space Madness,” talking to his “beloved ice-cream bar.” The final scene, in which Ren, beliving Stimpy’s the one with Space Madness, forces him to guard the “jolly, candy-like” History Eraser Button. Short. Funny.
It actually grossed me out. I still can’t believe it, I feel like such a wuss. I had to actually change the channel.
I am so ashamed…
Are you trying to tell me that they showed the classic R&S later on and I missed it?
John K’s timing is gone. Everything he has done since that first season of Ren and Stimpy has demonstrated a complete lack of comic timing.
I too was pretty disappointed with last night’s new R&S. (I didn’t even know about the later “classic” airing.) I was momentarily please to see John K was involved again; that’s why I was so baffled by how pedestrian the toon seemed. It didn’t have anything near the visual creativity of the old cartoons (the strange backgrounds, color explosions, detailed drawings, etc.). And the jokes were too stretched out and thin. I lauged a few times, but not nearly enough. I’ll give it another shot; maybe it was just one mediocre cartoon. But my patience is not infinite…
On a related subject: [sarcasm] Hey, TNN: could you please possibly make those overlaid promos a little bigger? You didn’t quite block the entire screen with that shit; I think there was a one-inch-square part of the screen left uncovered in the upper right corner. I was actually able to see a little bit of the cartoon I was ostensibly watching. Work on that.[/sarcasm]
I had the opposite reaction to mobo85.
I thought Gary the Rat to be a pretty good pilot episode that showed a lot of promise. Overdone in spots, and with an awful villain, but it could have been over the top and wasn’t.
But Stripperella was a total disappointment. Not a funny line, scene, idea, joke, or premise in the entire show. (Well, OK, the forty-'leven reasons for why the evil doctor hated models was kinda funny, but that was it.) It didn’t even try to be funny, unless you think that telling you in capital letters over and over that door number 3 was the secret door that hid the doctor’s secret lab, and having it actually be the secret door is funny.
And Pamela Anderson has been saying that the one thing she insisted on was that Stripperella should have nipples that cut glass. And there was indeed a glass cutting scene. And what did she used to cut the glass? Her fingernails.
If Pamela Anderson won’t watch her own show, why should the rest of us?
I thought the funniest thing that evening was the Snapple commercial with the running of the guinea pigs. Nearly died laughing at the little taped-on horns.
For some reason, I laughed my ass off at a scene in Stripperella where a bouncer looks at a black man obviously using a fake driver’s license to get in a strip club, and says matter-of-factly, “Okay, Mrs. Takamoto, you can go in.” And I loved the whole thing with the wheelchair.
I must also say I found the incompetent cheese delivery boy on Gary the Rat amusing.
I watched one minute of ren and stimpy and it SUCKED!
since when are ren & stimpy GAY??!!
and its not even the same voices!:rolleyes::dubious:
If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it’s NOT funny. John K. would have done well to remember that line…
I agree with the previous about R & S. I did not have high expectations, innuendo is always funnier than the explicit.
The original R & S voices were done by Billy West, who stayed with the show after John K. et al were fired. John K. once confronted Billy about this live on the Howard Stern show, his resentment toward West was rather severe.
West was always Stimpy, but he took over Ren after the leaving of John K., the original Ren.
I’ll give it a season, see if it gets any better, and judge from their. The fisrt R&S on Nick wasn’t the best either.
Yeah the funniest commercial we had was one for the Oakland A’s where they were talking about what animal they’d most like to be. Mark Mulder: “What? No way am I a giraffe! Come on!”
I’d like to state for the record that I couldn’t come up with any reason any of us needed to see a rat’s puckered anus (animated OR live action), someone sucking it, and then coming away with a brown mouth. That is burned on my mind forever and it will NEVER GO AWAY! ::runs away sobbing::
I was rather disappointed too. The story really needed to be the 7-minute shorts, and not a whole half hour. I really miss it when John K did the voice of Ren and Billy West did the voice of Stimpy.
The gay jokes were really overdone- I liked it before when Stimpy was merely suspiciously effeminite (like in the ep where Ren got Pec implants).
I wouldn’t dismiss it just yet- I want to see a few more episodes. There were plenty of episodes of classis R&S that I found dull, so there may be some keepers. But WHY OH WHY did they have to rehash one of the lamer aspects of the original show (Dr. Stupid)? They could have had old man hunger, the galoot, the fireman, the horse…JOE LIQUOR, ANY of them were funnier than Dr Stupid! :mad:
I wasn’t disappointed in the new R & S. I was flabbergasted at the fact that it made it to air. It was unendurable, and shockingly lacking in laughs - even chuckles. Truly one of the worst shows I’ve seen in the last few years…
hrh
I was disgusted, disappointed, awed, and to borrow from hrhomer, flabbergasted at that dispicable display of garbage under the name of Ren & Stimpy.
I wanted to turn it off after the first 5 minutes, but found myself unable to look away, like it was a horrible car wreck.
I will not be tuning in again. I will not have my beloved memories of Ren & Stimpy ruined by that…THAT!