From: mkuhn@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Martin W Kuhn)
Subject: Re: Latest Episode
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 01:53:45 GMT

In article <1992Nov8.092253.6623@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> ebh@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (Ed Horch) writes:
>In article <1992Nov08.022609.10611@src4src.linet.org> bill@src4src.linet.org (Bill Lanides) writes:
>>Is it just me or was this last ren n stimpy HORRIBLE??
>
>Just you, along with whoever else might have hated it.  Early

Well, since apparently everyone else liked it, I want to mention that
I agree with Bill-- This latest episode was really awful!

-------------
ObDisclaimer:

This is not intended to be a tirade or whiny post, I just want to
make it known that at least *two* people thought it was disapointing
in quality, and wanted to point out some reasons why.  Please
don't whine to me about how you don't agree, OK?  Everyone is
entitled to his own opinion, and I'm just venting mine.  Seems
like there are too many people bickering on this group as it is.
If you liked it, fine, that's OK with me.  Besides, having a more
obnoxious tone in the body of this post seem more natural for
this group...

-------------
[Nasty_Critic mode on]

Good grief, has Spumco gotten terribly lazy or something????  What 
substandard animation!  I kept waiting for someone to *move* during
the first half-- everyone just kept standing around blinking!!!!
Lots of repeated foreground cells too!!  Looked to me like this 
was originally a regular "10 minute" short, but they just tried to
pad it out to 15 minutes or so in order to be able to reasonably 
make it fill up an entire show, along with some recycled short bits.
Note that there was no title for the second half-- this would suggest
that this was only intened to be a single short.  (Note that "Stimpy's
Big Day" has a separate title for each part)

The only funny thing about the show was the "Don't Whiz on the Electric
Fence" game.  It would have been nice, perhaps, to know what the rules
of the game were, though.  (besides the obvious one)

The rest of the show was lackluster.  Just lots of R&S-ish "gross-ness"
with no story or depth at all.  

Even the characters we know and love were mangled somehow.  Stimpy just
sat around sticking his tounge out.  No personality at all.  What happened
to the "inteligent idiot" character of "Stimpy's Invention," or of the
Commander Hoek episodes?  Must have imploded or something, because it's
not to be found here.

What about Ren?  Why is he dressed in a suit and going to work????
Yes, it was probably an excuse so he could leave so that Stimpy and
Swen could get into "hilaree-us hi-jinx," but certainly out of character.
Why is Ren collecting *anything*, much less dinosour pies?  Why are
Stimpy and Swen defacing them?  We know that Stimpy is the one most
interested in material possessions; Ren generally couldn't care less--
except that he seems to have a vague fantasy of becoming wealthy.

Now, I realize, that with R&S, poor continuity is something to be
expected-- and quite often, results in genuine humor.  However, tampering
with the characters is not really a good idea, since it defocuses our
perceptions of the characters-- they lose their uniqueness.

Now, about the "short shorts" that accompanied last Saturday's disappointment:

Action Log:  
   Not a bad continuation of the Log line.  Just a few new backgrounds stuck
to recycled animation, just like the last one.  I'm glad we haven't seen
the last of Log yet.  I've loved Log from the very beginning-- the
"regular" Log commercial ("Hey kid!  You want a toy?") was the very
first of R&S we saw on the very episode (after the opening credits, natch) 
last August; I remember it well...

Gritty Kitty: Free Prize Inside:
   A nice idea, poorly executed.  An E-Z way to pad out 3 or 4 minutes.
Repeat of the _Muddy_Mudskipper_Show_ theme 100% padding.  The gritty
kitty commercial mostly poorly re-dubbed and re-edited old animation,
with a few new background cells.  No new foregrounds that I could detect.  
Good choice of prizes though.  Should have been better executed-- Would
be typical of H-B, but we expect more from Spumco....

What do we do till then:
  At last, a short bit with *new* animation! WoW!  Not much, but at least
it wasn't a pan-n-scan of a new background or something...  Obvious new
voice for Ren.


[Nasty_Critic mode off]


All in all, this was not the worst, but definitely near the bottom of the list
IMHO, anyway.  (Worst was "Nurse Stimpy," IMHO)

                 --Marty


(Who is distinguishing his post from 95% of the rest by actually following
up to an existing post instead of starting a new subject line, and not
including forty-seven million line ASCII pictures of R&S characters in it.)