# Circus Midgets

"Circus Midgets" is the third episode of the third season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on November 26, 1993. It is the first episode in the series with no involvement from Spümcø, being pitched and produced at Games Animation after the studio's firing.

## Plot

Ren and Stimpy are hitchhiking across a desert highway, looking for rides but get ignored by cars. They do eventually be picked up, being abducted by a small car and leaving their luggage behind.
Two clowns, Schlomo and Momo, are in the car laughing menacingly. They threaten Stimpy when he follows up laughing, before introducing themselves; they play various practical jokes in the duo before playing a laugh track at the end of their torture. They dress the duo as clowns and force them to enact various circus tricks that are hypothetically impossible due to the car's limited space, which includes trapeze and diving into a pool.
The clowns stop at a gas station, where they commit theft; Ren and Stimpy try to escape, only to find the driver to be a third clown; the clowns hit Ren, who asks to leave, with bags of money, car tires and Kowalski before leaving; they also abduct a cow and a singing blue whale in the process.
The clowns make fools of the people they had kidnapped, only to be tailed by policemen; Momo steals parts from the police car to stop it, only to have their tires deflate. The car goes off a cliff, during which everyone leaves in a bid of freedom. Ren and Stimpy hitchhike once again, only to be picked up by the Fire Chief; as the duo's clown costumes resemble "circus midgets", they are beat up by the Fire Chief while he drives.

## Cast

* Ren – voice of Billy West
* Stimpy – voice of Billy West
* Fire Chief – voice of Harris Peet

## Production

The script for "Circus Midgets" was written by Peter Avanzino and was heavy with references to the 1990 film Goodfellas, which Avanzino was a fan of. Jim Gomez was assigned to direct "Circus Midgets", a story that he had no interest in directing as he felt that the script was too violent and unnecessarily full of references to Goodfellas. Gomez was told to direct "Circus Midgets" if he wanted to be a director on the series. Gomez said: "I absolutely did not want to do it. I hated all the referential shit. Ballantine said, 'Well, there's not going to be any more opportunities for you directing if you don't do this one first'. Their whole thinking was that this script had already been approved. I just wanted to throw it out, but there was a bunch of bullshit attached to the delivery requirements at the time that we weren't privy to, and that seemed to be the driving force for a lot of it". Gomez was clearly unenthusiastic about the story that he directed, which impacted the finished product; he would put substantially more effort on "An Abe Divided", after which he gave up directing for the series.
Due to his lack of involvement and dislike of the episode, series creator John Kricfalusi did not commentate the episode in the Seasons 3 and a Half-ish DVD, replacing it with humorous commentary by Ren and Stimpy where they try to remember what actually happened in the episode; he voices Ren and Eric Bauza voices Stimpy.

## Reception

American journalist Thad Komorowski gave "Circus Midgets" two star out of five, calling it a meandering and mean episode leading up to a single ineffective joke. Komorowski stated that basic problem with "Circus Midgets" was Ren and Stimpy were "merely punching bags for a domineering third party" with Ren and Stimpy merely reacting instead of acting as was the case with the two cartoons from 1992 with George Liquor as an antagonist. The show's executive producer, Vanessa Coffey, admitted that the episode was a failure, saying: "It probably crossed some violent lines that we won't want to do again. We probably won't be using those circus midget characters in future episodes either".

## Books and articles

* Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1593931100.
* Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1629331836.