The Ren & Stimpy Show (Season 1-3)

***The Ren & Stimpy Show*** is an American animated series created by John Kricfalusi for Nickelodeon. The series follows the adventures of title characters Ren, an emotionally unstable chihuahua, and Stimpy, a good-natured, dimwitted cat. It premiered on August 11, 1991, as one of the original three Nicktoons, along with *Rugrats* and *Doug*. Throughout its run, the show was controversial for its off-color humor, sexual innuendo, dark humor, adult jokes, and violence. This controversy contributed to the production staff's altercations with Nickelodeon's Standards and Practices department. The show ended on October 20, 1996 when the final episode aired on MTV, with a total of five seasons and 52 episodes.

## Why It Rocks

1. It helped to forever change the scope of television animation, influencing the future of it and starting trends that are still continued to be used today such as:
	* Episode title credits at the beginning of each episode.
	* Bright harmonious color palettes.
	* Reliance on gross-out humor.
	* Grotesque close-up shots.
	* Strong inspiration from the Golden Age of Animation.
	* Being creator-driven instead of merchanidse-driven.
2. Great characters such as Ren, Stimpy, and Mr. Horse.
3. The episode plots are creative.
4. Great music, especially the theme song.
5. Smooth animation.
6. Awesome voice acting. Billy West, who voices Stimpy and Ren (Seasons 3-5 only), is one example.
7. "The Last Temptation" was an okay finale.
8. It can have heartwarming and emotional moments, not only the wacky and hilarious moments.
9. The gross-out humor is done right in this show.
10. Had so many amazing songs, including the "Happy Happy, Joy Joy" song.
11. All of the episodes remained to exist on DVD sets and on internet video sites, as of 2020.
	* Also, the clips of the show returned in NickRewind's YouTube channel in October 2018, and the rest of them in February 2019. Later the show itself returned to Amazon Prime Video on March 18, 2020.
12. Awesome catchphrases like ***YOU EEDIOT!***, ***You sick little monkey!***, ***Oh Joy!***, ***You fat bloated eediot!*** and more.
13. Great homage to many animators from the Golden Age of Animation, especially Bob Clampett and Tex Avery.
14. Many memorable episodes, such as:
	* "Big House Blues" (The series' pilot)
	* "Stimpy's Big Day"
	* "The Big Shot"
	* "Space Madness"
	* "Fire Dogs"
	* "Untamed World"
	* "Stimpy's Invention"
	* "Man's Best Friend" (The banned episode)
	* "Powdered Toast Man"
	* "Out West"
	* "Rubber Nipples Salesmen"
	* "Sven Hoek"
	* "Haunted House"
	* "Mad Dog Hoek"
	* "Son of Stimpy"
	* "Stimpy's Fan Club"
	* "A Visit to Anthony"
	* "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen"
	* "To Salve and Salve Not"
	* "A Yard Too Far"
	* "Circus Midgets"
	* "Ren's Pecs"
	* "An Abe Divided"
	* "Stimpy's Cartoon Show"
	* "Jimminy Lummox"
	* "Ren's Bitter Half"
	* "Powdered Toast Man Vs. Waffle Woman"
	* "My Shiny Friend"
	* "Ren Needs Help!"
	* "Ol’ Blue Nose"
	* "Bell Hops"
15. The German DVD of the complete series released in 2013 by Turbine Classics, is the first and truly uncensored DVD of the series, unlike the American DVDs released in the 2000s, had a lot of scenes cut out.

## Bad Qualities

1. The animation can sometimes look pretty bad, especially for 1990s standards.
	* Fil-Cartoons animation is considered the worst, due for having various animation errors, with the infamous scene of Stimpy having black eye dots in "Stimpy's Breakfast Tips" (though John Kricfalusi kept that in because he thought it was funny). Even Bob Jaques hated working with the studio and caused John Kricfalusi being credited as Raymond Spüm in "Nurse Stimpy", due to the horrible quality of the animation of the episode.
2. Some scenes are **EXTREMELY** disturbing like this one.
3. Many of the jokes are inappropriate for its target audience.
4. The infamous "It's a Dog's Life" and "Aloha Höek" episodes.
5. Ren can be unlikable at times. He even tried to execute Stimpy twice.
6. Some episodes have some scenes cut from the original episodes either for censorship by unfair reasons or were cut out to keep up the time slot.
7. The DVD title “The Ren & Stimpy Show: The Complete First and Second Seasons Uncut” is misleading because it had a lot of scenes cut out, due to Paramount Home Entertainment using Spike TV's masters of the episodes.
8. The show went downhill in the Games Animation era (1993-1996) after John Kricfalusi got fired from Nickelodeon for infamous things in 1992 and Bob Camp replacing him in the control of the series as creative director and supervising director. Due to this, the show suffers from more restricted animation and less clever plots and writing, as well spawning some horrible episodes.
9. The show got a godawful adult reboot that nearly killed the franchise for 17 Years.