Ren & Stimpy - The Lost Episodes That Should Have Stayed Lost

The '80s were a bad decade for cartoons. They started with cheaply-drawn Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and ended with insanely intricate Japanese-made cartoons that were just as inane as their American brethren. It was enough to put everyone off cartoons forever.

Then came Ren & Stimpy.

This oddball, seminal cartoon singlehandedly changed cartoons. Now, it was alright to be gross. It was alright to be overtly weird. It was alright to be adult. You can still see the influence of Ren & Stimpy in Adult Swim's lineup of cartoons.

The problem with having a show that originally aired on Nickelodeon, very much a network geared toward children, is that you can't necessarily get as outre as you might like. So, nearly 10 years after the show went off the air, John Kricfalusi, the show's creator, decided to make a batch of new episodes for Spike TV, stuff that Nickelodeon wouldn't let him do during the show's original run. And now, having seen these episodes, that were recently released on video, I can honestly say he shouldn't have bothered.

Ren & Stimpy was a weird show. A good show, but probably the goofiest cartoon ever made. These "lost" episodes are even weirder. Everything has been cranked up to 11. What was once pushing the envelope is now cramming that envelope right down your throat. Everything is so over-the-top that it's almost painful to watch. Imagine Al Pacino at his most manic, and you might begin to have an idea of what these cartoons are like. And adding profanity and heaps of cartoon boobies really don't add to the viewing experience; they just make it more mind-hurting. (Yes, I just made that word up.)

I think the thing that hurts these episodes the most is the absence of Billy West, who was the voice of both Ren and Stimpy. If you can impersonate Larry Fine, you can do Stimpy, and the guy who does the voice is capable enough. But Kricfalusi's attempt at Ren's voice just doesn't cut it. This is odd to say, as I'm talking about a cartoon dog, but his Ren just doesn't have the same subtlety as West's. West is the only person I know who would think to combine Peter Lorre and Burl Ives to voice a cartoon dog. And Kricfalusi just don't cut it.

So, if you're a Ren & Stimpy completest, check these out. Even if you hate them, you'll get to see some bouncy cartoon boobies. But I still don't think that's worth a watch.