Someone told me Ren and Stimpy is one of Western animation's all-time greatest but I didn't get around to it till...

Someone told me Ren and Stimpy is one of Western animation's all-time greatest but I didn't get around to it till recently. Thoughts?

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Ren & Stimpy was only good because of the limitations, the artist have his head extremely far up his own ass when it comes to his own ideas and thoughts while his Adult Party Cartoon or whatever it was called version of Ren & Stimpy was complete shit because there was no limits.

Honestly, I think there's more to it than just the lack of limitations. All of the magic that the first two seasons of the show had simply wasn't there and it's more than just it being for kids or whatever.

Which episodes from the original show are considered the best? Most people would say things like Stimpy's Invention or Space Madness or Untamed World or Sven Hoek. What made Ren and Stimpy great was that they were versatile characters that could do or be anything they want so you could put them in literally any ridiculous scenario imaginable. (No cartoon had done this since Looney Tunes so it was a fresh idea at the time) The writers of Adult Party Cartoon seem to have forgotten that and made it all about being gross and disgusting and yes, the original had many moments like that but it wasn't what it was entirely about.

And then there's a bunch of other factors that contribute to the show being shit. The animation looks grittier in a disturbing way, the voice acting wasn't as good for some reason, each episode was too long, everything about it was a mess. Maybe it would've improved if it ran longer but they took too long to complete episodes and I believe that was the same reason Nick fired John K so he clearly didn't learn that lesson even a decade later.

The problem with APC is that it lost the childish charm of the original R&S, the corporate Nickelodeon filter actually makes John K's works tolerable.

At its best, Ren & Stimpy creates a simultaneous feeling of attachment and detachment. You don't really know how to feel about what you're seeing.

It's not a flawless show. The pacing is kind of crappy in some early episodes though it certainly helps in others (like Sven Hoek, Space Madness and Stimpy's First Fart), same for the animation: Carbunkle episodes and many of the Rough Draft ones have pretty good or acceptable animation but it's not constant.

The stories don't make a lot of sense, they tend to be basic plots that sometimes are finished with surreal jokes instead of a proper conclusion (which is acceptable from my perspective) and contain tons of visual gags or jokes that are hit or miss. The times that they hit it are quite funny though (YMMV). Overall I think the first phase of the show everyone was pretty damn new to the ammount of liberty they had with the show so it was obvious they were going to make a mixed bag of results.

The Games era was average, you could see they were often just trying to deliver the episodes on time, though I still haven't watched it properly. APC was pretty crap, John and his crew repeated a lot of mistakes, maybe it could have gone better if all the original team got back together (Bob Camp, Bill Wray and Chris Reccardi added a lot to the show), though even then it could have failed considering the old and new talent they had (Vincent Waller, Lynne Naylor, Jim Smith, Nick Cross, etc.). I'd like to blame the network for APC, but you can tell John K's work is everywhere in it.

I think that calling it "Western animation's all-time greatest" is quite the hyperbole, but it definitely is influential and sets the bar very high in many aspects that cartoons this days haven't reached or pushed. I think it's funny that you can see and feel when ex-staff from Spumco has worked on something else, they really add something to the shows they work in.

>Lynne Naylor
She wasn't on APC, was she? I thought John was still fuming over being dumped by her. Are you sure you're not thinking of Katie Rice?

Crap, you're right. I decided to blindly follow IMDb credits and saw her as a layout artist for Fire Dogs 2 and Onward and Upward. Turns out her name doesn't appear in the credits I just watched.

Katie Rice did layouts and Gabe Swarr also worked on it, but I thought I was already mentioning too many names.

>She wasn't on APC, was she?
I checked IMDb. Shockingly enough she was part of the team for "Onward and Upward" and "Firedogs 2".

Not sure what sort of mind control bullshit John K. pulled to have the people he screwed over before stick with him to the bitter end for APC.

I always loved their use of vintage stock music, specially the use of Ole Georg Music cues, which sadly pretty much aren't featured in any modern media.

When APC came out, they just sticked with APM cues and to boot, the music editing was shit.

>I always loved their use of vintage stock music
This. It was a perfect fit for the show and somewhat unusual in an era when most cartoons had original scores.

Fun fact: Ole Georg Music's biggest customers, past and present, are producers of telenovelas.

Original scores > already existing scores
Fuck you.

>>Not sure what sort of mind control bullshit John K. pulled to have the people he screwed over before stick with him to the bitter end for APC.

"we need money and this is the only cartoon we've ever worked on before"

Love (You) too :^)

No, fuck you.

Yeah, he did it in homage to HB cartoons, which heavily relied on stock music in order to save costs. A pity they didn't used Valentino tracks, which has some nice vintage cues.
Later Nicktoons (SpongeBob, Rocko) will stick to stock music, but they would use only APM cues.

>Ole Georg Music's biggest customers, past and present, are producers of telenovelas.
Really? I know that 90s telenovelas featured OGM cues, but modern ones too?

>it's literally okay to not be original
>just use old shitty stock music as your score, no one will care!
Kill yourselves.

Ren and Stimpy had more originality in one episode than most of modern series in all their existence.

Obviously you've never seen 2001:A Space Odyssey, one of the greatest and most important films of all time.

citizen kane is more important though

This show is garbage for edgy teens

Which used "shitty stock music", m8. :^)
>All of the music used in the newsreel came from the RKO music library, edited at Welles's request by the newsreel department to achieve what Herrmann called "their own crazy way of cutting"

Those cartoons were originally "written" (i.e. storyboard and layout) at Spumco circa 1992.

You can see them mentioned in old sources as future episodes prior to John K. getting fired.

>Valentino tracks
I'm so autistic about rare music that I actually know what these are

Here's one that Eminem sampled in his song "Tough Guy"
youtube.com/watch?v=NZ-b9RM39nk

Wait, is APM not vintage?

Because I always thought a lot of the music in SpongeBob felt like it came from the 50s-60s

It has vintage music. But 75% of Associated Production Music catalog at best (I would say a higher percentage) it's modern, unlike Ole Georg Music or Valentino.

hated it growing up. but i also didnt like king of the hill or any cartoon comedy really. i was an action cartoon kid. give me exo squad, visionaries, centurions, thundercats, transformers. any of that kind of thing.
now that im an adult king of the hill is ok, but i still dont like ren and stimpy

Ren and Stimpy is one of those shows that actually BENEFITED from having all sorts of rules imposed on it by the network and ratings groups.

It forced them to find creative ways to get around all the rules with weird shit and various strange analogs and references. It was better for it.

And then you have shit like Adult Party Cartoon where they essentially have no rules and instead of being forced to find creative ways to have a naked lady and not actually show a naked lady on screen, they just show the naked lady.

youtube.com/watch?v=pe7driNrW9k

>00:41
Ah, I always loved that cue, "SF-607 On the Plaza" by Capitol Production Music. Now, it's available on the KPM's album "KPM Brownsleeves (KPMLPB) - KPMLPB-0027 - KPMLPB 27".

I hate to use the word but it's weirdly comfy despite some of the gross gags

Pic related is not one of those comfy episodes though

i love these cute scenes with Stimpy being so playful with Ren

>so he clearly didn't learn that lesson even a decade later.
He didn't learn it back in 1991.
Didn't learn it back in 2003.
And certainly didn't learn it in 2014.

I think the same thing about Batman: The Animated Series. People think I'm crazy but look at the first 20 minutes of the Killing Joke animated movie if you don't believe me. Guaranteed it would be like that and even worse if they give Dini and Timm complete control.

I wish John would just focus on making more comics and drawings. His quick little storyboard sketches are legitimately always fun to look at and a million times more engaging than anything he spends 12 years trying to make into a full fledged Flash abortion.

The same thing happened with shows like Family Guy.

While there were still some cringey jokes in seasons 1-3, the show felt more subdued and structure, based more in a mix of clean comedy and dirty comedy, which gave the dirty jokes an extra "punch" since they were used more sparingly.

The limitations and censors from Fox forced Seth and co to think outside of the box, rather than shocking the viewer every minute. After the show was un-cancelled, they were given free reign, which results in a rather unfunny show that tries too hard

My favorite Ren And Stimpy episodes are from after Jon left.
I don't see why his name is brought up so much when the quality didn't really fall or change when Jon got fired.

I suppose it's a matter of opinion whether the older episodes are better or not, but the show absolutely changed in Spumco's absence, and by its last couple seasons it was really fading.

I'd say it's like 50-50 chance. Dini on USM didn't really improve it and Timm on TKJ with Azzarello really didn't have a good movie. On the other hand I still liked Gods and Monsters, and JLU, and Dini's run on Detective.

First two seasons were GOAT. After that meh.

YYYYOOOOOOUUU

BOTH OF YYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOUUUUUUU

...

>The writers of Adult Party Cartoon seem to have forgotten that and made it all about being gross and disgusting
John is the only actual "writer." Those bad ideas were his.

I'll just leave this here.

apmmusic.com/libraries/kpm-brownsleeves-kpmlpb

It's shit

Go watch adventure time, junior.