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I said in my Dexter's Lab scorecard that my ability to post scorecards in the future would be harder than ever since I'm now attending medical school, but it turns out I was completely wrong. I actually have more free time now than I ever did, and maybe that's because I live by myself for 4 and a half out of the 7 days of the week, and medical school is... surprisingly a lot less busy than high school? I was never overwhelmed by work during high school since I always got my work done ahead of time, but university made my workload even more of a joke than high school, so I guess I'm able to watch as many shows as I want now. Yes, I'm shocked too.

HISTORY: Ren & Stimpy is a show that I've wanted to make a full scorecard on as far back as August 2018, since that was the month where I transformed individual season scorecards like Samurai Jack and Ed Edd n Eddy into full ones, and I also had scorecards of S1-5 and Adult Party Cartoon of this show up (Fun Fact: i forgot to take down my season 2 scorecard, and it's still on my DA. Will I remove it? Probably not because it's something funny to think about), so why did it take me over 3 years to actually make a scorecard? Well... it had to do with the fact that I couldn't recall S4-5 of this show, and I can explain why.

  This is a series that's always been on the backburner for me, but I never had any incentive to check it out until people started drawing comparisons to... okay I was participating in this challenge called "No SpongeBob September" but I yeeted myself out on September 11th so I'm gonna say it... SpongeBob. This was in 2016, when SpongeBob's "post-sequel" era was just taking off, and a lot of people drew comparisons between it and Ren & Stimpy, from the animation, to the plots, to the fact that they share a number of crew members. The comparisons became even more commonplace once season 10 aired, since that season had crazier animation than 9B, so I told myself that because I loved post-sequel a lot, that Ren & Stimpy would be a series that I should check out since apparently SB drew a lot of influence from it.
  The way that I watched Ren & Stimpy, though... was honestly a disaster. I started watching Ren & Stimpy in 2016... October 2016 to be specific, but my watch of the series was inconsistent as hell. I only watched the first episode, Big House Blues, before leaving this show behind until January 2017, where I watched all of season 1, and all of season 2, and for some reason I would only rewatch episodes from those two seasons. I mean, I did love them, but I think what made me avoid S3-5 was the history of production on this show... and John Kricfalusi. However, I do remember in May 2017 where, because I didn't bring food to a school party, I wasn't allowed to attend it and I ended up going to the library and watching the first season 3 episode, To Salve and Salve Not. Did this make me sit down and watch the Games era?
  No. Instead, it took me until February 2018 to watch season 3, and then I waited until July 2018 to watch S4-5, meaning it took me more than a year and a half to watch all of Ren & Stimpy. My favorite part is that I actually watched Adult Party Cartoon on July 11th, 2017, and then watched it AGAIN in October 2017, meaning I watched APC TWICE before ever touching S3-5 completely.
  Of all the watches I've ever done, I'd say Ren & Stimpy was my worst one of them all as it took me way too long to actually finish it, it was very inconsistent, and this scorecard is overdue by 3 years at the bare minimum-- yes, I consider this watch of mine to be worse than Wander... at least that show took me half a year to finish (I still haven't written a description for it though lol).

ANIMATION: Ren & Stimpy's animation is one-of-a-kind, I could talk about how the animation at the time was groundbreaking since it was one of the first cartoons since the Golden Age of Animation to go off-model, but even today, there is no show that can replicate the style this series has. Even post-sequel SpongeBob, which has people like Bob Camp and Vincent Waller working at the helms, can't reach it because I don't think any show can-- there's some sort of pristine art to this show that makes it hard to match. What makes Ren & Stimpy's animation age like a fine wine is just how much effort they put into each and every frame-- no two expressions or poses ever look the same at all, and when they do reuse parts (like how Stimpy's Fan Club has the same ending as Nurse Stimpy), it's typically a joke since the contexts in which they're used in are completely different, and work well in the nature of both episodes.

Besides that, I love how fluid and expressive the animation can be. While season 1 did have choppier animation than usual, it still had that artistic value that seasons afterwards would also have, I can take any expression or frame from season 1 and proudfully hang it on my wall since that's how much I like this show's aesthetic, and this ESPECIALLY applies to the episode Stimpy's Invention. This episode took more than a year to be fully produced, and it's no wonder since it carries every single quality that I listed above: the animation in it is so obviously high-budgeted, and it moves like a charm. Every single frame in it is unique, and you can slow the episode down just to see how much work went into it. In general, this show had a lot of talent behind it.

I feel like Stimpy's Invention set a new standard for this series' animation as season 2, up until Monkey See, Monkey Don't, is drop-dead gorgeous. It carries over every single aspect that already made that episode's animation stellar, but they improved the coloring so much as I think(?) they made the switch to digital ink and paint. Season 1's coloring was pretty pale at points, but season 2 fixed this by giving the colors more saturation. In general, season 2's aesthetic is a step-up from season 1, down to the backgrounds.

Ren and Stimpy's backgrounds scream "90s" to me, but even with that note in mind, they managed to add in techniques/quirks that make them stand out-- some of which I've never seen other cartoons do, including the ones that were directly inspired by Ren & Stimpy. The backgrounds in this show are usually these abstract paintings that mesh or flatout break according to whatever is happening on-screen. If you don't get what I mean, look at any scene where Ren loses it-- sometimes they'll have the backgrounds change altogether to show that he's losing it instead of having him make an over-the-top face. This is best demonstrated in Stimpy's Fan Club, the entire scene of Ren contemplating to kill Stimpy has its backgrounds follow no consistent positioning. At one point, the bed will be short, the next it'll be long, and they do it just so they can get numerous angles to indicate how Ren's gone off the deep end, and when it comes to backgrounds, the background would randomly become dotted to showcase distress, and there's one point where they flatout remove the background altogether. Hell, the animation quality degrades as Ren goes more insane, meaning that they perfectly convey Ren's descent into madness through background work along with the animation. You can see other instances of this like when Ren destroys his bed in In the Army, or his breakdown in Sven Hoek.

  I will say, I don't ever think Ren and Stimpy's animation ever truly degraded, because even past the tail-end of season 2, the show did retain its usual expressiveness and fluidity... dare I say it became even more expressive from that point onwards... and maybe that's because Bob Camp was manning the crew instead of John K? It's pretty obvious since he worked on a lot of seasons 11-12 of SpongeBob. I should've mention this earlier, but I'm currently rewatching all of SpongeBob and whilst watching Ren & Stimpy, all I could say to myself is that the way the characters are animated reminds me way too much of post-sequel, even if the latter doesn't reach the same bar in terms of animation. It'll be both exciting and jarring to see post-sequel again because I know there are certain expressions and visual gags that they plucked from this series.

The only part of Ren & Stimpy that got downgraded in my eyes would be the backgrounds, this show never had the most detailed backgrounds, but seasons 4-5 at points had backgrounds that were way too basic. I recall there being a scene in I Love Chicken(?) where the background was a radial gradient and somewhere in there there was an uncolored fridge. The backgrounds in School Mates look horrendous, and visually this episode is broken because the hand sizes of the characters would change on a whim. A Yard Too Far would've been better than it already is if not for the fact that literally everything in this episode is colored yellow, or slightly tinted yellow. I dunno, there's just some points in these seasons where it feels like they forgot to either make sure ligaments are up-to-scale, or they'd forget to have a background and see what they could put together in the shortest time possible. I still think that in spite of these problems, the Games era still has very good animation, and a special mention has to go to Blazing Entrails since that episode was animated by a completely different studio, and it's no wonder since the backgrounds look more detailed and vibrant than usual, and so do the character models, expressions, and everything really. I'd recommend that episode just on the basis that it's eyecandy.

tl;dr version: Ren & Stimpy set a standard for animation that I believe no show afterwards could ever reach. There's something meticulous about its fluidity and expressiveness that's just hard to match... maybe it's the fact that there was a strict rule that no two drawing could ever look the same, I dunno, and there are techniques employed in the backgrounds that are able to convey so much more than an off-the-wall expression. It's clear this show had a very big budget and they used every penny for their worth, as a lot of the expressions and drawings are what I'd call works of art.

CHARACTERS: This is a section I want to abandon when I feel like it in future reviews because some shows like Family Guy and South Park have way too many notable and interesting characters, but I'm really happy that Ren & Stimpy has a limited cast of characters. Not only because it makes it less of a chore to write endless paragraphs no one will read, but because I also think it fits in with this show's absurd nature. The show rarely introduces new characters, so instead they reuse older ones like Wilbur Cobb and have him play the role of... just about anything. In one episode, he's the Walt Disney of animation, and the next he's an angel in heaven.

But when it comes to the characters in this series, just about all of them are memorable. The titular duo in particular are two of my favorite characters I like to sit around and watch, even when some episodes aren't always interesting. Ren is, generally speaking, a funny character, I love the accent that both John K and Billy West gave him as it makes everything he says ten times funnier, ESPECIALLY when he loses it. The character is generally an asshole, sometimes even borderline abusive to Stimpy, but he always gets his comeuppance for doing so, and it's clear that he genuinely cares about Stimpy since the first episode had him beg some pet owners to adopt Stimpy, and then the next two episodes had him be depressed over the fact Stimpy isn't there-- that's a theme that carries over into other episodes too, like Hermit Ren. However, Ren's crowning moments are, obviously, when he goes crazy, it leads to some of the most gruesome, twisted, and honestly hilarious moments in the entire series. There's him beating up George Liquor in Man's Best Friend, the scene where he gruellingly describes how he's going to kill Sven and Stimpy, him destroying his bed in In the Army, the entirety of Space Madness, and the best of them all: Contemplating killing Stimpy in Stimpy's Fan Club-- that's one of my favorite moments in all of animation.

  Ren in general always feels like a ticking time bomb, you never know when he's going to go crazy... or not, because this character doesn't always do that. Sometimes he'll show his vulnerable side, like in the aforementioned Stimpy's Fan Club, the episode's conflict was initiated just because Ren didn't feel loved, there's also Stimpy's Cartoon Show, where he cried about being untalented-- I'll even throw in the ending of Fake Dad where he cries when Kowalski leaves him.

You'd think that some of these moments are 100% serious and heartfelt but there's sometimes a rugpull where Ren, of course, becomes abusive in a different way-- this character in general is a mess and that's why I love him, but I like Stimpy more of the two.

For being the idiot best friend, Stimpy is surprisingly anything but that-- I'd even argue he's smarter than Ren. The cat's a chef and a scientist, and he normally isn't that stupid-- he has a childlike innocence to him, but there's no episode where I'd call him a flatout moron besides Sven Hoek. In every other episode, this character has a surprising level of awareness, and that fact alone makes Stimpy honestly one of the most well-written and overall best "idiot" deuteragonists in any show. Most of the jokes surrounding Stimpy usually have to do with Ren's reactions to his actions or childish statements instead of him doing something legitimately dumb. While he is meant to be the stupid one between him and Ren, Stimpy is honestly a lot more adorable in my eyes-- his naivety and love of his best friend instantly makes him the most likeable character on this show, and I think that Billy West did an excellent job voicing this character too.

None of the other side characters have much to them, but I'd still say overall that they're funny characters. Powdered Toast Man is one of the more subversive superheroes I've seen in any cartoon-- other shows that have the subversive superhero have them be stupid, incompetent, or both. There are exceptions like Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy in SpongeBob, but I ultimately like what they did with Powdered Toast Man more. They gave this superhero so many stupid features that it's comical-- the way he flies in the air is literally random, sometimes he'll fly backwards, diagonally, or I have no clue. He's not incompetent, but most of his emergencies tend to be the stupidest things imaginable, I'd explain what they are but they'd spoil the joke, so just go and watch the episodes Powdered Toast Man and Powdered Toast Man vs. Waffle Woman, both are hysterical and some of my favorites.

      Other side characters don't have much to them, but I think when they do pop up, they can get a laugh, like Mr. Horse, Old Man Hunger, that fat lady whose name I never got, Wilburr Cobb, Kowalski, George Liquor, just about all of them are memorable and funny-- I don't care to explain why since there's no point to it.

tl;dr version: Every single character on this show is memorable and funny in some way-- the titular duo have such a spastic dynamic that they're always fun to watch even when some episodes don't have the most substance or best pacing, and Stimpy in particular is one of the best-written "idiot"-type characters I've ever seen.

GENERAL THOUGHTS ON REN & STIMPY: I've been wanting to write a section like this for YEARS, and I finally get to do it. So, uh, I love Ren & Stimpy... a lot. The moment that I finished season 1, I instantly grew an attachment to this show and would watch it endlessly in 2017 even if what I watched was limited-- the show was just THAT funny and fascinating to me. Seriously, words can't describe just how obsessed I was with this show, I went out of my way to see what cartoon creators like Dan Harmon (Rick and Morty) and Matt Groening (The Simpsons) had to say about this series, where exactly I could find this show's influence, how other shows' boundary-pushing compared to this one, so on and so forth. I highly love and respect this series for what it is, and what it did for animation, even if you don't like this series, the one thing you will commonly hear people say is that they respect this series, and there's good reason for that.

If you told me Ren & Stimpy was a kids show, I would only half believe you, because the amount of crap this show has gotten away with is insane. Even nowadays, where censorship is a lot less heavy (or, so I think), even when there exists series that are specifically aimed at an older audience-- they cannot compare to how raunchy, gross, and irreverent Ren & Stimpy is. This makes the series a million times funnier, I mean the show is slapstick-heavy and they almost always land because of how good the animation is, and the timing of the slapstick, but when Ren & Stimpy does other kinds of humor... the series suddenly becomes a thousand times funnier.

Seriously, so many moments in this series will have you question how they got past the censors at all-- I don't think any show nowadays would even attempt to do the things that Ren & Stimpy has. The only show past this one, that I can think of, that pushed the boundaries for what it could get away with is Regular Show. That show got away with saying crap, turd, there are some moments where characters come close to swearing, and there are a ton of sexual innuendos in that series.

Guess what? That applies to Ren & Stimpy ad infinitum. I can't name anything particularly dirty in season 1, other than maybe some characters saying "crap" (which isn't that much of a shocker since even a show like Dexter's Laboratory got away with saying it), season 2 ramped up this series' edginess to such a degree that many moments had my jaw touching the floor. I mean... the episode Powdered Toast Man had him save the pope, burn the Bill of Rights to make a fire, and then the episode ended with Powdered Toast Man roasting a sausage over a fire, while his female assistant roasted a marshmallow... in which we see it drip a little. Man's Best Friend is, by definition, a banned episode, but it stars a character named "George Liquor American". They gave the name of a character in a supposedly-kids cartoon "liquor". Out West is about two idiots looking for a reason to hang people, only to realize they've hanged just about everyone, and the episode ends with a song about hanging.

Every single episode starting from season 2 has something messed up in it, and I'm not willing to go through all of them since it'd ruin the surprises, but these moments definitely catch you offguard and will make you laugh if you have the sense of humor for it. Ren & Stimpy is a show that carries a pretty cynical and one could say "mean-spirited" nature since a lot of episodes feel like the universe is against both characters... more of the time Ren, but the show knows how to make some episodes light-hearted or at least know never to cross the line so that episodes are easier to stomach... except for It's a Dog's Life-- I felt like that one went a bit too far, and even then, I respect this episode for its darker atmosphere and twisted scenes... the episode literally opens with Ren & Stimpy being sent to a gas chamber while a priest reads from The Old Testament, I can't not at least revere what they were able to get away with.

That's what makes Ren & Stimpy work as well it does for me, the fact that an episode can start to lighthearted and innocent and turn into something dark and callous, or maybe an episode will be that all the way through, some episodes could even just be constant strings of jokes like An Abe Divided or Stimpy's invention, some could have legitimately heartfelt stories like Terminal Stimpy or A Visit to Anthony-- the show can do literally anything and it would make sense in the weird universe that this show has created for itself. Not to mention that it always keeps the viewer on his/her seat, you never know what this series could throw out next-- sometimes episodes can be completely batshit stupid like Pen Pals-- that episode is about Ren & Stimpy wanting to break INTO JAIL just so that Ren can avoid paying his taxes, the episode is a goldmine of comedy just for this premise alone.

I feel like I should have more to say, but to be honest, I don't, because if we're talking about the original show, I don't have any general issues with Ren & Stimpy. Season 1 was pretty sluggish, but it still had a lot of funny moments, and it ended on one of the funniest cartoon episodes ever made, there could be a bad egg here or there but I could still point to a moment or two that made me laugh, and this would be a good place to end the review, but there's just one more thing I need to cover and you already know what it is.

ADULT PARTY CARTOON: Did you know that I've seen Adult Party Cartoon 3 times? That was three times too many, to be honest, but I don't regret doing that. Back in 2017, when I saw this show twice, I didn't find it the absolute bottom of the barrel cartoon that many people, especially cartoon YouTubers, made it out to be. Hell, I didn't even dislike it-- if we're talking "ratings", I went back and forth between calling this show "Meh" and calling it "Poor" before settling on the former. I tried my hardest to be lenient on this series back then because I thought that what caused this show to turn out the way it did was executive meddling (this is now proven untrue, everything raunchy and unpleasant in this show was on John K's hands and it was a lie that Spike TV forced him to add in edgier material), an episode like Altruists did have moments that could fit in the original show, but then the next scene would have Stimpy kissing a duck for an overly long period of time.

On my third rewatch though... yeah... I have to admit that this series is pretty bad, as while I still do think the series isn't the absolute worst... I certainly do not like it and my reasons vary from "it tries way too hard" to "this is slow and boring as sin".

I don't think this series would be bad for me, if it wasn't for the fact that EPISODES HAVE RIDICULOUS RUNTIMES That's the biggest issue plaguing Adult Party Cartoon-- the length. Onward and Upward is 20 minutes, Ren Seeks Help is 22, Fire Dogs 2 is 27, Naked Beach Frenzy is... 25? Don't remember. Altruists is the longest, running for a whopping 39 mins, and Stimpy's Pregnant is 29.

Want to know the most ironic part? Despite being the shortest episode, Onward and Upward is the one that felt like it lasted the longest, because that episode dragged out scenes forever. That's the other issue plaguing this series other than its length: the dragging. Scenes will linger on forever and it'll take even longer to move onto the next point, the first 7 minutes of Onward and Upward is filled with annoying snoring and extremely juvenile jokes that are trying to be 'gross', but come off as pathetic instead. Even Ren Seeks Help, an episode that I've always liked, had an opening that went on for a bit too long, though it more forgivable there since at least it conveyed the point that Ren messed up badly.
  A criticism people have of the original show is that it has sluggish pacing, and although I do understand where they're coming from, I don't agree with it outside of season 1, as the rest of the episodes felt well-paced-- fast-paced even, especially in the Games era. But when it comes to Adult Party Cartoon, the runtimes coupled with the constant dragging of scenes, ultimately made this series a boring one to watch, I didn't pay attention to a majority of Stimpy's Pregnant because my attention span was reduced to 0 after sitting through the first 5 episodes.
Even an episode like Altruists, which did have some funny moments and overall tried so hard to capture the magic of the original show, was still bad because of how boring and long the episode was. But okay, runtimes and dragging shouldn't be a problem if the series is funny, right?

You're right, but Adult Party Cartoon isn't funny. I did get a few laughs here and there, but all the other times this show tells jokes, they end up being some of the most juvenile and eyeroll worthy gags the series has ever done. Onward and Upward tried so hard to be disgusting and raunchy, but the jokes it does have wouldn't be out of place in any other adult cartoon-- the original show had moments way more nerve-wracking than this. I don't think anything in Adult Party Cartoon can come close to Ren pulling his nerve endings in Ren's Toothache, because at least that episode went to territories that even your average adult sitcom wouldn't even think of going.

Snot, spit, vomit, this is the only thing Onward and Upward has to offer, and even if we treat these as jokes, they last so long that they lose their shock/gross-out value almost immediately. I didn't even mention the scene where Ren made Stimpy kiss a rat's ass-- they dragged that one out too, and to be honest, Ren kissing Stimpy in the pilot was "grosser" than this. It's just so sad to see how a show that once had the ability to shock and gross the audience, whilst simultaneously making them laugh, is reduced to desperately trying to be gross, but going with the most by-the-numbers methods that no one has ever found gross.

I have other problems with this series too, including the animation. I will say that from a visual aspect, it does look cleaner and better than most of the original show besides Blazing Entrails and a majority of season 2, but I, personally, do not like the way this series looks at all. Ren & Stimpy's designs are nothing complex, so giving them all these details makes them look a lot more grotesque, it really reminds me of the way that season 6 of SpongeBob looks-- a lot glossier, with details being put on characters that shouldn't even have such details in the first place, and a color palette that can only be described as puke-- I don't know how to describe what they did to the colors here but the original show looked a lot more pleasing than this.

But if we're talking about the actual animation, it can look good or move well when it wants to (I will say the expressions in this show are on-point), but it's obvious this show had some production issues since there are moments where characters will speak but not have their lips move at all-- this is a problem I have not seen in Ren & Stimpy since the pilot. I noticed that in Onward and Upward and Ren Seeks Help that they added in voice-lines post-production, and it came off as jarring-- Big House Blues had an excuse for doing this since it was a pilot, this show has a bigger budget than that episode I'm pretty sure, so what excuse does this series have? There are also moments where characters will jump between two frames, or in the case of Naked Beach Frenzy, take several frames of animation, loop them, and then flip them horizontally to give the illusion that a character is turning around. I noticed, once again, in Ren Seeks Help that, while changing shots, they forgot to change the background and thus changed it a bit later than usual. Seriously, there so. many. animation. errors, and it sometimes ruins any intrigue I once had.

And y'know what? I can say the same for the sound editing-- this show's sound editing is terrible because it relies on so many stock sound effects. The original show did too, and many cartoons to this day still do, but they don't piece two different sound effects together, or play the same ones over and over in the way this series does. There are moments where they'll take a dramatic impact, and then mid-way through the first one, play the second part of another dramatic impact. It sounds wrong, it's jarring, and it makes no sense from a professional standpoint.

There's just one last thing that bothers me about this show, and it would be Stimpy's voice. Billy West did not reprise his role as Stimpy, and Eric Bauza ended up taking his place, to which I say: Eric Bauza's Stimpy is terrible, it does not sound like the character at all and it sounds like a whinnier, pale imitation. His voice often came off as distracting to me, and I hated that because I felt like Billy West played the role of Stimpy so well-- I can't explain why exactly, but I just feel like no one could take Billy West's place.

tl;dr version: The original Ren & Stimpy was honestly hilarious for just how twisted, sick, and callous the show was. So many moments will catch you offguard and make you ask how they were able to air in the first place, it really was groundbreaking for the censors, and besides Regular Show, I can't name any others that came close. It had a cynical nature to it, but they made sure to pack episodes with jokes upon jokes to mitigate this rather cruel nature this series regularly has. Unfortunately, Adult Party Cartoon threw away everything that made the original series good to begin with and went with by-the-numbers grossout that isn't even gross, bad sound-editing, constant animation errors, absurdly long runtimes, and constant dragging of scenes. Just so you know, the original R&S didn't have any 22 minute episodes besides A Scooter for Yaksmas, all the other "specials" are like... 16 minutes in runtime.

CONCLUSION: I love the original Ren & Stimpy-- I was expecting the pie chart to look a lot better than what it is, but the show isn't that long, so I think calling it GREAT wouldn't be so wrong of me. Everything about the original show clicked with me, and to this day, it still means a lot to me, personally. Even 30 years later, this series is one-of-a-kind and I love marveling at how many things they were able to shamelessly slip past the censors, it makes this already funny show even funnier, as it adds a layer of edge. You could be turned off from the cynical nature, but the number of jokes that land end up making that cynical nature a lot more of a background than a foreground, I think all the characters are funny, well-written, and memorable, and the animation of the original show aged perfectly-- it still looks beautiful all these years later. I don't have any general problems with the original show, but Adult Party Cartoon is borderline worthless, it sucked out the soul the original show had and replaced it with worse-looking visuals, bad grossout, bad sound editing, the works. It wasn't enough to ruin the series' overall grade, and I guess it isn't all too bad since I like Ren Seeks Help, but if it vanished, I wouldn't care. It took me forever to get this scorecard done, but it's finally here.

I have no clue what show I'm going to tackle next, I'm just waiting for Family Guy Season 20 to drop in 6 days from now lol

Here's a free Top 20

20. In the Army

19. Who's Stupid Now?
18. My Shiny Friend
17. Bass Masters
16. Ren's Bitter Half
15. Stupid Sidekick Union
14. No Pants Today
13. The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen
12. A Visit to Anthony
11. Powdered Toast Man vs. Waffle Woman
10. Ren's Brain
9. Man's Best Friend
8. Blazing Entrails
7. Pen Pals
6. Stimpy's Cartoon Show
5. Terminal Stimpy
4. Sven Hoek
3. An Abe Divided
2. Stimpy's Invention
1. Stimpy's Fan Club

Description

I said in my Dexter's Lab scorecard that my ability to post scorecards in the future would be harder than ever since I'm now attending medical school, but it turns out I was completely wrong. I actually have more free time now than I ever did, and maybe that's because I live by myself for 4 and a half out of the 7 days of the week, and medical school is... surprisingly a lot less busy than high school? I was never overwhelmed by work during high school since I always got my work done ahead of time, but university made my workload even more of a joke than high school, so I guess I'm able to watch as many shows as I want now. Yes, I'm shocked too.

HISTORY: Ren & Stimpy is a show that I've wanted to make a full scorecard on as far back as August 2018, since that was the month where I transformed individual season scorecards like Samurai Jack and Ed Edd n Eddy into full ones, and I also had scorecards of S1-5 and Adult Party Cartoon of this show up (Fun Fact: i forgot to take down my season 2 scorecard, and it's still on my DA. Will I remove it? Probably not because it's something funny to think about), so why did it take me over 3 years to actually make a scorecard? Well... it had to do with the fact that I couldn't recall S4-5 of this show, and I can explain why.

  This is a series that's always been on the backburner for me, but I never had any incentive to check it out until people started drawing comparisons to... okay I was participating in this challenge called "No SpongeBob September" but I yeeted myself out on September 11th so I'm gonna say it... SpongeBob. This was in 2016, when SpongeBob's "post-sequel" era was just taking off, and a lot of people drew comparisons between it and Ren & Stimpy, from the animation, to the plots, to the fact that they share a number of crew members. The comparisons became even more commonplace once season 10 aired, since that season had crazier animation than 9B, so I told myself that because I loved post-sequel a lot, that Ren & Stimpy would be a series that I should check out since apparently SB drew a lot of influence from it.
  The way that I watched Ren & Stimpy, though... was honestly a disaster. I started watching Ren & Stimpy in 2016... October 2016 to be specific, but my watch of the series was inconsistent as hell. I only watched the first episode, Big House Blues, before leaving this show behind until January 2017, where I watched all of season 1, and all of season 2, and for some reason I would only rewatch episodes from those two seasons. I mean, I did love them, but I think what made me avoid S3-5 was the history of production on this show... and John Kricfalusi. However, I do remember in May 2017 where, because I didn't bring food to a school party, I wasn't allowed to attend it and I ended up going to the library and watching the first season 3 episode, To Salve and Salve Not. Did this make me sit down and watch the Games era?
  No. Instead, it took me until February 2018 to watch season 3, and then I waited until July 2018 to watch S4-5, meaning it took me more than a year and a half to watch all of Ren & Stimpy. My favorite part is that I actually watched Adult Party Cartoon on July 11th, 2017, and then watched it AGAIN in October 2017, meaning I watched APC TWICE before ever touching S3-5 completely.
  Of all the watches I've ever done, I'd say Ren & Stimpy was my worst one of them all as it took me way too long to actually finish it, it was very inconsistent, and this scorecard is overdue by 3 years at the bare minimum-- yes, I consider this watch of mine to be worse than Wander... at least that show took me half a year to finish (I still haven't written a description for it though lol).

ANIMATION: Ren & Stimpy's animation is one-of-a-kind, I could talk about how the animation at the time was groundbreaking since it was one of the first cartoons since the Golden Age of Animation to go off-model, but even today, there is no show that can replicate the style this series has. Even post-sequel SpongeBob, which has people like Bob Camp and Vincent Waller working at the helms, can't reach it because I don't think any show can-- there's some sort of pristine art to this show that makes it hard to match. What makes Ren & Stimpy's animation age like a fine wine is just how much effort they put into each and every frame-- no two expressions or poses ever look the same at all, and when they do reuse parts (like how Stimpy's Fan Club has the same ending as Nurse Stimpy), it's typically a joke since the contexts in which they're used in are completely different, and work well in the nature of both episodes.

Besides that, I love how fluid and expressive the animation can be. While season 1 did have choppier animation than usual, it still had that artistic value that seasons afterwards would also have, I can take any expression or frame from season 1 and proudfully hang it on my wall since that's how much I like this show's aesthetic, and this ESPECIALLY applies to the episode Stimpy's Invention. This episode took more than a year to be fully produced, and it's no wonder since it carries every single quality that I listed above: the animation in it is so obviously high-budgeted, and it moves like a charm. Every single frame in it is unique, and you can slow the episode down just to see how much work went into it. In general, this show had a lot of talent behind it.

I feel like Stimpy's Invention set a new standard for this series' animation as season 2, up until Monkey See, Monkey Don't, is drop-dead gorgeous. It carries over every single aspect that already made that episode's animation stellar, but they improved the coloring so much as I think(?) they made the switch to digital ink and paint. Season 1's coloring was pretty pale at points, but season 2 fixed this by giving the colors more saturation. In general, season 2's aesthetic is a step-up from season 1, down to the backgrounds.

Ren and Stimpy's backgrounds scream "90s" to me, but even with that note in mind, they managed to add in techniques/quirks that make them stand out-- some of which I've never seen other cartoons do, including the ones that were directly inspired by Ren & Stimpy. The backgrounds in this show are usually these abstract paintings that mesh or flatout break according to whatever is happening on-screen. If you don't get what I mean, look at any scene where Ren loses it-- sometimes they'll have the backgrounds change altogether to show that he's losing it instead of having him make an over-the-top face. This is best demonstrated in Stimpy's Fan Club, the entire scene of Ren contemplating to kill Stimpy has its backgrounds follow no consistent positioning. At one point, the bed will be short, the next it'll be long, and they do it just so they can get numerous angles to indicate how Ren's gone off the deep end, and when it comes to backgrounds, the background would randomly become dotted to showcase distress, and there's one point where they flatout remove the background altogether. Hell, the animation quality degrades as Ren goes more insane, meaning that they perfectly convey Ren's descent into madness through background work along with the animation. You can see other instances of this like when Ren destroys his bed in In the Army, or his breakdown in Sven Hoek.

  I will say, I don't ever think Ren and Stimpy's animation ever truly degraded, because even past the tail-end of season 2, the show did retain its usual expressiveness and fluidity... dare I say it became even more expressive from that point onwards... and maybe that's because Bob Camp was manning the crew instead of John K? It's pretty obvious since he worked on a lot of seasons 11-12 of SpongeBob. I should've mention this earlier, but I'm currently rewatching all of SpongeBob and whilst watching Ren & Stimpy, all I could say to myself is that the way the characters are animated reminds me way too much of post-sequel, even if the latter doesn't reach the same bar in terms of animation. It'll be both exciting and jarring to see post-sequel again because I know there are certain expressions and visual gags that they plucked from this series.

The only part of Ren & Stimpy that got downgraded in my eyes would be the backgrounds, this show never had the most detailed backgrounds, but seasons 4-5 at points had backgrounds that were way too basic. I recall there being a scene in I Love Chicken(?) where the background was a radial gradient and somewhere in there there was an uncolored fridge. The backgrounds in School Mates look horrendous, and visually this episode is broken because the hand sizes of the characters would change on a whim. A Yard Too Far would've been better than it already is if not for the fact that literally everything in this episode is colored yellow, or slightly tinted yellow. I dunno, there's just some points in these seasons where it feels like they forgot to either make sure ligaments are up-to-scale, or they'd forget to have a background and see what they could put together in the shortest time possible. I still think that in spite of these problems, the Games era still has very good animation, and a special mention has to go to Blazing Entrails since that episode was animated by a completely different studio, and it's no wonder since the backgrounds look more detailed and vibrant than usual, and so do the character models, expressions, and everything really. I'd recommend that episode just on the basis that it's eyecandy.

tl;dr version: Ren & Stimpy set a standard for animation that I believe no show afterwards could ever reach. There's something meticulous about its fluidity and expressiveness that's just hard to match... maybe it's the fact that there was a strict rule that no two drawing could ever look the same, I dunno, and there are techniques employed in the backgrounds that are able to convey so much more than an off-the-wall expression. It's clear this show had a very big budget and they used every penny for their worth, as a lot of the expressions and drawings are what I'd call works of art.

CHARACTERS: This is a section I want to abandon when I feel like it in future reviews because some shows like Family Guy and South Park have way too many notable and interesting characters, but I'm really happy that Ren & Stimpy has a limited cast of characters. Not only because it makes it less of a chore to write endless paragraphs no one will read, but because I also think it fits in with this show's absurd nature. The show rarely introduces new characters, so instead they reuse older ones like Wilbur Cobb and have him play the role of... just about anything. In one episode, he's the Walt Disney of animation, and the next he's an angel in heaven.

But when it comes to the characters in this series, just about all of them are memorable. The titular duo in particular are two of my favorite characters I like to sit around and watch, even when some episodes aren't always interesting. Ren is, generally speaking, a funny character, I love the accent that both John K and Billy West gave him as it makes everything he says ten times funnier, ESPECIALLY when he loses it. The character is generally an asshole, sometimes even borderline abusive to Stimpy, but he always gets his comeuppance for doing so, and it's clear that he genuinely cares about Stimpy since the first episode had him beg some pet owners to adopt Stimpy, and then the next two episodes had him be depressed over the fact Stimpy isn't there-- that's a theme that carries over into other episodes too, like Hermit Ren. However, Ren's crowning moments are, obviously, when he goes crazy, it leads to some of the most gruesome, twisted, and honestly hilarious moments in the entire series. There's him beating up George Liquor in Man's Best Friend, the scene where he gruellingly describes how he's going to kill Sven and Stimpy, him destroying his bed in In the Army, the entirety of Space Madness, and the best of them all: Contemplating killing Stimpy in Stimpy's Fan Club-- that's one of my favorite moments in all of animation.

  Ren in general always feels like a ticking time bomb, you never know when he's going to go crazy... or not, because this character doesn't always do that. Sometimes he'll show his vulnerable side, like in the aforementioned Stimpy's Fan Club, the episode's conflict was initiated just because Ren didn't feel loved, there's also Stimpy's Cartoon Show, where he cried about being untalented-- I'll even throw in the ending of Fake Dad where he cries when Kowalski leaves him.

You'd think that some of these moments are 100% serious and heartfelt but there's sometimes a rugpull where Ren, of course, becomes abusive in a different way-- this character in general is a mess and that's why I love him, but I like Stimpy more of the two.

For being the idiot best friend, Stimpy is surprisingly anything but that-- I'd even argue he's smarter than Ren. The cat's a chef and a scientist, and he normally isn't that stupid-- he has a childlike innocence to him, but there's no episode where I'd call him a flatout moron besides Sven Hoek. In every other episode, this character has a surprising level of awareness, and that fact alone makes Stimpy honestly one of the most well-written and overall best "idiot" deuteragonists in any show. Most of the jokes surrounding Stimpy usually have to do with Ren's reactions to his actions or childish statements instead of him doing something legitimately dumb. While he is meant to be the stupid one between him and Ren, Stimpy is honestly a lot more adorable in my eyes-- his naivety and love of his best friend instantly makes him the most likeable character on this show, and I think that Billy West did an excellent job voicing this character too.

None of the other side characters have much to them, but I'd still say overall that they're funny characters. Powdered Toast Man is one of the more subversive superheroes I've seen in any cartoon-- other shows that have the subversive superhero have them be stupid, incompetent, or both. There are exceptions like Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy in SpongeBob, but I ultimately like what they did with Powdered Toast Man more. They gave this superhero so many stupid features that it's comical-- the way he flies in the air is literally random, sometimes he'll fly backwards, diagonally, or I have no clue. He's not incompetent, but most of his emergencies tend to be the stupidest things imaginable, I'd explain what they are but they'd spoil the joke, so just go and watch the episodes Powdered Toast Man and Powdered Toast Man vs. Waffle Woman, both are hysterical and some of my favorites.

      Other side characters don't have much to them, but I think when they do pop up, they can get a laugh, like Mr. Horse, Old Man Hunger, that fat lady whose name I never got, Wilburr Cobb, Kowalski, George Liquor, just about all of them are memorable and funny-- I don't care to explain why since there's no point to it.

tl;dr version: Every single character on this show is memorable and funny in some way-- the titular duo have such a spastic dynamic that they're always fun to watch even when some episodes don't have the most substance or best pacing, and Stimpy in particular is one of the best-written "idiot"-type characters I've ever seen.

GENERAL THOUGHTS ON REN & STIMPY: I've been wanting to write a section like this for YEARS, and I finally get to do it. So, uh, I love Ren & Stimpy... a lot. The moment that I finished season 1, I instantly grew an attachment to this show and would watch it endlessly in 2017 even if what I watched was limited-- the show was just THAT funny and fascinating to me. Seriously, words can't describe just how obsessed I was with this show, I went out of my way to see what cartoon creators like Dan Harmon (Rick and Morty) and Matt Groening (The Simpsons) had to say about this series, where exactly I could find this show's influence, how other shows' boundary-pushing compared to this one, so on and so forth. I highly love and respect this series for what it is, and what it did for animation, even if you don't like this series, the one thing you will commonly hear people say is that they respect this series, and there's good reason for that.

If you told me Ren & Stimpy was a kids show, I would only half believe you, because the amount of crap this show has gotten away with is insane. Even nowadays, where censorship is a lot less heavy (or, so I think), even when there exists series that are specifically aimed at an older audience-- they cannot compare to how raunchy, gross, and irreverent Ren & Stimpy is. This makes the series a million times funnier, I mean the show is slapstick-heavy and they almost always land because of how good the animation is, and the timing of the slapstick, but when Ren & Stimpy does other kinds of humor... the series suddenly becomes a thousand times funnier.

Seriously, so many moments in this series will have you question how they got past the censors at all-- I don't think any show nowadays would even attempt to do the things that Ren & Stimpy has. The only show past this one, that I can think of, that pushed the boundaries for what it could get away with is Regular Show. That show got away with saying crap, turd, there are some moments where characters come close to swearing, and there are a ton of sexual innuendos in that series.

Guess what? That applies to Ren & Stimpy ad infinitum. I can't name anything particularly dirty in season 1, other than maybe some characters saying "crap" (which isn't that much of a shocker since even a show like Dexter's Laboratory got away with saying it), season 2 ramped up this series' edginess to such a degree that many moments had my jaw touching the floor. I mean... the episode Powdered Toast Man had him save the pope, burn the Bill of Rights to make a fire, and then the episode ended with Powdered Toast Man roasting a sausage over a fire, while his female assistant roasted a marshmallow... in which we see it drip a little. Man's Best Friend is, by definition, a banned episode, but it stars a character named "George Liquor American". They gave the name of a character in a supposedly-kids cartoon "liquor". Out West is about two idiots looking for a reason to hang people, only to realize they've hanged just about everyone, and the episode ends with a song about hanging.

Every single episode starting from season 2 has something messed up in it, and I'm not willing to go through all of them since it'd ruin the surprises, but these moments definitely catch you offguard and will make you laugh if you have the sense of humor for it. Ren & Stimpy is a show that carries a pretty cynical and one could say "mean-spirited" nature since a lot of episodes feel like the universe is against both characters... more of the time Ren, but the show knows how to make some episodes light-hearted or at least know never to cross the line so that episodes are easier to stomach... except for It's a Dog's Life-- I felt like that one went a bit too far, and even then, I respect this episode for its darker atmosphere and twisted scenes... the episode literally opens with Ren & Stimpy being sent to a gas chamber while a priest reads from The Old Testament, I can't not at least revere what they were able to get away with.

That's what makes Ren & Stimpy work as well it does for me, the fact that an episode can start to lighthearted and innocent and turn into something dark and callous, or maybe an episode will be that all the way through, some episodes could even just be constant strings of jokes like An Abe Divided or Stimpy's invention, some could have legitimately heartfelt stories like Terminal Stimpy or A Visit to Anthony-- the show can do literally anything and it would make sense in the weird universe that this show has created for itself. Not to mention that it always keeps the viewer on his/her seat, you never know what this series could throw out next-- sometimes episodes can be completely batshit stupid like Pen Pals-- that episode is about Ren & Stimpy wanting to break INTO JAIL just so that Ren can avoid paying his taxes, the episode is a goldmine of comedy just for this premise alone.

I feel like I should have more to say, but to be honest, I don't, because if we're talking about the original show, I don't have any general issues with Ren & Stimpy. Season 1 was pretty sluggish, but it still had a lot of funny moments, and it ended on one of the funniest cartoon episodes ever made, there could be a bad egg here or there but I could still point to a moment or two that made me laugh, and this would be a good place to end the review, but there's just one more thing I need to cover and you already know what it is.

ADULT PARTY CARTOON: Did you know that I've seen Adult Party Cartoon 3 times? That was three times too many, to be honest, but I don't regret doing that. Back in 2017, when I saw this show twice, I didn't find it the absolute bottom of the barrel cartoon that many people, especially cartoon YouTubers, made it out to be. Hell, I didn't even dislike it-- if we're talking "ratings", I went back and forth between calling this show "Meh" and calling it "Poor" before settling on the former. I tried my hardest to be lenient on this series back then because I thought that what caused this show to turn out the way it did was executive meddling (this is now proven untrue, everything raunchy and unpleasant in this show was on John K's hands and it was a lie that Spike TV forced him to add in edgier material), an episode like Altruists did have moments that could fit in the original show, but then the next scene would have Stimpy kissing a duck for an overly long period of time.

On my third rewatch though... yeah... I have to admit that this series is pretty bad, as while I still do think the series isn't the absolute worst... I certainly do not like it and my reasons vary from "it tries way too hard" to "this is slow and boring as sin".

I don't think this series would be bad for me, if it wasn't for the fact that EPISODES HAVE RIDICULOUS RUNTIMES That's the biggest issue plaguing Adult Party Cartoon-- the length. Onward and Upward is 20 minutes, Ren Seeks Help is 22, Fire Dogs 2 is 27, Naked Beach Frenzy is... 25? Don't remember. Altruists is the longest, running for a whopping 39 mins, and Stimpy's Pregnant is 29.

Want to know the most ironic part? Despite being the shortest episode, Onward and Upward is the one that felt like it lasted the longest, because that episode dragged out scenes forever. That's the other issue plaguing this series other than its length: the dragging. Scenes will linger on forever and it'll take even longer to move onto the next point, the first 7 minutes of Onward and Upward is filled with annoying snoring and extremely juvenile jokes that are trying to be 'gross', but come off as pathetic instead. Even Ren Seeks Help, an episode that I've always liked, had an opening that went on for a bit too long, though it more forgivable there since at least it conveyed the point that Ren messed up badly.
  A criticism people have of the original show is that it has sluggish pacing, and although I do understand where they're coming from, I don't agree with it outside of season 1, as the rest of the episodes felt well-paced-- fast-paced even, especially in the Games era. But when it comes to Adult Party Cartoon, the runtimes coupled with the constant dragging of scenes, ultimately made this series a boring one to watch, I didn't pay attention to a majority of Stimpy's Pregnant because my attention span was reduced to 0 after sitting through the first 5 episodes.
Even an episode like Altruists, which did have some funny moments and overall tried so hard to capture the magic of the original show, was still bad because of how boring and long the episode was. But okay, runtimes and dragging shouldn't be a problem if the series is funny, right?

You're right, but Adult Party Cartoon isn't funny. I did get a few laughs here and there, but all the other times this show tells jokes, they end up being some of the most juvenile and eyeroll worthy gags the series has ever done. Onward and Upward tried so hard to be disgusting and raunchy, but the jokes it does have wouldn't be out of place in any other adult cartoon-- the original show had moments way more nerve-wracking than this. I don't think anything in Adult Party Cartoon can come close to Ren pulling his nerve endings in Ren's Toothache, because at least that episode went to territories that even your average adult sitcom wouldn't even think of going.

Snot, spit, vomit, this is the only thing Onward and Upward has to offer, and even if we treat these as jokes, they last so long that they lose their shock/gross-out value almost immediately. I didn't even mention the scene where Ren made Stimpy kiss a rat's ass-- they dragged that one out too, and to be honest, Ren kissing Stimpy in the pilot was "grosser" than this. It's just so sad to see how a show that once had the ability to shock and gross the audience, whilst simultaneously making them laugh, is reduced to desperately trying to be gross, but going with the most by-the-numbers methods that no one has ever found gross.

I have other problems with this series too, including the animation. I will say that from a visual aspect, it does look cleaner and better than most of the original show besides Blazing Entrails and a majority of season 2, but I, personally, do not like the way this series looks at all. Ren & Stimpy's designs are nothing complex, so giving them all these details makes them look a lot more grotesque, it really reminds me of the way that season 6 of SpongeBob looks-- a lot glossier, with details being put on characters that shouldn't even have such details in the first place, and a color palette that can only be described as puke-- I don't know how to describe what they did to the colors here but the original show looked a lot more pleasing than this.

But if we're talking about the actual animation, it can look good or move well when it wants to (I will say the expressions in this show are on-point), but it's obvious this show had some production issues since there are moments where characters will speak but not have their lips move at all-- this is a problem I have not seen in Ren & Stimpy since the pilot. I noticed that in Onward and Upward and Ren Seeks Help that they added in voice-lines post-production, and it came off as jarring-- Big House Blues had an excuse for doing this since it was a pilot, this show has a bigger budget than that episode I'm pretty sure, so what excuse does this series have? There are also moments where characters will jump between two frames, or in the case of Naked Beach Frenzy, take several frames of animation, loop them, and then flip them horizontally to give the illusion that a character is turning around. I noticed, once again, in Ren Seeks Help that, while changing shots, they forgot to change the background and thus changed it a bit later than usual. Seriously, there so. many. animation. errors, and it sometimes ruins any intrigue I once had.

And y'know what? I can say the same for the sound editing-- this show's sound editing is terrible because it relies on so many stock sound effects. The original show did too, and many cartoons to this day still do, but they don't piece two different sound effects together, or play the same ones over and over in the way this series does. There are moments where they'll take a dramatic impact, and then mid-way through the first one, play the second part of another dramatic impact. It sounds wrong, it's jarring, and it makes no sense from a professional standpoint.

There's just one last thing that bothers me about this show, and it would be Stimpy's voice. Billy West did not reprise his role as Stimpy, and Eric Bauza ended up taking his place, to which I say: Eric Bauza's Stimpy is terrible, it does not sound like the character at all and it sounds like a whinnier, pale imitation. His voice often came off as distracting to me, and I hated that because I felt like Billy West played the role of Stimpy so well-- I can't explain why exactly, but I just feel like no one could take Billy West's place.

tl;dr version: The original Ren & Stimpy was honestly hilarious for just how twisted, sick, and callous the show was. So many moments will catch you offguard and make you ask how they were able to air in the first place, it really was groundbreaking for the censors, and besides Regular Show, I can't name any others that came close. It had a cynical nature to it, but they made sure to pack episodes with jokes upon jokes to mitigate this rather cruel nature this series regularly has. Unfortunately, Adult Party Cartoon threw away everything that made the original series good to begin with and went with by-the-numbers grossout that isn't even gross, bad sound-editing, constant animation errors, absurdly long runtimes, and constant dragging of scenes. Just so you know, the original R&S didn't have any 22 minute episodes besides A Scooter for Yaksmas, all the other "specials" are like... 16 minutes in runtime.

CONCLUSION: I love the original Ren & Stimpy-- I was expecting the pie chart to look a lot better than what it is, but the show isn't that long, so I think calling it GREAT wouldn't be so wrong of me. Everything about the original show clicked with me, and to this day, it still means a lot to me, personally. Even 30 years later, this series is one-of-a-kind and I love marveling at how many things they were able to shamelessly slip past the censors, it makes this already funny show even funnier, as it adds a layer of edge. You could be turned off from the cynical nature, but the number of jokes that land end up making that cynical nature a lot more of a background than a foreground, I think all the characters are funny, well-written, and memorable, and the animation of the original show aged perfectly-- it still looks beautiful all these years later. I don't have any general problems with the original show, but Adult Party Cartoon is borderline worthless, it sucked out the soul the original show had and replaced it with worse-looking visuals, bad grossout, bad sound editing, the works. It wasn't enough to ruin the series' overall grade, and I guess it isn't all too bad since I like Ren Seeks Help, but if it vanished, I wouldn't care. It took me forever to get this scorecard done, but it's finally here.

I have no clue what show I'm going to tackle next, I'm just waiting for Family Guy Season 20 to drop in 6 days from now lol

Here's a free Top 20

20. In the Army

19. Who's Stupid Now?
18. My Shiny Friend
17. Bass Masters
16. Ren's Bitter Half
15. Stupid Sidekick Union
14. No Pants Today
13. The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen
12. A Visit to Anthony
11. Powdered Toast Man vs. Waffle Woman
10. Ren's Brain
9. Man's Best Friend
8. Blazing Entrails
7. Pen Pals
6. Stimpy's Cartoon Show
5. Terminal Stimpy
4. Sven Hoek
3. An Abe Divided
2. Stimpy's Invention
1. Stimpy's Fan Club