Update: John Kricfalusi, the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, was accused of underage sexual abuse on March 29, 2018.
Confession: I never got The Ren and Stimpy Show. I mean, look at this shit:
I was maybe 4 years old during Ren and Stimpy’s heyday, and it was one of the most oddly sophisticated shows on television. It made self-referential jokes out of its own episode titles. It portrayed a nasty, increasingly neurotic chihuahua and woefully stupid cat in a physically abusive relationship. The show’s grossness and crass sensibilities were matched only by its insistence on multi-syllabic words too complex for my pre-adolescent brain to comprehend. It animated entire episodes about farts. That’s just its brand of fun.
This week, Ren and Stimpy turns 25. This year, Nickelodeon might be putting it through a quarter-(after-)life crisis with talks of a revival. This century, there’s not a cartoon on the air that wasn’t somehow influenced by showrunner John K.’s willingness to stretch and contort his characters wildly away from their animation models and break with tradition.
I mean look, Ren and Stimpy was never a good kids’ show. It wasn’t really made for 4-year-olds. Nonetheless, I thank the animation gods every day that it exists, farts and all.
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