Saturday, July 13, 2013

Rein-Toon-Ation: Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon (2003)

A while back, we reviewed one of Spike TV's trio of adult cartoons that bowed in 2003, Stripperella. This time, we'll look at the return of John Kricfalusi's Ren & Stimpy.

At the time the following promo aired, Spike was still TNN (The National Network), and underwent the name change before the launch of Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon. The sad part is that this was the show that got the most hype, but was the worst of the trio (Gary The Rat, starring Kelsey Grammer (ex-Frasier), was the third part of The Block).



Your eyes ain't deceiving you, effendi. They were in a human's mouth, using it as a temporary living space. That said human was homeless was beside the point. In a nutshell, it illustrated just how far Kricfalusi (who was seen in the promo) was willing to go to push the envelope and do things that Spike's step-sister network, Nickelodeon, wouldn't let him do a decade earlier. Kricfalusi needed a hit series to rebound from the failure that was The Ripping Friends, which bombed at 2 networks (Fox & Cartoon Network) two years prior. Unfortunately, the people that followed the original Ren & Stimpy turned away from this show in droves. In fact, the entire block wound up cancelled.

Rating: D-.

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