Animotion and Car Tunes

[beatbandito]

Now I'm thinking about how a(n ultimately) subjective test to determine human legitimacy relies on technology where non-human intelligence extrapolates images. Or at least that's how most image enhancement works IRL. It's not exactly a theory, shut up I don't know why I continued to hit post even after all this extra text.

[Thad]

Welp, another box set to buy. Once they release the non-deluxe edition without a Funko Pop.

[Thad]

And the latest entry in "we can't film in live action so let's bring back an old cartoon" is...Ren and Stimpy. John K is not involved and will not be receiving any compensation.

Who was asking for this? Even if John K isn't involved, it's not like I can scrub that association from my brain. And even before I knew its creator was a predator, my appetite for any new Ren and Stimpy was pretty thoroughly killed by...pretty much everything after season 2 of the original series. (And I'm very much including Adult Party Cartoon.)

[beatbandito]

Look, if John K. isn't involved can't we just get past all that and enjoy the otherwise wholesome humor of the series?

You know, jokes like:
gay people like things in their butts
fat women are terrifying
muscular women are actually bulky male crossdressers /some terrible version of what they imagine trans women to be like
every other woman has a -10 pants size and tits bigger than their heads

the classics

[Thad]

...I'm pretty sure all that stuff was John K too.

The parts that weren't John K were...
...you know, that thing,
...and the time where...
...
...
...I think there was an episode with Billy Mumy?

[Brantly B.]

I was the exact age to like Ren & Stimpy the year it started. A year later, I was no longer that age, and have not been since.

[KingRoyal]

Ren & Stimpy is probably the best case for placing restrictions on an artist, honestly. From what I understand, Nickelodeon vetoing most of his ideas is what the original show any good at all.

[Mongrel]

It became a family favourite back when it was on, just because stinky gum-holes, log, pissing on the electric fence, and gritty kitty all became running gags/memes for my dad, brother, and I. Especially the stinky-gum holes, because dad would comically yell at us about that to brush our teeth, and because I knew the backstory of that episode.

(John K and Bob Camp were in a diner with John describing the episode's basic outline to Bob. A guy one table over yelled "Hey hey hey! We're trying to EAT here!", a line which ended up in episode as something yelled at Ren by a fly trying to eat shit when Ren opens his mouth).

So for us it's a nostalgia thing. I don't have any desire to rewatch any of it.

Well, outside maybe Don't whiz on the Electric Fence; I could probably watch that a few more times. But it'd still be nostalgia more than anything else.

[Thad]

I was the exact age to like Ren & Stimpy the year it started. A year later, I was no longer that age, and have not been since.

It's not just our age, though; the decline in quality after season 2 is real.

Ren & Stimpy is probably the best case for placing restrictions on an artist, honestly. From what I understand, Nickelodeon vetoing most of his ideas is what the original show any good at all.

That's certainly been my perception ever since Adult Party Cartoon (though that at least had one legitimately-good episode and two weird-enough-to-be-interesting ones; my opinion on the four episodes that aired pretty much matches Nathan Rabin's (NSFW), and I never saw the last two that went straight-to-DVD and were apparently especially horrifying).

I'd say there's a bit of gray area in that some of the episodes that Nickelodeon cut aired in more complete versions on MTV and those versions were better, and Man's Best Friend (the episode that never aired at all during the original run) is good. But on the whole, John K clearly did much better work under Nickelodeon's constraints than he did when Spike told him he could do whatever he wanted.

Ren and Stimpy/Nickelodeon/John K: Good.
Ren and Stimpy/Nickelodeon/no John K: Bad.
Ren and Stimply/John K/no Nickelodeon: Bad.

All that said, I can't watch any of them anymore without a bad taste in my mouth, any more than I can watch Fat Albert. I don't think Ren and Stimpy/no Nickelodeon/no John K will be good, but at this point that's irrelevant; I'm not going to be able to enjoy it no matter what its quality.

I guess the audience for the new show is "people who have fond memories of Ren and Stimpy but not enough to type it into Wikipedia"?

[KingRoyal]

I would say the Ren & Stimpy/no John K formula can work when you consider the comics, which were good and written by Dan Slott. Really, though, any team that can make a good Ren & Stimpy series could probably anything else good and that would be time better spent.

[Thad]

Fair point; I thought of mentioning the comics but decided my post didn't need one more tangent. Slott and Kazaleh both did some great work in that series. (Slott still lists the CYOA issue as among his favorite things he's ever written.)

Souvlaki?
Souvlaki!
Souvlaki-laki-laki!
HEY!

[Büge]

Who was asking for this?

Billy West.

The parts that weren't John K were...

Billy West.

It's not just our age, though; the decline in quality after season 2 is real.

Yeah, no Billy West.

[Destynova]

Well...there was the Big Red Button skit.

[Upthorn]

I think my favorite episode was the one where Ren & Stimpy were in boot camp and kept getting punished with KP duty. First they had to peel potatoes, then onions, all the way up to peeling H-bombs.

The in-between stuff that they did to earn those punishments might have been disgusting hog-shit, I can't remember, but the structure and running gag of ever-worse items to peel was actually pretty decent absurdist humor.

[Thad]

Who was asking for this?

Billy West.

The parts that weren't John K were...

Billy West.

It's not just our age, though; the decline in quality after season 2 is real.

Yeah, no Billy West.

No, after season 2 there was twice as much Billy West. It was Adult Party Cartoon that had no Billy West.

And look, I love me some Billy West; he was not the problem with seasons 3-6 or however long the show ran before they put it out of its misery. But I'd rather see him in something else, anything else, at this point. Futurama would be the obvious pick for a Billy West cartoon I want to see brought back, but I'd settle for Doug.

(I'm exaggerating a bit when I say there was nothing good or memorable in the Bob Camp era. I remember the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen and Chicken-in-a-Drawer being good.)

I think my favorite episode was the one where Ren & Stimpy were in boot camp and kept getting punished with KP duty. First they had to peel potatoes, then onions, all the way up to peeling H-bombs.

The in-between stuff that they did to earn those punishments might have been disgusting hog-shit, I can't remember, but the structure and running gag of ever-worse items to peel was actually pretty decent absurdist humor.

Yeah, that's some good comic escalation right there.

I don't remember the details but I liked Sarge. And at the end he grabs them in his fist and says "CONGRABULATIONS!"

[Mongrel]

IIRC, there was a lot of behind the scenes politicking that basically made showrunning R&S an absolute nightmare. After Nick pushed out John K, a bunch of other staff left in protest and Bob Camp was villified as some sort of cackling turncoat who was just in it for the money. That last bit may or may not be true, I can't really be fucked to find out.

As Thad mentions above, most fans knew Camp was effectively the showrunner from 3 onwards, but was the show bad because of him, because of Nick, or both? I can't say... and like I said, I don't really give a damn anymore.

[Thad]

IIRC, there was a lot of behind the scenes politicking that basically made showrunning R&S an absolute nightmare. After Nick pushed out John K, a bunch of other staff left in protest and Bob Camp was villified as some sort of cackling turncoat who was just in it for the money. That last bit may or may not be true, I can't really be fucked to find out.

Billy West said Kricfalusi tried to talk him into quitting too, in solidarity, and when he refused he got vilified too. But really, it was selfish and unfair of Kricfalusi to expect West to stick his neck out for him. IIRC Billy put it simply: "He's annoying."

The way West saw it, John K had stolen the role of Ren from him in the first place; as West tells it, he auditioned for both roles and expected to get both of them, but Kricfalusi decided late in the game that he wanted to play Ren himself.

John K did invite him back to play Stimpy again for Adult Party Cartoon, and West must have at least considered it because he read a script, dismissed it (correctly) as "just a bunch of gay jokes", and passed on it. Eric Bauza played Stimpy in Adult Party Cartoon.

As Thad mentions above, most fans knew Camp was effectively the showrunner from 3 onwards, but was the show bad because of him, because of Nick, or both? I can't say... and like I said, I don't really give a damn anymore.

Camp was and is a fine artist and animator (he worked on Thundercats, and you know how I feel about Thundercats), and directed a number of the good episodes of R&S while Kricfalusi was still onboard.

I suspect his comic sensibility probably isn't as sharp or distinctive as Kricfalusi's, but I definitely lay the decline at Nickelodeon's feet a lot more than at Camp's. Insofar as any of it was Camp's fault, it was his fault for choosing to be the guy who'd play ball and do things the way Nickelodeon wanted him to. If it hadn't been him, it would have been somebody else.

And as bland as the Camp era got, they never put out anything as bad as the first episode of Adult Party Cartoon (the "just a bunch of gay jokes" script that led West to pass on the gig).

And the bottom line is that all the talent in the world doesn't excuse being a shit of a human being. And it was pretty clear that John K was an abusive egomaniac even before we found out he was a child molester on top of it.

It made for a pretty simple and understandable David-and-Goliath narrative at the time, and I can certainly appreciate a fandom siding with a creator over a corporation. But it's become extraordinarily clear in the years since that John K is not the sympathetic figure we mistook him for at the time.

I admit to having some decidedly mixed feelings on the whole "John K isn't being compensated for this" announcement. On the one hand, good, obviously; I don't want anyone to pay John K to make cartoons anymore. But on the other hand, it's not as if Nickelodeon has decided to cut a creator out of a share of profits just this once due to extenuating circumstances, either; even if I don't have any sympathy for John K in particular, I really can't applaud a corporation cutting a creator out of profits as a matter of principle. I think I've made it pretty clear at this point that I think really the correct thing to do in this case would have been no new Ren and Stimpy at all, and just make something new instead. It's not like obvious Ren and Stimpy knockoffs were in short supply in the '90s.

[Thad]

Ooh, I thought of a cult cartoon I haven't seen anybody float for a revival yet: Duckman. Bring back Duckman!

[Mongrel]

Ooh, I thought of a cult cartoon I haven't seen anybody float for a revival yet: Duckman. Bring back Duckman!

Rocko's Modern Life?

[Niku]

Ooh, I thought of a cult cartoon I haven't seen anybody float for a revival yet: Duckman. Bring back Duckman!

this has basically been bob mackey’s drum to beat on the What A Cartoon podcast since episode 1. jason alexander has apparently been recently quoted that “we” (so himself and who knows who else) are always talking about it, soooo it’s possible!