Stimpy's Big Day
| "Stimpy's Big Day" | |
|---|---|
| The Ren & Stimpy Show episode | |
 Title card | |
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 1 |
| Directed by | John Kricfalusi |
| Story by | John Kricfalusi Vincent Waller |
| Production code | RS-01B |
| Original air date | August 11, 1991 |
"Stimpy's Big Day" is the first episode of the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on August 11, 1991.
Plot
[edit]In the first part of a two-part story, Ren and Stimpy are living together in a trailer park. Ren berates Stimpy for spending too much time watching cartoons on television and, in particular, The Muddy Mudskipper Show. Stimpy enters a poetry contest for the Nitty Gritty Kitty Litter company where he declares his love of their kitty litter despite Ren's opposition. Stimpy's inane poem wins the first prize. As a result, Stimpy is awarded $47 million and an appearance on The Muddy Mudskipper Show. Ren tries to steal the $47 million by pretending to be Stimpy. Stimpy leaves for Hollywood while Ren becomes lonely in his trailer park. The story concludes with the next episode, The Big Shot!.
Cast
[edit]- John Kricfalusi – Ren
- Billy West – Stimpy
- Harris Peet – Muddy Mudskipper
- Cheryl Chase – Pool Babe
- Darrin Sargent – TV Announcer
- Jim Smith – TV Announcer
- Vincent Waller – Pillow
Production
[edit]Production started in October 1990 in order to meet the scheduled premiere in August 1991. After The Ren & Stimpy Show was approved by the network in September 1990, Spümcø hired new animators in order to kick off the series' production.[1] Most of the people whom John Kricfalusi hired were artists who had previously worked with Kricfalusi on The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil in 1988.[2] The painter Teale Wang recalled in 2009 that Kricfalusi had an unorthodox way of recruiting artists, as she stated that, in early 1991, "John offered me a full-time job, but I told him I was going back to The Simpsons. He looked at me and said, 'oh I get it. You like it safe. You don't like to take chances. I understand'. I got so pissed off, I told him to fuck off and that I'd take his job! I was actually shaking. He knew exactly what he was doing. I only knew him two weeks, but he had figured me out in two minutes".[1] In its early days, Spümcø was described as more as a "mom-and-pop shop", and not until the first months of 1991 did the studio operated more like a conventional animation studio.[1]
Much of the episode was drawn by Kricfaluso and Lynne Naylor, the co-founders of Spümcø.[1] Naylor simplified the design of Ren and Stimpy from their look in their debut in the 1990 pilot episode Big House Blues under the grounds that it took too much time and was too expensive to draw the characters in frame by frame as was done in style of the Big House Blues.[3] In Big House Blues, Ren and Stimpy had an "underground" look that was gone by Stimpy's Big Day.[4] Naylor argued that a simpler design was needed to save money and time.[3] This was especially the case with Ren as he was notoriously difficult to draw properly, and many cartoonists have failed at drawing Ren.[3] Naylor's redesign of Ren and Stimpy became the norm for the rest of the show, though Kricfalusi has expressed preference for the original look of the duo in the Big House Blues.[3]
Production was greatly hindered when Naylor broke up with Kricfalusi in March 1991, after which she left Spümcø and would not involved with The Ren & Stimpy Show until after Kricfalusi's firing.[1] Working on Stimpy's Big Day imposed serious strains on their relationships as Naylor was far more committed to reaching the deadlines imposed by the studio than Kricfalusi (a factor that contributed to his later firing by Nickelodeon).[5] David Koenigsberg of Spümcø recalled: "She was building up with all this tension because she felt the deadlines much more oppressively than John did".[5] Koenigsberg recalled that the other animators would laugh and joke while working, but Naylor "was like the uptight librarian reminding everyone 'we have to go back to work now'. She was serious, it was not a joke. I remember talking to her one day about how we should laugh at this, and she really couldn't".[5] Naylor had completed the layouts for Stimpy's Big Day when she broke up with Kricfalusi.[5] However, despite the break-up, Naylor played a major role in Stimpy's Big Day as she drew the opening scene where Ren criticizes Stimpy for watching cartoons too much, which established a dynamic that continued for the rest of the show.[6] Both Kricfalusi and Naylor had been born in the 1950s, and as result the couple set Stimpy's Big Day sometime in the 1950s as a tribute to the world of their youth.[6]
Reception
[edit]American journalist Thad Komorowski rated Stimpy's Big Day favorably, giving the episode three stars.[7] Karen Schomer, television critic of The New York Times, noted in 1992 that the episode showcased how the show was different from other animated series at the time, with its gross-out humor, the characters' distinct lack of good will and self-awareness contributing to its popularity amongst older audiences.[8] The American critic Matt Langer wrote in Stimpy's Big Day "Kricfalusi constantly made reference to the detritus of American culture, and deliberately violated norms of good taste."[9]
Books
[edit]- Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1593931100.
- Langer, Matt (June 1993). "Animatophilia, Cultural Production and Corporate Interests: The Case of 'Ren & Stimpy'". Film History. 5 (2): 125–141.
- Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1629331836.
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e Komorowski 2017, p. 85.
- ^ Komorowski 2017, p. 84.
- ^ a b c d Komorowski 2017, p. 85–86.
- ^ Komorowski 2017, p. 86.
- ^ a b c d Komorowski 2017, p. 87.
- ^ a b Komorowski 2017, p. 88–89.
- ^ Komorowski 2017, p. 352.
- ^ Schoemer, Karen (11 March 1992). "Twisted Humor of Children's Cartoon Gains a Cult Following". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 June 2024.
- ^ Langer 1993, p. 131.
