Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon"

Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" (a.k.a. Ren and Stimpy's All New Adult Party Cartoon) is an American animated television series created by John Kricfalusi and produced in 2003 by Spümcø. It aired on Spike on the summer of 2003. The series is a spin-off of the critically acclaimed Nickelodeon series The Ren & Stimpy Show. The series only aired six episodes, only three of which aired on its network. The last three were later released on DVD in July 18th, 2006. The show also lasted only two months in 2003 before being canceled due to negative reception. The series was not only Spümcø's last animated series before its closure in 2005, but also the last TV show that Kricfalusi ever made before his retirement in 2018 due to sexual misconduct allegations, as well killing the Ren & Stimpy franchise and preventing the franchise getting a revival or a reboot until August 5, 2020, when ViacomCBS announced a Ren & Stimpy reboot for Comedy Central (one of three reboots for the network) without John Kricfalusi; a new creative team will be involved, though Billy West and a few of the original writers have been confirmed to return. Bob Camp's involvement in said reboot (if any) is currently unknown.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The concept of an adult’s spin-off of a children’s TV show is definitely a very bad idea, which was why it upset and angered so many fans of the original show.
 * 2) * To be fair, stuff like this can work, but only if you put in as much effort as people wanted. The fifth season of Samurai Jack, for example, has worked, because it not only stayed true to the first four seasons, but also gave it a darker tone. Shows like Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021, and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law also worked, because they were funny and clever, though the original shows that they were based on did not receive as much praise. However, when you make it into an adult show that's nothing but raunchy, it insults the fanbase very hard.
 * 3) * The original may have been more appropriate for adults than for kids, but not to this extent.
 * 4) The humor is nothing more than absurd shock value and gross-out humor that is far too cruel, vulgar, disturbing, and disgusting even for its intended adult audience.
 * 5) It sucks out the charm of the original 1991 Nicktoon, and ruined everything on how special Ren & Stimpy was on Nickelodeon.
 * 6) * To be fair, one of the main reasons what made the original Ren & Stimpy beloved by fans is how Nickelodeon's censorship restrictions not only controlled its amount of adult and gross-out content, yet it encouraged the writers of the original Ren & Stimpy to be more creative with their comedic gags and story executions. Since Adult Party Cartoon is aimed at adults and therefore is unaffected by censorship unlike the original show, this resulted to the show losing its creativity in favor of overuse of gross-out and raunchy humor without any network censorship interference whatsoever.
 * 7) Awful and despicable stories and unfunny episode ideas, with ignorant jokes in some of them.
 * 8) Lots of scenes are drawn out and go on for way too long, like the toilet scenes in "Fire Dogs 2" and some jokes in "Altruists", for example.
 * 9) Disturbing and cruel moments in the show, such as killing/abusing animals, suicide, torment, sexual harassment, etc.
 * 10) In the original show, Ren beats up Stimpy when he did something stupid because for one thing, it's hilarious, and it never went over the top or overly mean-spirited and harsh, but in the reboot, he beats up Stimpy and torments him for no reason.
 * 11) The title characters have been reduced to mindless perverts with little-to-no redeeming qualities (especially Ren);
 * 12) * Stimpy, who was portrayed as ditzy, dumb, and happy-go-lucky like in the original series, is portrayed as a stereotypical homophobic character over Ren for no reason and acts extremely stupid and pointless and has no purpose to the show whatsoever.
 * 13) * Ren in "Adult Party Cartoon" is portrayed as a monstrous, unpleasant, and psychopathic moron who tormented animals and bugs in his childhood to inflict the pain on others, he murdered his therapist after being called crazy, acted like a mindless pervert to bimbo women with no good qualities, has showed no reasons why he is scary and cruel like how he had his right reasons to act the way he was in the old show, and seemed to care a lot less about Stimpy. This is an example of doing a sour-tempered character backwards.
 * 14) Speaking of Ren, the episode "Ren Seeks Help", has been considered one of the worst episodes in cartoon history, because it makes Ren a tormentor who murders helpless animals for his own pleasure (as mentioned above). There was no reason for Ren to act the way he is other than for shock humor, but in the old show, he has his right reasons to be scary and cruel because of the way he is, and in "Adult Party Cartoon", it was done all backwards. The writers also made him even more crueler and unfunny as it is as of "Ren Seeks Help". Why did they ruin Ren's character? No seriously, what have they done?
 * 15) Episodes like "Stimpy's Pregnant" and "Fire Dogs 2" contain false advertising and misleading titles at the same time because in "Stimpy's Pregnant", Stimpy actually isn't pregnant, he is just constipated and they had to have him bring out the poop baby anyway just for the sake of it. "Fire Dogs 2" had nothing to do with the first "Fire Dogs", it had nothing but pointless filler and focused more on a character who is basically an obese unfunny version of Fireman Sam who makes Homer Simpson look like a railway engine driver.
 * 16) The animation, while smooth and of very high quality, can get really very ugly and disturbing with all the washed-out colors and horrifying imagery.
 * 17) Although the theme song is catchy, it reuses the exact same intro as the original 1991 show without any attempts at changing the animation except the title card, which is incredibly lazy and uncreative. In addition, it is misleading for the most part, as it deceives viewers into watching the original Ren & Stimpy, when actually it is Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" .
 * 18) Nobody knew what Ren did to make Stimpy so upset with him in "Ren Seeks Help", but an argument is what caused it according to John Kricfalusi.
 * 19) None of the characters from the original show (save for the titular characters, Mr. Horse, Mr. and Mrs. Pipe, and the Fire Chief) such as Mr. Announcer Salesman, Muddy Mudskipper, Sven Hoek and Powdered Toast Man make an appearance in this series, not even George Liquor, a character John Kricfalusi uses in most of his projects.
 * 20) The animation is horrendous and looks awful.
 * 21) The voice acting, especially for Stimpy, is garbage and sounds terrible.
 * 22) This killed the Ren and Stimpy franchise until now.

Cancelled Episodes

 * 1) Life Sucks - Ren explains to Stimpy that life sucks, much to Stimpy's horror. After that, they have an extensive look at life's past tragedies like the Children's Crusade. According to John Kricfalusi himself, this was meant to be a prequel episode to "Ren Seeks Help". This is suggesting that this episode was the cause of Ren and Stimpy's argument, as it is never stated in "Ren Seeks Help" what Ren had done exactly. Production had begun on this episode, with some voice work and roughly a third of the storyboard completed at the time of the show's cancellation. This episode was also originally written for Nickelodeon.
 * 2) The Big Switch - The supposed sequel to "Ren Seeks Help", with it beginning with Stimpy no longer being tolerate to Ren's abuse any longer as the two argue over which is better by being an idiot or a "psychotic asshole". They finally settle the argument by making a bet that they can switch roles for a day. The episode's basic premise would somewhat be loosely made into the Games Animation era episode, "Who's Stupid Now?".
 * 3) Fishing Trip - Ren & Stimpy go on a fishing trip in search of the elusive foul-mouthed bass. The episode's basic premise is loosely related to the season 3 episode "Bass Masters" and the unproduced Spümcø episode "The Wilderness Adventure."
 * 4) The Wilderness Adventure - George Liquor takes Ren & Stimpy hunting in the deep woods. The episode was originally written for Nickelodeon, but was rejected several times. Michael Pataki was made to reprise his role as George Liquor. The storyboard for the rejected episode, however, were completed all the way back in the 90s, as far as before the show actually started production, as one of the ideas would later used in the season 2 episode The Great Outdoors. Two small portions of some of the storyboards of this episode had some voice work, sound effects, and music completed and put into part of the episode before the show's cancellation.
 * 5) My Little Ass - A fake commercial that was suppose to be parody the series, My Little Pony. The script for the commercial was written during when Kricfalusi was working on the new episodes for Spike, but it never came to fruition. (Source: John K. Interview - 08/19/03, WGN Radio)
 * 6) Powdered Toastman's Rolling Tobacco - A second fake commercial. The commercial was going to mark the return of Powdered Toastman. The idea for the commercial was conceived, but the commercial itself was never fully produced. (Source: John K. Interview - 08/19/03, WGN Radio)
 * 7) Log for Moms - A third fake commercial. This commercial was possibly going to be about a log specifically targeted to mothers. This commercial was planned, but it was never completed.
 * 8) The Succubus - The plot of this episode was going to be based on some of Kricfalusi's experiences with Robyn Byrd.
 * 9) Untitled Shampoo Master Episode - The character named Shampoo Master first appeared in Naked Beach Frenzy, and Kricfalusi was planning on making an entire episode dedicated to him.
 * 10) Untitled Mike Barrier Episode - An episode about Mike Barrier's own interests and fears that was planned to be made, though it never began production.
 * 11) Untitled Father Episode - Another episode was going to be about the specific tastes and phobias of someone, this time being Kricfalusi's own father. The episode was left unfinished.

Reception
Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" was universally panned by both critics, audiences and longtime Ren and Stimpy Fans. It currently sits at 2/10 on IMDb. According to Wikipedia, Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" has been listed as one of the worst tv shows of all-time. PhantomStrider despises this cartoon and considers it to be worst than shows like Problem Solverz and Fanboy & Chum Chum. Billy West (Stimpy's Voice Actor) rejected the series, calling it the worst thing he has ever seen.

WatchMojo ranked it No. 2 on the Top 10 Worst Animated TV Comedies.