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, bestiality, 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. And has some animation errors.
 * 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, and the theme song is somewhat pitched up. 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, (Excluding Mans Best Friend If You Consider That An Episode Of Adult Party Cartoon) a character John Kricfalusi uses in most of his projects.
 * 20) This reboot would kill the franchise for 17 years until Comedy Central announced an upcoming reboot.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The voice acting was decent despite how bad the show was. Eric Bauza's performance as Stimpy was good (when he's not crying, at least) and sounded pretty close to his old voice actor, Billy West.
 * 2) A handful of jokes were kinda funny, like "You're the pitcher, I'm the catcher!" in "Onward and Upward".
 * 3) Thanks to being animated by Carbunkle Cartoons and Big Star Enterprise, the animation is still very detailed and fluid like in the original. This is one of the only redeemable qualities of this show.
 * 4) Mr. Horse, like in the original show, is a great character, and is probably the only character in the series who was consistently good.
 * 5) * Some of the other characters from the original show also returned such as Mr. and Mrs. Pipe in Altruists and Stinky in a brief cameo in Stimpy's Pregnant.
 * 6) A few good scenes:
 * 7) * The flute dance from "Fire Dogs 2" was entertaining and memorable.
 * 8) * The scene in the beginning of "Altruists" where Ren beats up Stimpy felt pretty close to the old show.
 * 9) * Ren remembering the first time meeting Stimpy was charming, but decent as said in "Ren Seeks Help".
 * 10) The theme song from the original series is still catchy.

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. Billy West (Stimpy's Voice Actor) rejected the series, calling it the worst thing he has ever seen. Ren seeks Help has a heavy amount of dislikes.

This show ruined both the reputations of Ren & Stimpy and Kricfalusi, because of the poor reviews that "Adult Party Cartoon" has received, and the reason why Ren & Stimpy didn't come back for their own animated movie to Nickelodeon nor were even set to appear in the canceled Nicktoons movie. Paramount Pictures, one of the subsidiaries of ViacomCBS, also rejected a proposed theatrical short for Ren & Stimpy in Spring of 2017, because they refused to let Nickelodeon do anything with the franchise.

On January 28, 2020, a crowdfunded documentary about the original show and Kricfalusi called Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story, was released at the Sundance Film Festival and was released both theatrically and video-on-demand on August 14, 2020. The documentary has no involvement from Nickelodeon and ViacomCBS, but they were credited in the documentary's end credits under "Special Thanks".

On August 5, 2020, ViacomCBS announced a reboot of Ren & Stimpy produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studios for Comedy Central without the involvement of Kricfalusi; according to Variety, he will not have financial remuneration or creative input from the reboot, due to his allegations in 2018. This caused various fans and people who worked in the original show, including Cheryl Chase, to speak out against the idea (due of Bob Camp not being involved with the reboot), while various animators also disliked the idea of rebooting existing franchises, instead of studios greenlighting their original ideas. One of the two victims of John Kricfalusi, Robyn Byrd, made a petition on Change to urging ViacomCBS cancel the reboot on Comedy Central, as according to her, it would "cause trauma and endanger fans and crew members who worked in the original series". Despite the petition and negative reaction to the reboot's announcement, mainly from the animation industry, according to Billy West, the reboot is still happening, but development was delayed due to COVID-19.