Comedy Central's revival of The Ren & Stimpy Show is a bad idea -- not just because of its creator's sexual misconduct scandal

Paste Magazine

ViacomCBS says Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, who was accused of underage sex abuse in the 1990s, won't have anything to do with the Comedy Central reboot. But, says Garrett Martin. "you can’t have Ren & Stimpy today with Kricfalusi, but the problem is you also can’t really have it without him—at least the Ren & Stimpy that people might be nostalgic for. The first two seasons of its original run were the episodes that built its reputation, and they all bear Kricfalusi’s trademark absurdity and love for the grotesque. The series ran for three more seasons after he was fired in 1993, but they weren’t well-received at the time and aren’t fondly remembered today. Kricfalusi himself had an opportunity to return to his show in the early ‘00s, but even with the original creator on board the Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon revival was a notorious disaster that was cancelled after only three episodes aired. So here’s a show that’s heavily dependent on the vision of a creator who’s now completely toxic and already proved almost 20 years ago that his creative tank for new Ren & Stimpy episodes was utterly dry." Martin adds that "even the once-popular and supposedly good episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show absolutely do not stand up today. Kricfalusi’s vision might’ve turned the show into a phenomenon at the time, but today it mostly feels like empty shock value. It’s gross for the sake of being gross, and its characters are little more than loose collections of obnoxious traits that exist solely to set up jokes. Kricfalusi was inspired by the old irreverent shorts of Bob Clampett, and it shows; Ren & Stimpy lacks the character development and commitment to storytelling that cartoons have cultivated from the ‘90s on, which wouldn’t be a problem if its jokes were funny enough. They aren’t. The Ren & Stimpy Show is a great example of a short-lived fad that doesn’t really work outside of its specific moment in time. Does that mean a new Ren & Stimpy is destined to fail? Not at all. Perhaps a genuinely talented and creative mind will be put in charge of the revival, and recalibrate it into something that somehow fits the current culture without completely disregarding the spirit of the original. Still, of all of these nostalgic remakes coming to Viacom networks in the upcoming months, this is the one that makes the least amount of sense—and one that, in turn, makes the other ones lose a bit of their luster."