Stimpy's Fan Club

"Stimpy's Fan Club"
The Ren & Stimpy Show episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 17
Directed by	Peter Avanzino
Story by	Elinor Blake John Kricfalusi
Production code	RS5-13A
Original air date	April 24, 1993 (1993-04-24)

Stimpy's Fan Club is the 17th episode of the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that aired on the Nickelodeon network on 24 April 1993.

Plot

Ren and Stimpy receive a massive amount of fan mail. Ren is greatly upset when none of the fan letters are addressed to him. Stimpy consoles Ren by making him president of his fan club. Ren imagines that the position of a president of a fan club is alike to being president of the United States and has a fantasy of ordering nuclear strike that destroys much of the Earth. Ren writes replies to fan mail to Stimpy that are mean-spirted and rude as he is jealous of Stimpy's popularity. Stimpy warns him twice not to write insulting replies to his fans, but Ren continues. At night, Ren and Stimpy sleep together in the same bed. As Stimpy sleeps, Ren is consumed with jealousy over Stimpy's popularity and holds a lengthy soliloquy about the merits of killing Stimpy. Ren decides to kill Stimpy, but is prevented from doing so by a brain aneurysm. The next day, Ren disguises himself as Stimpy and tells the mailman not to deliver any more fan mail for Stimpy. Ren is delighted to receive a fan letter, but discovers it is from Stimpy. Ren breaks down in tears and hugs Stimpy. In a repeat of the same homoerotic joke from Nurse Stimpy, Ren asks Stimpy for reassurances that "nobody will know about us". Stimpy replies in the affirmative while all of the recurring characters watch in from the window.

Cast

• Ren-voice of John Kricfalusi
• Stimpy-voice of Billy West
• Mailman-voice of Billy West

Production

The episode was envisioned as part of the second season that had been ordered in November 1991. The script had been written by the showrunner John Kricfalusi and his girlfriend Elinor Blake. Production had started at the Spümcø studio in 1992, but little in the way of drawing for the episode had been completed by the time the Spümcø studio lost the contract on 21 September 1992. In one of his last performances as Ren, Kricfaulsi recorded the dialogue for Stimpy's Fan Club shortly before he was fired. Stimpy's Fan Club was finished by the Games Animation studio in late 1992-early 1993. Bob Camp, the showrunner of the Games Animation studio stated the artists of Games Animation "worked extra hard to make the cartoons [Kricfaulsi] had started as good as if he'd make them". The task of inking Stimpy's Fan Club was done at the Rough Draft Korea studio in Seoul.

Reception

The American journalist Thad Komorowski praised Krcfalulsi's voice acting in Stimpy's Fan Club as his "last masterwork for the series", stating that Kricfalusi's voice acting "does the heaviest lifting" as the director of Stimpy's Fan Club, Peter Avanzino "was not among the show's best draftsmen". Komorowski wrote that Stimpy's Fan Club was a modest success as Kricfalusi's voice acting was let down by indifferent draftsmanship. The episode was banned in the United Kingdom for the amount of violence in it along with the scene where Ren contemplates killing Stimpy.

Books

• Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1593931100.
• Finley, Laura L. (2018). Violence in Popular Culture American and Global Perspectives. Santa Monica: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781440854330.
• Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1629331836.