The Great Outdoors (The Ren & Stimpy Show)

"The Great Outdoors"
The Ren & Stimpy Show episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 15
Directed by	Vincent Waller Ken Bruce
Story by	John Kricfalusi Vincent Waller
Production code	RS5-13B
Original air date	March 27, 1993 (1993-03-27)

The Great Outdoors is the 15th episode of the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that aired on the Nickelodeon network on 27 March 1993.

Plot

Ren and Stimpy go camping in the woods. The two go skinny-dipping at night, only to joined by Old Man Hunger and his mother, the Fat Lady. Ren tries to start a campfire, but only burns himself instead. Ren is drained dry by mosquitos. Ren contacts Beaver Fever from drinking dirty water, which causes to grow a beaver tail which he uses to attack Stimpy with.

Cast

• Ren-voice of Billy West
• Stimpy-voice of Billy West
• Old Man Hunger-voice of Billy West
• Fat Lady-voice of Billy West

Production

The episode was started by the Spümcø studio in 1992. The production was delayed, and the lay-out stage was done at the Rough Draft Korea studio in Seoul instead of at the Spümcø studio was usual as a cost-saving measure. Vincent Waller was in South Korea supervising the lay-out stage for The Great Outdoors when the Spümcø studio when learned on 21 September 1992 that Spümcø studio had lost the contract for The Ren & Stimpy Show, and that someone else would be finishing The Great Outdoors. Ken Bruce of the Games Animation studio was sent out to replace Waller..

Reception

The American journalist Thad Komorowski wrote that The Great Outdoors was a weak episode with no real plot, and that the episode "lacked finesse" as the artists at Games Animation were clearly not interested in the story.

Books

• Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1593931100.
• Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1629331836.