Ren Seeks Help (Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon")

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"Ren Seeks Help"

"This time, I've gotta do something about it. I'll seek help. I'll do it for you!"
(gets worse and murders someone)

Part of Season:	1
Episode Number:	2
Air Date:	July 3, 2003
Writer:	John Kricfalusi and Richard Pursel (story) Matthieu Cousin Butch Hartman (both writers/uncredited)
Director:	John Kricfalusi
Previous episode:	"Onward and Upward"
Next episode:	"Fire Dogs 2"

"Ren Seeks Help" is the second episode of Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon". It follows Ren finally feeling guilty about something abusive that he did to Stimpy, so he seeks a therapist to help him and tells his darkest childhood stories and why he became such an abusive psychopath in the first place.

Plot

After committing a horrible act towards Stimpy, Ren realizes how cruel he can be, and decides to get psychiatric help to do something about it.

You monster!!! - Stimpy

Why It Can't Be Helped

To get the elephant out of the room first: Unlike the original Ren & Stimpy series, this episode has an extremely cold, cruel vibe to it, and also feels more like a Ren & Stimpy horror creepypasta than an actual Ren & Stimpy episode or some fictional Lost Episode that isn't really meant to exist like Dead Bart or Squidward's Suicide. Yet, this episode, in particular, is treated as a comedy, when it all has material that works for a horror show with torture and drama.
Misleading title: Although Ren does seek help, he only goes to Dr. Horse to share memories of what he did in his youth, so he does not get any help at all.
Ren is at his absolute worst here, as he mentions how he enjoyed tormenting bugs when he was little and also kills Mr. Horse at the end after he is called crazy. This has since butchered Ren as a character and he is another example of why he suffered the worst amount of flanderization in this show, especially for a character that was beloved in the '90s. Worst of all, he hardly gets any comeuppance for his horrific actions.
Stimpy's screaming and crying in the beginning is extremely ear-piercing, although we do feel bad for him after Ren argued with him.
Downright hideous and nightmare-inducing title card with Ren making an extremely disturbing and grotesque face, with Stimpy making a rather questionable face.
Continuing from WICBH#3, the episode has horrifying moments of Ren torturing animals:
- Most notably, Ren is shown pulling legs off of a caterpillar, while the latter screams in agony.
- Ren licks a tick impaled in a stick with his tongue that has a sharp curl on the end.
- And we simply cannot forget about the frog. Ren finds a frog. He then rides his tricycle onto the frog against the wall, causing its guts to go out. He attaches jumper cables to the frog and starts a car, electrocuting the frog. The frog then collides with a pole and gets set on fire.
It is more or less a morbid rip-off of the episode Ren Needs Help from the original Ren & Stimpy, but with more disturbing imagery, even though that episode was conceived right after John Kricfalusi was fired from the original show.
Poor use of dark humor.
Ren does not even get punished by his parents; there is an instance where the audience think he is going to be punished, but his mother allows Ren to use a chainsaw instead of a gun to end the poor frog who wanted to die.
The ending is underwhelming yet very disturbing. It shows the severely mangled frog trying to shoot himself with a gun, but he still survives. Why end the episode like a Looney Tunes cartoon for all the horrible stuff everybody went through? It's off-putting and somewhat insulting to the Looney Tunes cartoons that it just becomes confusing.
Eight plot holes (and animation errors):
- Ren somehow gains demon-like horns on his head while attacking Mr. Horse, almost as if he transformed into a demon.
- Ren has a fourth toe and the fifth finger on his arm after he goes crazy even though Ren normally has three toes and four fingers and an animal control guy's hand being bitten off of his left arm to his right.
- Ren's father is a priest, even though priests (at least Catholic ones) cannot get married.
- While Ren is attacking Mr. Horse by scratching him, he appears not to have his clothes on, but when he is about to get the gun, he has his clothes on.
- The bitten hand with five fingers suddenly has four in the next scene where Ren swallows it.
- A pool of Stimpy's tears appears in the next shot, which shows the floor like the previous scene without transition.
- Logic fail: Ren somewhat screeches like a cat while killing Mr. Horse, even though he's a chihuahua.
- Ren became rabid so suddenly after Mr. Horse called him crazy and said that he's a horse.

Redeeming Qualities

The concept of Ren's past that caused him to be crazy is great but was terribly executed. This kind of thing works in a horror show, but it feels way too out of place in a comedy show, as stated in WICBH#1.
- Plus, it's actually understandable as to why Ren wants to see a therapist, because of what he did to Stimpy, and also, Ren does actually feel guilty for his actions for Stimpy, so at least he does show some compassion for Stimpy in this series, although this doesn't excuse what he did to Mr. Horse near the end.
- Unlike most APC episodes, this episode also has a more coherent structure with a more progressive narrative, even with some padding.
Ren does actually get some comeuppance where he got beaten up by Mr. Horse (albeit briefly) before getting detained and imprisoned by the Animal Patrol for all of the horrible actions he did throughout the episode, which is very satysfying.
Mr. Horse is the only tolerable character in the episode, especially with his line: "Psychologist? Are you nuts? I'M A HORSE!!!"
Plus, the line "What are you doing? Giving a gun to our little boy!", can be seen as a funny one-liner.

Reception

Ren Seeks Help was universally panned by critics, audiences, and longtime Ren & Stimpy fans. It is often considered the worst episode of the series, though sometimes also the best due to its positive qualities. This episode got the series canceled before the remaining were on DVD. It currently sits at a 3.3/10 on IMDb, being the lowest rated in the whole series. PhantomStrider considered this the worst cartoon episode and the worst cartoon of all. Well-known cartoon devotee Thad Komorowski was move favorable on the episode, giving it four and a half out of five stars on his Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story book, and calling it "a grim classic". Besides that, It was largely hated. However, surprisingly enough, the episode was actually well-received when it first released as people said that it was the least bad of all the episodes and as time passed, people have looked back at the episode and realized that it wasn't as bad as other episodes in the series like Naked Beach Frenzy or Stimpy's Pregnant, but that doesn't mean people said it was outright good, people still dislike this episode just not as much as other cartoon reviewers, most specifically PhantomStrider and TheMysteriousMrEnter or don't think it's as horrendous as any of the other episodes of the show.

Trivia

This episode was originally written in 1991 for the original show's second season when the first season of the original Nickelodeon's Ren & Stimpy series finished production and started airing until 1992 according to John Kricfalusi, however, Nickelodeon declined the idea as of it being too intense, so 11 years later, the idea was sent over to Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon.
Despite Richard Pursel still loving this episode, he hates the parts of Mr. Frog being suicidal, tortured and brutally abused by Ren.
Ren's father was inspired in the combination of John Kricfalusi's own father, Mike Kricfalusi and his Unitarian minister grandfather.
The Mr. Horse's line from the ending of this episode, "Are you nuts?! I'm a horse!" became an internet meme.
As stated in the reception content, the episode was originally well received when it first came out, but then after time went by, people considered this the least bad episode in the series.

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