The Ripping Friends

The Ripping Friends
You might as well want to be ripping your own toenails with a crowbar and save your friends's eyes from witnessing such garbage.
Genre: Comedy Action Adventure Slapstick Running Time: 30 minutes Country: United States Canada Release Date: September 15, 2001 – January 26, 2002 Created by: John Kricfalusi Starring: Harvey Atkin Mark Dailey Michael Kerr Mike MacDonald Merwin Mondesir Seasons: 1 Episodes: 13

The Ripping Friends: The World's Most Manly Men! (also known as The Ripping Friends) is an American-Canadian animated television series, created by John Kricfalusi. The show premiered September 22, 2001 on Fox Kids, but was cancelled in September 2002. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block later picked up the show.

Why It Rips Itself Apart

1. Very cringeworthy and cliched concept: What if muscled men became "superheroes" (read: poorly written characters with superpowers)?
2. Despite being made by John Kricfalusi (the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show), the show hardly looks like his signature art style. And while some characters do look they were drawn by him, they look like someone else's creation.
   • The eponymous Ripping Friends' character designs in particular look like something you would expect from Doug TenNapel (the creator of Earthworm Jim).
3. At times, the Ripping Friends would just yell and scream. Even in moments when there's no reason to do so, it sounds like they are.
   • A notorious example would have to be Slab. We know that may sound racist (considering that he's the only black character in the show), but please, see it for yourself.
4. Mediocre voice acting, even from Harvey Atkin and Mark Dailey.
5. Abysmal and creepy character designs (especially The Ripping Friends and their foster mother, He-Mom).
6. Random, gross and nonsensically crappy plots:
   • "Rip's Shorts" is about Rip's underwear coming to life and controlling people to become evil.
   • "Stinky Butt" is about Citracett (one of the show's antagonists) being banished to hell, and then giving the superpower to control his farts (or "super farts", as Rip calls this superpower) and became his new supervillain alias, Stinky Butt the Foul.
   • The first one, "The Indigestible Wad" has the worst plot of all: A little girl went to the dentist, so her gum comes to life and steals saliva from other people's mouths, turning them into flavorless zombies, which is just disgusting.
7. Some extremely mean-spirited torture moments:
   • "Manman and Boyboy" contained scenes of child abuse that involves Boyboy (Manman's kid sidekick) constantly being put into jeopardy and treated as a butt-monkey throughout.
   • "Jimmy's Kidnapped" is a brutal Jimmy torture episode and is one of the two episodes (next to "The Infernal Wedding") to be banned from Fox Kids.
   • He-Mom putting the brothers through a painful and sadistic training regime in one episode. Worse, it's played for laughs!
8. Very cringe-worthy, unfunny and inappropriate jokes.
9. An infamous segment in one episode where Crag answers the question "Why do hot dogs come in a packet of 12, but Buns come in a packet of 8?" by flying into an argument involving a bun and a wiener, it ends with Rip tearing off the wiener's shirt to pull out his casing, splashing the bun with water to make her all soggy. You can watch the whole thing here.
10. Even if it wasn't entirely the best thing Disney has ever done, this show (along with Angela Anaconda) is one of the reasons why they had to buy Fox Kids, which makes us glad about the block's closure due to network decay.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Unlike most of John K's work (especially Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon"), the show doesn't involve too much on sex jokes and gross-out humor (despite having some).
2. The animation is at least passable, for thankfully being animated at Carbunkle Cartoons.

Reception

TBA

Trivia

• Kricfalusi had previously tried pitching the show in the late '80s, but networks considered it "too extreme".
• Infamous sexual harassment victim of John K., Robyn Byrd used to work in this show.
• This show also featured Eric Bauza, who would later voice Stimpy in the hideous Ren & Stimpy adult reboot. Which this show was also the first one that Eric Bauza worked as voice actor.

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