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Recap / Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" E2 "Ren Seeks Help"

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The real Mickey Mouse wouldn't hurt a fly... or in this case, a frog.

Original air date: 7/3/2003

"Ren Seeks Help" is the second episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show: Adult Party Cartoon.

Ren did something so horrible to Stimpy, it left Stimpy in hysterical grief and Ren in guilt. To atone for this, Ren seeks out a therapist to control his violent urges once and for all.

After wandering past a dreary cityscape, Ren eventually comes across the office of Dr. Mr. Horse, who agrees to listen to his problems. And that's when Ren goes into detail about his disturbing childhood, where he describes the unspeakable pain he experienced being spanked at birth, which he took out on innocent animals. His most notable victim was a frog, who was violated, blown up, ground up by a tricycle wheel, and electrocuted. By a car battery. Upon learning that the frog wanted to be put out of his misery, Ren decided to force him to continue living instead.

Ren then shares with Mr. Horse his relationship with Stimpy, talking about how they first met. He then goes on to reveal what exactly he did to Stimpy, which is never revealed to the audience. This horrifies Mr. Horse so much that he proceeds to assault Ren, causing Ren to go berserk. He beats Mr. Horse, and bites off the hand of one of the asylum workers trying to capture him. After Ren is hauled away, the frog from Ren's childhood visits the bloody scene, and shoots himself with Mr. Horse's gun which turns out to be a 'BANG' gun that impales him, leaving him in even more agony.

(cue "That's All Folks" spoof and credits)

Examples:

  • Artistic License – Traditional Christianity: Ren's father was a Catholic priest, even though members of that priesthood are sworn to celibacy. While it's admittedly possible that he was breaking the rules, the fact that he doesn't seem to be making any effort to hide the fact that he's in a romantic and sexual relationship makes it hard to believe he could get away with it.
  • Art Shift: After Ren expresses anger at being asked if he loves Stimpy, Mr. Horse looks to the viewer and his face is drawn to resemble the head of a real horse.
  • Ate His Gun: The frog tries to kill himself by doing this, but only manages to leave himself in even worse agony than before.
  • Ax-Crazy: Ren is at his happiest trying to brutally kill the frog, and later murders Mr. Horse.
  • Backstory Horror: Ren's childhood is perhaps the darkest moment in the entire series.
  • Bad People Abuse Animals: The episode goes into painstaking detail to describe the many horrific ways Ren tortured animals as a child to justify its portrayal of Ren as a cruel, abusive sociopath.
  • Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Ren's parents are depicted this way; they wear clothes, but not shoes.
  • Beyond Redemption: After hearing Ren's backstory and what he did to Stimpy, Mr. Horse declares him outright irredeemable and proceeds to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: The episode has an extended flashback of a young Ren torturing a frog in grotesque ways: first shoving firecrackers up its butt, then running it over with his tricycle, then hooking it up to a car battery, then mutilating it with a chainsaw. After all that, Ren refuses to kill the frog, and we see that the frog is still alive 10-20 years later, living in horrible agony.
  • Black Comedy Burst: The show was no stranger to Black Comedy, as seen with Ren's mental breakdowns. This episode takes his instability and sadism to horrific extremes.
  • Break the Cutie: An offscreen moment for Stimpy.
  • Bullying a Dragon: After hearing all the horrible things he's capable of, Mr. Horse really should have known what would happen when picking a fight with Ren.
  • Bungled Suicide: At the end of the episode, the frog tries to shoot itself, only for the gun to be a "Bang!" Flag Gun that leaves him impaled, but alive and in pain.
  • Butt-Monkey: The frog only exists to be mutilated by Ren.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: What Ren did to various animals, especially that poor frog.
  • Crazy-Prepared: For no reason (nobody called during the fight and nobody yelled at a chihuahua beating a horse to death), two asylum workers come in to take Ren away.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Ren gives this to Mr. Horse via a gun.
  • Cruel Mercy: Ren refuses to kill the frog when it begs for death.
  • Crying a River: Stimpy wails enough to flood his bedroom with tears, though the body of water just appears out of nowhere.
  • Darker and Edgier: Easily one of, if not the darkest Ren & Stimpy production ever made, as the details above and below can attest to.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Ren explains that his desire to inflict pain on others came from a moment where he felt an "unspeakable pain", that being getting spanked by the midwife when he was born.
  • The Dog Bites Back: Or rather, the cat bites back. Stimpy gets so upset over what Ren said to him, it's his turn to threaten to kill him.
  • Domestic Abuse:
    • Implied with Ren's parents. And it's a rare case of reciprocal abuse in fiction too — Mrs. Hoek screams at and hits her husband for giving their son a gun (right before handing him a chainsaw) and later Mr. Hoek slaps her in the face for showing concern over Ren. It's implied that this is a common occurrence in the Hoek household.
    • Despite Ren inexplicably denying being an item with Stimpy in this episode, their relationship feels more like it here than it ever has before. Just listen to Ren recounting their first meeting.
      Ren: Then I met Stimpy. What a silly idiot. Why, I remember the first time I slapped Stimpy. He hardly even felt it. So I hit him harder...and harder...BUT HE WOULDN'T GO DOWN!
  • Downer Beginning: Stimpy is in agony on what Ren did to him...the chihuahua even finds it that horrible! While the former continues to wallow uncontrollably, the latter takes a long, restful journey to seek psychological help.
  • Downer Ending: Holy mother of God. After Mr. Horse finds out what Ren did to Stimpy, he beats him up. Ren completely loses it and retaliates by pistol-whipping him to death before being carted off by two asylum workers (one of whom he mutilates), presumably to be locked up in a mental institution. The frog shows up and tries to kill himself with Mr. Horse's gun, only to be impaled on a bang flag (which still doesn't kill him) and be left in worse agony than ever. And to top it all off, Stimpy's still back at home, likely still bawling over what Ren did to him, whilst simultaneously waiting for his best friend to come back, not knowing that he's being hauled away.
  • Enfant Terrible: Played disturbingly straight with Ren; he started to mutilate animals ever since infancy.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Even a sociopath like Ren found what he did to Stimpy utterly deplorable.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: Mr. Horse points out that Ren should be "locked away from normal, decent people". Not long enough and—true to Mr. Horse's words—two asylum workers come in to take Ren away.
  • Flashback: Several of them, each showing Ren torturing animals.
  • Foreshadowing: When Ren first enters Mr. Horse's office, Mr. Horse tells him that he can sit down and talk if he wants to. At first, it sounds like the kind of language psychiatrists use to let their patients know that they're there to help themselves, not do what others are telling them to do. When Ren asks if he should tell him about his childhood, Mr. Horse tells him to do so if he likes. Again, this sounds like something a psychiatrist would say. As it turns out, he's saying all of this because he genuinely doesn't know why Ren is there and wants to know why.
  • Freudian Couch: Ren lies on a couch when he visits Mr. Horse.
  • Furry Reminder:
    Ren: What kind of a psychologist are you?!
    Mr. Horse: PSYCHOLOGIST?! Are you nuts?! I'M A HORSE!!!
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Averted for the most part, but Mr. Horse's death scene plays with this trope. We never see what's happening to Horse while Ren is beating him, but later his mutilated head is given a Gross-Up Close-Up.
  • Gut Punch: Ren is revealed to have done something irredeemable. Mr. Horse is killed in a brutal fashion. This is only the second episode of Adult Party Cartoon, and it serves to tell the audience this isn't the Ren and Stimpy they knew from The '90s.
  • He's Not My Boyfriend: Dr. Horse asks Ren if he loves Stimpy. Ren denies it with "Not in that way. He's a friend. Just a friend." If you've seen the other adult episodes, you know Ren's denials are Blatant Lies.
  • Hypocritical Humor: When Ren's dad is about to give his son a gun, Ren's mom swipes it out of Ren's hand, insisting that he's too young to be using guns. Then she hands him a chainsaw.
  • I Hate Past Me: Averted. Ren surprisingly does not seem to regret all of the atrocities he has done throughout his childhood, despite apparently having felt horrible for mistreating Stimpy. In fact, he's pretty much looking at the flashbacks quite fondly.
  • I Have a Family: The tick and the frog try this on Ren to make him stop the torture. It doesn't work.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Deranged lunatic he may be, Ren is completely right that Mr. Horse essentially wasted his time by not even telling him he's not a psychologist.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Ren. Oh God, REN!
  • Made of Iron: Deconstructed; the frog that Ren tortures goes through several things that should have killed him several times over. The deconstruction comes from the fact that before it's even over he wants to die.
  • Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: A frog dreams of being killed.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Ren has deep regrets he said something apparently bad to Stimpy.
  • Nightmare Face: Ren makes a monstrous face when the asylum workers confront him after he beats Mr. Horse.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ren delivers a nasty beatdown to Mr. Horse in the climax in retaliation for the one Mr. Horse just dished out to him.
  • No Name Given: The frog is never named, despite being an important character in the episode.
  • Noodle Incident: This sets up the plot, as Ren apparently said something incredibly horrible to Stimpy. He whispers the event to Mr. Horse, which gets him shouting at Ren and calling him a psycho.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Pistol Whip: Ren beats Mr. Horse to death this way. Also serves as a bit of Foreshadowing, since Ren's mom bonks Ren's dad on the head with his pistol upon being handed to Ren to finish off the frog.
  • Precision F-Strike: Mr. Horse shouts this when he chews out Ren near the end. The TV version has a car horn censoring the word.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When Stimpy tells Ren "How. Can you say. Those horrible things. To ME?!"
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mr. Horse gives one to Ren after he reveals to him what he did to Stimpy. Ren counters that with one of his own.
    Mr. Horse: You need to be locked up — away from decent, NORMAL people! What kind of a lunatic are you?! You just walk up to strangers on the street and tell them "Hey, Mister, you want to hear some sick stories of my sick, twisted youth"!?
    Ren: I don't understand! I came to you for help! I bared my soul to you! I told you all my darkest secrets! And now you tell me I'm crazy? WHAT KIND OF A PSYCHOLOGIST ARE YOU?!
    Mr. Horse: PSYCHOLOGIST?! Are you nuts?! I'm a HORSE, YOU CRAZY SON-OF-A-BITCH!!!
  • Sadist: Ren was abusing and torturing animals and people for fun ever since he was a toddler.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • In "Sven Höek," Ren states that he and the titular character were born from the same litter (despite being cousins), and even shows a picture of them as newborns. In this episode, Ren is shown to be an only child, and his newborn self looks very different from in the photograph in "Sven Höek."
    • In addition, Ren says that Stimpy is "just a friend", despite the two being a gay couple in Adult Party Cartoon. Both of these errors are most likely due to the episode being written in 1991.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Stimpy is only present for the first ten minutes of the episode and he's clearly not in the mood to be funny. The rest of this extremely dark episode goes on without him.
  • The Shrink: Mr. Horse. Subverted in that he's not actually a shrink. He's a horse.
  • The Sociopath: Ren. His Comedic Sociopathy is actually deconstructed here.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Much of the torture Ren inflicts on animals is set to some pretty cheery music.
  • That's All, Folks!: After the dark and morbid ending, a parody of the Looney Tunes signoff appears with Ren, Stimpy, Mr. Horse, the frog, and the injured asylum worker (still with his hand bitten off) smiling at the audience from inside the circles.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: For once, Stimpy refuses to forgive the way Ren treats him, and forces him to get help.
  • Torture Porn: A rare Western Animation example, as each incident of young Ren victimizing animals is animated in graphic detail.
  • Truth in Television: Most of Ren's behavior is accurate to real life serial killers.
  • The Unreveal: The plot is built off of Ren seeking help after doing something horrendous to Stimpy. When he tells Mr. Horse, however, all we get is a whisper.
  • Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The camera never cuts away when Ren's mother vomits.
  • Wham Line: When we learn that Ren can't get psychological help after all:
    Ren: (after Mr. Horse calls him crazy) I don't understand! I came to you for help! I bared my soul to you! I told you all my darkest secrets! And now you tell me I'm crazy? What kind of psychologist are you?!
    Mr. Horse: Psychologist?! Are you nuts?! I'M A HORSE, YOU CRAZY SON-OF-A-BITCH!
  • You Monster!: Stimpy calls Ren a monster after he said something horrible to him.
  • Zany Cartoon: The intent of this episode was to deconstruct this trope, as the zany cartoon character in question, Ren, goes to therapy and reveals the horrific things he has done in his childhood. References to various classic characters and gags are strewn throughout the episode, juxtaposed with incredibly grotesque and violent imagery so that their comedic impact is replaced with sheer horror.

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