"He's ADORRRRRR-ABLE!!"
Stimpy: What's The Big Sleep, Ren?
(Ren brings Stimpy's ear close to his mouth, as if to whisper)
Ren: He's...
Ren (shouting): ...DEAD! DEAD, YOU EEDIOT! YOU KNOW WHAT "DEAD" IS!? JUST LIKE WE'LL BE IF WE DON'T GET OUTTA HERE!
(Ren starts sobbing)
Big House Blues is the pilot episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show.
The cartoon opens with Ren and Stimpy, an asthma-hound chihuahua and a fat, dopey Manx cat, roaming the streets homeless and unable to find any food. After being run over by the local dogcatcher's truck, they are escorted to the city pound where they are assured that they'll love it. All goes well until one fellow inmate, Phil the Dog, is taken to be put in "The Big Sleep", in the words of Jasper the Dalmatian Pup.
The next morning Stimpy coughs up a hairball on Ren, making him look like a poodle. This attracts the attention of a little girl who falls in love with Ren, adopts him and promises to love him, and squeeze him, and everything. But Ren won't go unless Stimpy does, too.
At their new home, Ren receives a sweater from his new owner, while Stimpy receives his "foist material possession": a litterbox.
- Completed in 1990. First aired on Nickelodeon September 1991.
- Directed by: John Kricfalusi
- Story by: John K., Bob Camp and Jim Smith
- Animation by: Carbunkle Cartoons.
Tropes:
- And Call Him "George": The little girl who adopts Ren and then Stimpy.
- Animation Bump: One of the most lavishly animated episodes of the entire series and the only one to be inked by hand.
- Big Sleep: An infamous example.
- Bowdlerization: Ren kissing Stimpy in his sleep, thinking he's a beautiful woman, and the punchline of Ren freaking out and washing his mouth out in the toilet was cut by Nickelodeon. Spike TV reinstated this scene when they ran classic Ren and Stimpy episodes with the Adult Party Cartoon episodes.
- Ironically, despite that scene being cut, the opening theme song sequence, which has clips from Big House Blues, has the part where Ren runs to the toilet to clean his mouth.
- Another edit to this episode: after the dog catcher gives Ren and Stimpy party hats, he effeminately wiggles his butt and says, "Go ahead. Have fun. See if I care." as Nick thought the scene was "too feminine".
- Conjoined Eyes: Stimpy briefly has these as he's pulling at the bars in heartbreaking agony.
- Deadly Euphemism: "The Big Sleep", of course.
- Delayed "Oh, Crap!": After Jasper tells Ren about "The Big Sleep", Ren appears to be calm at first, until it sinks in.
- Deranged Animation: Even by the series proper's standards, the animation here is exaggerated and wild.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Stimpy hardly speaks and has visible toes for a big part of the pilot.
- Furry Reminder: Ren emits some puppy-like whimpers during his "Big Sleep" breakdown.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Right after Phil stated that nothing can go wrong, he's taken away to be put to sleep.
- Madness Mantra: "THE BIG SLEEP!!! THE BIG SLEEP!!!"
- Narrator All Along: The dog catcher.
- Never Say "Die": Subverted. "The big sleep" is used as a euphemism for "death," but only until Ren explains to Stimpy what "the big sleep" really means.
- Pilot: The one for Ren and Stimpy, and unlike most pilot episodes, pretty much everything, from Ren and Stimpy's designs, voices, and personalities to the animation is fine-tuned from the get-go.
- Pounds Are Animal Prisons: Complete with human toilets in the barred cells.
- Pronouncing My Name for You: The start of the Running Gag about the pronunciation of Ren's last name.Ren: That's "Höek", you eediot, not "Hoke"!
- The Quiet One: Oddly enough, Stimpy doesn't have any speaking lines until halfway through the episode and even then he only has three lines total.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Ren after realizing he kissed Stimpy.
- Shout-Out: Jasper was based directly off of "Pooch the Pup", a character created by a classic comic artist, Milt Gross.
- When the little girl is taking Ren away, two of the dogs in the background look a lot like George Jetson and Fred Flintstone.
- According to John K. in this blog post
, the little girl is based on the dog from the Tex Avery cartoon "Lonesome Lenny".
- Title Montage: The opening for every Ren and Stimpy episode is a rapid-fire montage of clips from this cartoon including the scenes that got cut by Nickelodeon.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Phil praises the dog pound for giving them a square meal a day and a roof over their head, claiming that nothing can go wrong. Then the dogcatcher takes him away in order to put him to sleep.
- Wild Take: Ren does a series of these when he realizes what Jasper meant by "The Big Sleep".
