Ren Seeks Help by TheDarkCat97[]
I want you all to listen to me very carefully. First of all, if you don't know what a placenta is, you're too young to watch the many reviews of this specific episode on YouTube (and yes, they're all over YouTube). As for the episode itself, I don't think that I'm old enough to watch the actual episode. But here we are. I've seen many terrible episodes from a variety of different cartoons during my youth. And I thought that I could take on anything. But this one almost tapped me out. It can change who you are. Beyond just giving you nightmares, or making you think that the writer's a sadistic fuck. It has the ability to kill hope. It has the ability to kill sanity. It has the ability to kill innocence. I may be going down here, but I'm bringing this fucker down with me.
Before we begin, let's find out how we got here. After Viacom bought out Nickelodeon, they made stupid decision after stupid decision. We've already established that, but here was one of their worst: reviving Ren & Stimpy as an adult cartoon. An Adult Party Cartoon if you will. I would say that this gives a good argument for censorship, but this is actually what a cartoon would be like if the censors were reversed. I'm getting all kinds of conflicting reports because no one wants to take the blame and I don't blame them, but the executives kept forcing in, let's call them, "adult themes". That being said, John K. made the first episode of the Adult Party Cartoon, Onward and Upward entirely out of gross out jokes because a fan asked him to and Richard Percel, the writer of this episode, moved on to SpongeBob and helped write such classic episodes as A Pal for Gary and Pet Sitter Pat, so no one is innocent here. These writers then went on to make the infamous episode that we'd consider, "the episode that killed a character in seconds".
The episode was called Ren Seeks Help, and I winded up watching it around July 3rd, 2003, the same exact time that it aired.
The episode opens in a room, where Stimpy is seen screaming and crying hysterically on the bed, while Ren looks on with an ashamed and apologetic expression. Ren apologizes to him and promises that he will go to seek help. While Stimpy continues to cry on the bed, Ren leaves his home and slowly walks through the city to seek a therapist. After arriving at a place simply called "Help", he meets Mr. Horse, who's dressed as a psychiatrist, and tells him his childhood story, as he did, the flashback begins with the birth of Ren, and his abusive behavior began as a child where he abused bugs such as; yanking out their legs, licking them with a barbed tongue, and burning them alive. His favorite of all is hurting a frog in a gruesome manner (as we see throughout the entire episode). But as the frog pleads and forces Ren to end his life, however, Ren decides that he can't after he was confused over the frog's request.
Later one day, Ren's parents forces their son to end the abused frog's life by giving him a chainsaw. But Ren is, as usual, sneaks off to throw him in the trash can nearby.
Back in the present day, Ren tells Mr. Horse about the time he met Stimpy. After hearing Ren's horrid story, Mr. Horse angrily tell him that he's crazy and that he should've stayed away from normal people, then decides to beat him up. However, Ren goes absolutely ballistic, and kills Mr. Horse in a feral manner. After the deed is done, two animal control officers barges in while the crazed Chihuahua goes on the attack by biting off one of the men‘s hands off, until the second one caught Ren with a net and takes him away to the pound.
Afterwards, the same injured frog from Ren’s childhood crawls in and then shoots himself to commit suicide, but survives, causing him to suffer in even more agony. Then the cartoon ends with a Looney Tunes-like ending card, with the characters smiling at the audience along with a sign reading, “That’s It Folks!”
You know what the sad part is? People say that this is the best episode of Adult Party Cartoon. I don't know, I haven't watched any of the other episodes. And since this is the worst thing that I've ever watched and probably ever going to watch, I'm not going to watch the other episodes. I refuse to. If I'd have to guess as to why this is considered the best is that this episode does things other than try to gross people out in various ways, but it's too disturbing to be comedic, and tries to tell too many jokes to be played straight, and it gets so confused that it begins to feel like the disturbing shit is the joke that they're trying to tell.
No matter what story they're trying to tell, it takes too long to get started, takes too long to do it and has next to no payoff. Most of the jokes they do tell are either gross, or don't understand the basics of comedy. The production is shit; a lot of people keep telling you that it's supposed to be overly dramatic. Ren & Stimpy is supposed to be a comedy, it's always been a comedy. I'm not saying that it could only do comedy, but comedy is what you come to a show like this for. Going to this for dramatic tension is like going to Family Guy for political commentary, it just doesn't belong there. What do the other episodes do? They be gross? Oh, they take care of a baby made out of shit. There's more ways to disgust a person than pure imagery. It's like why people hate A Pal for Gary more than The Splinter. In fact, you can probably call this episode the A Pal for Gary of all animation. Think about it, it starts off with nothing but sap, tons of animal abuse, disturbing content where it shouldn't be and a character bastardized to make the cruelty worse. But unlike A Pal for Gary, I felt a piece of myself die after watching this. I felt broken after watching this.
I mean, why did Ren do all those things...? Why did it show me what Ren did...? And, most of all... What did Ren do to Stimpy that was so horrible, that it drives the sanest person alive into lunacy?
After watching that god forsaken episode, I laid in bed and had fallen asleep. Only to have a nightmare. I was in this dark, narrow hallway with what looked like Mr. Horse's head and that abused frog mounted on opposite sides of the wall. There was even bloody handwritings all over the walls, words such as "Froggy" and "I'm not crazy". The place I was in was so dark, that it consumed the light. I walked down the dimly lit hallway until I reached a stairwell, and down those stairs was what I assume was something I should avoid. I didn't know what, but it sounded like growling. I made a break for it, and darted all the way back to where I was, which was a door. I tried to open it, but it was locked. I banged on it, and hollered for someone to let me out, but then I heard the growling get closer, and closer, and closer. Until... I slowly looked over my shoulder.
Then I saw it -- or, him.
It was Ren, with that same bestial look when the animal control officers came in. A fireman's axe was tightly gripped in his clawed hands, and he was inching ever so slowly, still with that feral expression. The first thing that came to mind was to grab the little mongrel by the neck and yeet him across the hall, that way, I can take the axe and crash my way through the door. But, that wasn't the case. I didn't do all of that, of course, but before I can ponder on that thought, he ran up to me and slammed the axe into my skull. And that's when I woke up with a loud yell. Sweat beaded across my face and I shook with deep, shallow breaths.
I didn't tell anyone online about what I had saw, apparently, everyone wind up watching it on Spike TV, and nearly shat themselves over it. The episode was never uploaded to YouTube, but there are some clips of the episode scattered all over the internet. Hell, there were even some screenshots of the episode as well on Google. This episode became popular in some way, and I don't blame it one bit, this episode is really messed up, to be honest.
One day after walking home from school, I noticed that there was a missing poster of a scrawny "asthma-hound" Chihuahua with a floppy body, donkey-like ears, neon-pink eyes with dark red pupils, red eyelids, and a fairly long, rat-like, pink tail. The Chihuahua has a set of jagged, monolithic teeth, and the look of the thing made it look like it came out of Edgar Allen Poe's nightmares. My jaw dropped all the way to fucking China at this point, and I looked at my friends, who are continuing their walk home, and I made a dead bolt back home and slammed the front door shut before locking everything in the entire house. My parents asked me what was wrong, and I told them that there was a wanted poster of a serial child molester (that I made up on the spot) that was currently on the run from police after abducting children in his truck. I didn't want to tell them about what I think was a real-life Ren Höek on a missing pet picture. I don't know if this is real, nor is it a figment of my traumatized imagination. But, I know one thing, it did convince me that there is something -- or someone -- out there.
I never really believed in some unexplained phenomenon before, but, now that I have, I just don't know anymore. I don't know why Ren did what he did, nor what he did to Stimpy, but whatever it was, it has to be the most fucked up thing any cartoon character's ever done (even though it was only hinted by Ren).
Some time after the events of what happened, nothing really happened. But, just before I started typing this down, I received news from my parents that my uncle was killed by what was revealed to be an escaped mental patient. He was murdered far from home and his body was hidden in the sewers. The maniac was never caught or identified, but the messages he left were all too familiar with Ren's quotes from Ren Seeks Help. I don't know if this is just a coincidence or what, but, now I was getting a little freaked out. And no, the guy was never caught, hell, there's not even a sign that he was breaking into someone's house, nor there was any vehicles in site.
How the hell is this even remotely possible? This is not normal in any shape or form, nor did it make any sense whatsoever.
Now, I am gonna end this on a good note. I contacted the show's original creator, John Kricfalusi, about Ren Seeks Help, and what's currently happening. And he had this to say when he wrote me back:
"Dear ███, thanks for getting a hold on me about the situation, because I have a 'lot' to get off my chest.
"First of all, I never wanted the Adult Party Cartoon to be made, I knew it's gonna get a lot of hate, but the greedy bastards down at Via-crotch don't seem to give much of a shit, all they care about is money. I mean, yeah, I did some shit that was... rather personal, but this just made the matters worse. And yes, I did see Ren Seeks Help on TNN once, and it pissed me off in more ways than one.
"After watching that episode, I called up those—what's the word I'm looking for? Dipshits? No, that word is too good for them. Assholes? No, that's not quite right. Fuckers? You know what, I'm just gonna call them excuses for humanity until I find a description that verbally fits their crude, idiotic, and juvenile talentless asses! I called them to ask them what reality do they live in. In this reality, it's conventional wisdom that it takes an adult to write for children. What am I saying, that's not fair, children would make better writers than them! Hell, infants would! My dog would! Oh, wait! I remember now, I called them mindless, degenerate hacks! I told them that they may want to think their lucky stars every second of every day that whatever the fuck they sold your souls to was stupid enough to give them their jobs. Because if they lose their jobs writing this trite shit, they'll most likely never work again. Not on television, but in any job. I don't know anyone who would lower themselves so substantially to even reluctantly want their demented, poisoned minds around. I ended my call telling them to just leave us all alone, and to go back to the fucking sludge they came from.
"After that, I literally felt vindicated, I felt justified, knowing that Ren & Stimpy would've done the same thing (even though they're just cartoon characters and are not real, but, yeah). And as for the things you described after watching that episode, yeah, you do realize that Ren is not real, right? Because you're making it look like Ren is going all 'Bendy and The Ink Machine' and killing random people. Heh, stupid I know, but, that's what came into my mind after reading your Email. But, anyway, I'm glad you came to me about the whole ordeal, and I do believe that whoever killed your uncle is just another batshit asshole who's doing all the killing, here, and not a cartoon character. Hopefully we get to talk more, I do like having a fan come around and strike a conversation, together.
"Sincerely, John Kricfalisi, creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show."
After reading that, I felt much relieved about the whole situation. And it did make some good points about me worrying that Ren is coming to kill me and whatnot, which is highly stupid of me. But, I was a kid back then, I mean, you can't blame me for thinking of such childish nonsense. I think it's best if anyone doesn't try and scrap up whatever they can to watch the full episode; one, because you can only find the full episode in a review from either TheMysteriousMrEnter or PhantomStrider. Second, it's just... too much. If I upload the full episode, here, then I can very well drive you insane, get you sick or disturbed enough to click off this page. Both the images, the clips, and the episode, itself, can make anyone queasy and unnerved at the same time.
And as for the picture of the dog I saw, I don't know if that was a new breed of dog or just a picture someone made on Artstation. But, if that was the case, then I gotta hand it to whoever made that image, cause it's really well done. Yet again, I've seen better works from Artstation that really catches the eye, so, it's no brainer that someone would make this for fun. But, why nail it to a post on the street? That question, alone, has been on my mind ever since I first laid eyes on it.
And it did made me think twice about things, I ain't lying to you all when I say this. It most certainly did. But the question still remains, what did Ren do to Stimpy that got Mr. Horse so outraged? Guess we'll never know for sure. Over all, though, it was the freakiest shit I have ever seen.
Don't believe me? Watch the reviews, and see for yourself.
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