Jerry The Bellybutton Elf is the 12th episode of the third season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on April 9 1994.
Plot
Stimpy is spending too much time playing with bellybutton, and hears a voice from inside his bellybutton, telling him to go inside his bellybutton where he will have "fun".[1] Stimpy embarks on a psychedelic journey into his bellybutton to the tune of Climb Inside My World by the band Masters of Reality. There he meets Jerry the bellybutton elf who enslaves him.[1] Ren finds a nub, which is all that is left of Stimpy.[1] Without Stimpy around, Ren throws a party which is attended by all of the recurring characters including Muddy Mudskipper and his obese wife, Mimby. When Stimpy brings Jerry a meal made of lint, he becomes angry. Jerry turns into a monster, Adonis the Lord of Chaos, who tries to eat Stimpy. Stimpy tries to escape, but only drags Ren inside of his bellybutton. Jerry eats both Ren and Stimpy while Mimby eats what remains of Stimpy.[1]
The task of directing Jerry the Bellybutton Elf was assigned to Ron Hughart who was known as "the reliable director".[2] The story was intended as a parody of Alice in Wonderland. Hughart said of his work on Jerry: "The [Climb Inside My World] was added to the episode at some point after the initial storyboard was given to me. A couple of the guys didn't want to board the sequence or at least didn't know what to do with it. I boarded it and timed it."[2]
Reception
The American journalist Thad Komorowski rated Jerry as a bomb as wrote the episode was a "pitifully unfunny cartoon".[1] By contrast, the critic Witney Seibold praised the climax and Gottfried's voice acting, writing: "Jerry has one of the most vocal and unusual freakouts in a show full of them. Gottfried didn't just employ his well-known voice, but pushed it to 11, shrieking at the top of his lungs and mutating into a giant murderous porkchop. What a class act."[3]
Books
Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN978-1593931100.
Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN978-1629331836.
