"Space Madness" is the fifth episode of the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on September 8, 1991. Along with Marooned and Black Hole, the episode is part of a loose trilogy in the first season known as the "space episodes" centering around the show-within-the-show, a parody of Star Trek-like science fiction shows titled The Adventures of Commander Höek and Cadet Stimpy.
Space Madness was received positively by critics, and is considered to be one of the series' best episodes.
Plot
Ren and Stimpy thinking of a situationCommander Höek eats a bar of soap as if it were an ice cream bar.
Ren and Stimpy decide to watch television together and quarrel over what to watch. Finally, they decide on their favorite "live-action drama", the science-fiction show The Adventures of Commander Höek and Cadet Stimpy, that stars characters resembling themselves as the eponymous characters. Stimpy, a big fan of the show, dresses up as Space Cadet Stimpy while watching the episode.
Commander Höek and Space Cadet Stimpy are the two-animal crew of a spacecraft who have gone further into space than any dog and cat before. The duo have been traveling together on the same spaceship for 36 years on their way to the Crab Nebula, having done so a dozen times before.
After realizing they have no duties, including minding the spacecraft, for another six years, Ren and Stimpy try to think about what to do with their prolonged period of leisure. They think for what seems like a long time with the sound of a ticking clock in the background distressing Ren, only to revealed as the sound of Stimpy tapping the table. Stimpy tries to cheer him up by preparing a three-course meal consisting of three tubes of space food, which pushes him to his breaking point and begins showing signs of the "space madness".
Stimpy lets Ren take a bath, which succeeds in calming him down temporarily. As Stimpy turns off the gravity, Ren finally snaps after thinking of various foods from Earth he greatly missed. Ren eats a bar of soap that he is convinced is really an ice cream bar from his childhood while floating in a body of water inside the ship. He believes Stimpy to have intended to take the bar of soap away from him, dispersing the body of water and tries to intimidate Stimpy with a toothbrush, only to forcefully brush his own teeth. Concerned, Stimpy restrains him on the ground.
Ren records his captain's log. He believes Stimpy to have attacked him and actually having "space madness". To control his apparent "madness", Ren assigns him to guard the History Eraser Button, a seemingly nonsensical yet highly destructive device. Stimpy does his best, but the show's narrator, the Announcer Salesman, continuously tests his limits, going as far as to physically appear to intimidate him. As Stimpy presses the button, the Announcer Salesman sees this as a cliffhanger opportunity, only for him and the duo to immediately be erased from existence.
At the end of the episode, the show's logo appears but the duo are erased from existence after a while, implying that the show did affect reality. A fictional advertisement for Sugar Frosted Milk airs midway through the episode.
Billy West – voice of Stimpy and the Announcer Salesman
Production
The story was conceived in 1990 and was illustrated in the spring of 1991.[1]Space Madness saw the first appearance of the recurring character that came to be known as the Salesman.[2]John Kricfalusi, the showrunner of the Ren & Stimpy, stated in a 2008: "Stimpy's Invention and Space Madness were both rejected by Nickelodeon before I talked them into letting me do them. And they turned out to be our two most popular episodes".[3] By June 1991, the task of drawing in the episode had been sub-contracted out to Carbunkle Cartoons in Vancouver; it was the first episode in the series to be animated by Carbunkle Cartoons and the first to not be animated by Lacewood Productions.[4] The American critic Thad Komorowski wrote that much of the quality of the episode was due to the work of Carbunkle Cartoons which gave the episode a cinematic quality that was unusual in American animated TV series.[5]
There was much tension between Bob Jaques, the chief of Carbunckle Cartoons and Kricfalusi.[5] Jaques complained about the scene where Ren floats in his body of water while eating the soap bar that Kricfalusi tried to redraw the scene after sending it to Carbunkle to be drawn in.[5] Jaques stated: "The design of the water varied from layout to layout so per the rules, we followed the layouts. He could have sent the footage back for changes, but it was the growing OCD in him that made him want to touch stuff that was beyond his skill level".[5] The task of coloring in Space Madness was assigned to Fil-Cartoons Studio in Manila.[6] Fil-Cartoons work was described to be even worse than Lacewood Productions' output; Kricfalusi despised working with the studio for their incompetence, and Jaques felt that Fil-Cartoons' subpar performance ruined his enjoyment of the episode.[6]
Reception
American critic Thad Komorowski wrote that Space Madness was the "first genuine masterpiece" of The Ren and Stimpy Show, and was the episode that made the show popular.[2] The critic Jonathan Barkan praised Space Madness along with its sequel Marooned that "played almost like demented Star Trek episodes."[7]
The critic Rob Harvilla wrote that Space Madness was one of the best of the show that features a surreal plot and Ren's colorful insults to Stimpy such as "you bloated sack of protoplasm!" Harvilla praised the voice acting in Space Madness as "phenomenal", writing that both John Kricfalusi and Billy West performed their characters with "stupendous, indelible voices". Harvilla wrote that he greatly enjoyed Space Madness along with the rest of The Ren & Stimpy Show as an youth in the early 1990s, but argued that his enjoyment of the show today is tainted by the sexual abuse allegations against Kricfalusi that came out in 2018.[8]
Books
Klickstein, Matthew; Summers, Marc (2013). Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age. London: Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN9781101614099.
Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN978-1629331836.
