Monkey See, Monkey Don't

"Monkey See, Monkey Don't"
The Ren & Stimpy Show episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 13
Directed by	Bob Camp
Story by	Bob Camp Vincent Waller
Production code	RS5-13A
Original air date	February 13, 1993 (1993-02-13)
Episode chronology
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List of episodes

Monkey See, Monkey Don't is the 13th episode of the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that aired on the Nickelodeon network on 13 February 1993.

Plot

Ren and Stimpy are once again hungry and homeless. Ren becomes jealous when he sees how well fed the monkeys are in a zoo, and devises a scheme where he and Stimpy will disguise themselves as monkeys. Their disguise fools the Swedish zoo keeper who tosses Ren and Stimpy into a monkey cage with Filthy the monkey. Filthy forces Ren to eat the ticks on his back. The visitors at the zoo provide Filthy with food while Stimpy receives nut shells and a Ren a rock. When the zoo keeper offers monkey chow to eat, Ren drops the disguise. Ren and Stimpy are transferred to another part of the zoo.

Cast

• Ren-voice of Billy West
• Stimpy-voice of Billy West
• Zoo keeper-voice of Billy West
• Filthy-voice of Billy West.

Production

For the season of The Ren & Stimpy Show, production was split into a "A" unit headed by the showrunner John Kricfalusi and a "B" unit headed by Bob Camp. ^[1] Money See, Monkey Don't was one of the "B" episodes directed by Camp. ^[1] The episode was set to premiere in the fall of 1992, but had fallen behind schedule by the summer of 1992 as Camp had was reported to have "spent an irregularly long time" in doing the storyboards for Monkey See, Monkey Don't. ^[2] The firing of Kircfalusi on 21 September 1992 and the replacement of the Spümcø studio with Games Animation greatly hindered the production of Monkey See, Monkey Don't. ^[3] As Kricfalusi was no longer with the show, Billy West provided the voice for Ren. ^[3]

Reception

The episode met with overwhelming negative reviews and is considered by critics to be the worse episode of the second season. ^[3] The American journalist Thad Komorowski wrote the idea of Ren and Stimpy living in their own feces to obtain inedible food was "repellant", the jokes were unfunny and West gave a "high pitched and grating performance" as Ren. ^[3] The American critics Daniel Goldmark and Yuval Taylor praised the use of classical music in the episode, but wrote that the gross-out gags in the episode were as disgusting as they were unfunny. ^[4]

Books

• Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN   1593931107.
• Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN   978-1629331836.
• Goldmark, Daniel; Taylor, Yuval (2002). The Cartoon Music Book. New York: A Cappella. ISBN   9781556524738.

References

1. Komorowski 2017, p. 160.
2. Komorowski 2017, p. 185.
3. Komorowski 2017, p. 227.
4. Goldmark & Taylor 2002, p. 273.