Black Hole (The Ren & Stimpy Show)

Black Hole is the penultimate episode of the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that originally that aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on February 23, 1992. It is the third and final episode in a loosely linked trilogy known as the "space episodes" set in the show-within-the show, The Adventures of Commander Hòek and Cadet Stimpy.

"Black Hole"
The Ren & Stimpy Show episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 5b
Directed by	John Kricfalusi Bob Camp
Story by	Bob Camp and Will McRobb
Production code	RS-06A
Original air date	February 23, 1992 (1992-02-23)

Plot

The Adventures of Commander Hòek and Cadet Stimpy is a parody of Star Trek that served as a show-within-the-show. Ren and Stimpy are once again piloting a space ship though the depths of space when their ship is unwillingly sucked into a black hole. On the other side of the black hole, Ren and Stimpy find themselves in trapped a strange, surreal world that causes both of them to frequently mutate into grotesque versions of themselves. Ren attempts to find a way to escape the alternative dimension, but is constantly hampered by Stimpy's stupidity and annoying habits. Ren and Stimpy stumble across a mountain of socks meant for left feet, and Ren realizes that the mountain of socks are where all of the Earth's missing socks have gone. He has visions of being welcomed as a hero upon his return to Earth for discovering the mountain of socks, but must first find a way to return home. Stimpy reads a book and finds out that they must leave by 3 p.m. or be stuck forever in the alternative dimension; there is a bus stop at the Trans-Dimensional Gateway that will serves this purpose. Ren and Stimpy find a bus that runs to Jersey City, but are expelled from the bus when they lack the exact change. Rather than suffer continuing mutations, Ren and Stimy decided to commit suicide by setting their molecules to implode, only for Stimpy to reveal that he had the exact change all long and just forgot it, just before they imploded.

Cast

• Ren-voice of John Kricfalusi
• Stimpy-voice of Billy West
• The Bus Driver-Harris Peet
• George Liquor-Harris Peet

Production

The idea for a trilogy that would serve as both a parody of Star Trek and as a show-within-the-show was created during a writing session held during a drinking bout in a bar between John Kricfalusi and Jim Smith. The precise story of the production of Black Hole is heavily disputed. Bob Camp claims that he co-directed Black Hole, a claim rejected by Kricfalusi who states he directed Black Hole himself. Black Hole does not list a director in its credits, which apparently reflected a dispute within the Spümcø at the time over who had directed Black Hole. Camp claims to have served as the co-director, saying he got "his feet wet as a director" on Black Hole, a claim categorically rejected by Kricfalusi who states that he was the only director on Black Hole. Kricfalusi explained the lack of a director's credit on Black Hole by saying: "A director is somebody who right from the start of a story, follows it all the way through to the end, and it's his idea and vision".

Reception

The critic Kendra Ackeman listed Black Hole as one of the best of the show with a "entertaining" and surreal story. By contrast, the journalist Thad Komorowski described Black Hole as a failure that had no coherent plot, substituted "silliness for substance" and seems not to had any single person directing it.

Karen Schomer, the television critic of the New York Times wrote in 1992 about Black Hole: "...Ren and Stimpy go for a ride on a spaceship and wind up getting sucked into a black hole. This never happened to Bart Simpson. In the strange world beyond the black hole's vortex, logs and roasted chickens float through the air and giant eight balls perch atop crags of rock. Ren and Stimpy's bodies begin to come apart, and their eyeballs drift off their faces. They climb a mountain that turns out to be composed of missing left socks. Their last chance for escape fails when a bus marked Jersey City comes by and refuses them entry because they lack exact change. 'What'll happen to us?' Stimpy wails. 'We'll probably continue to mutate,' says Ren." Schomer described Black Hole as a bleak episode that was unlike any other cartoon show in the United States.

Animation expert Martin Goodman wrote: "On a surface level, they were funny, subversive cartoons with an offbeat retro look, but a deeper examination revealed them to be an encapsulation of some of our darkest fears, ones in which the soul and body are powerless against a world out of balance. Perhaps the most striking example of this was the episode Black Hole, which finds the duo stranded on a bizarre, hostile planet; they begin to mutate into progressively hideous versions of themselves before imploding at the end of the cartoon."

Books and articles

• Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1593931100.
• Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1629331836.