Nurse Stimpy

"Nurse Stimpy" is the 4th episode of the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States 25 August, 1991.

Plot

Ren becomes deadly ill and Stimpy vows to take care of him. Stimpy dons a nurse's uniform and provides a variety of unpractical treatments that cause Ren much pain. At the end, Ren becomes cured while Stimpy becomes sick instead. Ren puts on the nurse uniform and says "now ee't my turn!"

Cast

• Ren-voice of John Kricfalusi
• Stimpy-voice of Billy West

Production

The episode had a troubled production with the script being rewritten five times.^[1] The storyboard work for Nurse Stimpy was done by Chris Reccardi while Bob Camp did the lay-out with the rest of the work being done by the Lacewood studio in Ottawa.^[1] John Kricfalusi who directed Nurse Stimpy disallowed his own work and used a pseudonym for the director's credit.^[2] In a 1993 interview, Kricfalusi said of Nurse Stimpy: "It's really ugly cartoon".^[1] The American critic Martin Goodman wrote the Ren & Stimpy Show explored fears of illness, decay and death as the show "featured filth, illness, disease and mutilation to an unprecedented degree, making these horrors an integral part of the show".^[3]

Reception

Nurse Stimpy is widely regarded as one of the weaker stories of the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show with the American journalist Thad Komorowski writing that Nurse Stimpy is "merely an exhibition of toilet humor".^[1]

Books

• Klickstein, Matthew; Summers, Marc (2013). Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age. London: Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 9781101614099.
• Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1629331836.

References