Starving and desperate (yet again!), the two come up with a scheme with which to get some eats. Ren, the "thinker", notices that the en-caged animals in the zoo, particularly the monkeys, have it made. After an idiotic interview with the Keeper, the two are now considered Monkeys, and go about adjusting to the habitat. Sure, performing for the crowd gets rewards for some of the apes, but Ren and Stimpy, far less impressive in their monkey behaviors, end up with garbage.
Of course, their are some pretty good gross-out gags (the grooming etiquette and social hierarchy feed these), but overall, this episode lacks a final direction. After all, they were only ever after a feed - there's not a lot of dramatic potential there, and the resident ape (drawn superbly, by the way) is a character that sort of steals the show, and to my knowledge, never appeared again.
Next we have "Fake Dad", a funny take on the "Big Brother" organizations. Ren finds himself surrogate father of a huge, mono-syllable uttering, hairy criminal named Kowalsky. This guy, who resembles the Lummox characters we've grown to love, is delivered in a police van! Of course, there are some teething problems here for Ren, who goes on to discover that Kowalsky, in his infantile manner, has no regard for his household possessions as he goes about crushing his "favourite" items. The idea of "tough love" is touched upon here, as Ren takes a spoon with which to discipline his "child". The notion/morality of child abuse is pretty heaving-going for Saturday morning, but that's why this cartoon still lives on, right? There's some good gags about Kowalsky's diet ("meat-on-meat sandwich") and a distressingly emotional scene towards the end when Kowalsky, torn from Ren's care, is taken back to prison. Of course, Stimpy in his old-world sentimentality is only too happy to soothe Ren's tears...
Of course, their are some pretty good gross-out gags (the grooming etiquette and social hierarchy feed these), but overall, this episode lacks a final direction. After all, they were only ever after a feed - there's not a lot of dramatic potential there, and the resident ape (drawn superbly, by the way) is a character that sort of steals the show, and to my knowledge, never appeared again.
Next we have "Fake Dad", a funny take on the "Big Brother" organizations. Ren finds himself surrogate father of a huge, mono-syllable uttering, hairy criminal named Kowalsky. This guy, who resembles the Lummox characters we've grown to love, is delivered in a police van! Of course, there are some teething problems here for Ren, who goes on to discover that Kowalsky, in his infantile manner, has no regard for his household possessions as he goes about crushing his "favourite" items. The idea of "tough love" is touched upon here, as Ren takes a spoon with which to discipline his "child". The notion/morality of child abuse is pretty heaving-going for Saturday morning, but that's why this cartoon still lives on, right? There's some good gags about Kowalsky's diet ("meat-on-meat sandwich") and a distressingly emotional scene towards the end when Kowalsky, torn from Ren's care, is taken back to prison. Of course, Stimpy in his old-world sentimentality is only too happy to soothe Ren's tears...
