Out West (The Ren & Stimpy Show)

Out West is the 4th episode of the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on 29 August 1992.

Plot
In a remote town in the American Southwest some time in the 19th century the law is represented by two stereotypical hillbilly "yahoos", the brutalist, ignorant, moronic Sheriff Abner Dimwit and his equally asinine and vicious Deputy Sheriff, Ewalt Nitwit. The principle interest of Dimwit and Nitwit in life is hanging people for their sadistic amusement. Dimwit and Nitwit have hanged countless innocent people merely for the pleasure of executing people, leading Abner to ponder if perhaps they should execute someone who is actually guilty of a crime for once. Bored as there is no else left to hang, the duo are delighted when two outlaws Ren aka Three-Fingered Höek and his sidekick Stimpy aka Stupid the Kid arrive in their town to "loot and pillage". Despite the wanted posters of Ren and Stimpy, Dimwit and Nitwit fail to recognize them. Urged on by Abner and Ewalt to commit a crime to provide them with an excuse to hang them, Ren and Stimpy steal first the sheriff's obese wife and then Mr. Horse. Even then, Dimwit and Nitwit cannot understand what was happening and Mr. Horse has to explain to them that he has been stolen. Dimwit and Nitwit attempt to hang Ren and Stimpy, but fail as Ren is too lightweight for the rope to break his neck while Stimpy is too fat. Out of desperation to hang someone, Dimwit and Nitwit hang themselves. As they slowly suffocate to death, they join Ren and Stimpy in singing a song in praise of the joys of hanging people entitled "The Lord Loves a Hanging, That's Why He Gave Us Necks".

Cast

 * Ren-voice of John Kricfalusi
 * Stimpy-voice of Billy West
 * Mr. Horse-voice of John Kricfalusi
 * Abner Dimwit-voice of Jim Smith
 * Ewalt Nitwit-voice of Bob Camp

Production
The episode was approved by the Nickelodeon network in November 1991 with a premiere set for August 1992. Bob Camp who co-wrote the story for Out West later complained about the network censorship as there were scenes "cut out for one reason or another and we had had to make last-minute substitutions so it wasn't quite as funny". Production at the Spümcø studio was divided between the prestigious "A" productions directed personally by the showrunner John Kricfalusi which received more time and larger budgets vs. the less prestigious "B" productions directed by Bob Camp which received less time and lower budgets. For the second season, Out West along with In The Army, Mad Dog Hoëk and Monkey See, Monkey Don't were the lesser "B" productions assigned to Camp. Kricfalusi co-wrote the story for Out West along with Camp, but was not especially involved in its production. Unlike the "A' productions headed by the perfectionist Kricfalusi, the "B" productions headed by Camp moved forward at a swifter pace and were completed on time. Camp stated he saved time because: "I storyboarded straight ahead, full size on layout paper, that's doing layout and storyboard at the same. Someone would take all the scenes and make a storyboard out of it, and we would do lay-out".Out West came in slightly under budget owing to Camp's production methods. The network rules forbade the characters from drinking alcohol, but in Out West there are numerous corks in the background, which suggests that the inability of Abner and Ewalt to understand even the simplest of concepts is due not only to their stupidity, but also because they are drunk as well.

The process of drawing in the scenes for Out West was done at the Carbunkle studio of Vancouver in the spring of 1992. Kricfalusi would preferred to have the work sub-contracted out to a cheap studio in Asia, but selected the Carbunkle studio, which needed work as Sven Höek was not ready yet. Chris Sauvé of the Carbunkle studio stated about the scene he illustrated of Ren and Stimpy riding into town on giant chickens: "It was the only scene I ever did on Ren & Stimpy where I actually did a live-action reference. I went and some kid's move, The Adventures of Milo & Otis and I still-framed this scene of all these chickens. I was just amazed at how fast those chickens moved their heads. It was basically popping from pose to pose: if it wasn't it was one frame held and then that flappy thing underneath would move".. When it aired in 1992, the Nickelodeon network censored the scene where Abner and Ewalt placed the nooses around their necks along with Ewalt's line "y'all bring the kids next time, ya hear!"

Reception
The American journalist Thad Komorowski criticized Out West for its "peculiarly sluggish pacing" as he complained that there were too many scenes meant to establish the stupidity of Abner and Ewalt that consisted of them staring blankly into space as they struggled to understand the simplest of concepts that were severely "taxing" for the audience. However, Komorowski praised the ending as "the willful and blatant shattering of every taboo" that "marks one of the defining moments of the series". Most notably, the song The Lord Loves A Hanging, That's Why He Gave Us Necks invokes traditional American values and Christianity in support of capital punishment. However, the song is being ironical in its nominal pro-death penalty stance as the song is told from the viewpoint of someone who gratuitously wants to see people hanged merely for the sadistic pleasure of watching someone die, which undermines the pro capital punishment message. The ending of Out West was banned in the United Kingdom by the British Board of Film Classification under the grounds that "the subject of hanging is presented as comedic, fun and risk free, on the grounds of potential harm to the likely audience and in accordance with the Video Recordings Act 1984."