Space Madness (The Ren & Stimpy Show)

"Space Madness" is the 5th episode of the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on September 8, 1991. Along with Marooned and Black Hole, the episode is part of a loose trilogy in the first season known as the "space episodes" centering around the show-within-the-show, the Star Trek-like science fiction show The Adventures of Commander Höek and Cadet Stimpy.

Plot
Ren Höek and Stimpy Cat decided to watch television together and quarrel over what to watch. Finally, they decide on their favorite "live-action drama", the science-fiction show The Adventures of Commander Höek and Cadet Stimpy, that stars themselves as the eponymous characters. Commander Höek and Space Cadet Stimpy are the two-animal crew of a spacecraft who have gone further into space than any dog and cat before. The duo have been travelling together on the same spaceship for 36 years on their way to the Crab Nebula and Ren begins to show the signs of the "space madness" caused by him being in space for too long.

As Ren descends into paranoid insanity, Stimpy does his best to be loyal to and to comfort his commander despite Ren's increasingly bizarre antics. Ren eats a bar of soap that he is convinced is really an ice-cream bar from his childhood, and which he believes Stimpy is trying to steal from him. In his paranoia, Commander Höek becomes convinced that Space Cadet Stimpy means to do him harm after Stimpy seizes him in an attempt to calm him down.

Ren decides that the best way to rid himself of Stimpy is have him guard the History Eraser Button, which he believes will drive Stimpy mad. As Stimpy guards the History Eraser Button, an obnoxious TV reporter appears and does everything within his power to encourage Stimpy to push the button. Finally, Stimpy gives in to temptation and does push the History Eraser Button, which erases both him and Ren from history. The end credits features Ren and Stimpy as normal before the two disappear as the duo no longer exist.

Cast

 * John Kricfalusi – voice of Ren
 * Billy West – voice of Stimpy and the Announcer Salesman

Production
The story was conceived in 1990 and was illustrated in the spring of 1991. Space Madness saw the first appearance of the recurring character that came to be known as the Salesman. John Kricfalusi, the showrunner of the Ren & Stimpy, stated in a 2008: "Stimpy's Invention and Space Madness were both rejected by Nickelodeon before I talked them into letting me do them. And they turned out to be our two most popular episodes". By June 1991, the task of drawing in the episode had been sub-contracted out to the Carbunkle studio of Vancouver. The American critic Thad Komorowski wrote that much of the quality of the episode was due to the work of the Carbunkle studio who gave the episode a cinematic quality that was unusual in American cartoon TV shows.

There was much tension between Bob Jaques, the chief of the Carbunkle studio, and John Kricfalusi, the chief of the Spümcø studio. Jaques complained about the scene where Ren floats in his body of water while eating the soap bar that Kricfalusi tried to redraw the scene after sending it to the Carbunkle studio to be drawn in. Jaques stated: "The design of the water varied from layout to layout so per the rules, we followed the layouts. He could had sent the footage back for changes, but it was the growing OCD in him that made him want to touch stuff that was beyond his skill level". The task of coloring in Space Madness was assigned to the Fil-Cartoons Studio of Manila. Jaques felt that there was a number of flaws with the work of Fil-Cartoons studio that ruined his enjoyment of the episode.

Reception
The American critic Thad Komorowski wrote that Space Madness was the "first genuine masterpiece" of The Ren and Stimpy Show, and was the episode that made the show popular. The critic Jonathan Barkan praised Space Madness along with its sequel Marooned that "played almost like demented Star Trek episodes."

The critic Rob Harvilla wrote that Space Madness was one of the best of the show that features a surreal plot and Ren's colorful insults to Stimpy such as "you bloated sack of protoplasm!" Harvilla praised the voice acting in Space Madness as "phenomenal", writing that both John Kricfalusi and Billy West performed their characters with "stupendous, indelible voices". Harvilla wrote that he greatly enjoyed Space Madness along with the rest of The Ren & Stimpy Show as an youth in the early 1990s, but argued that his enjoyment of the show today is tainted by the sexual abuse allegations against Kricfalusi that came out in 2018. Harvilla wrote that he felt though the show was a vital part of "ribald '90s pop-culture history", but the legacy of its "malevolent madness" poses difficult questions. Harvilla wrote the way that Kricfalusi used his celebrity as the showrunner and as the voice of Ren to have sex with teenage girls who were fans of his show meant that if there was a "real-world equivalent of the History Eraser Button", then the question arises if it should be pressed for the Ren and Stimpy Show. Harvilla concluded "No need to erase it, per se, but some history is history for a reason".