Road Apples is the eighth episode of the third season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on March 12, 1994.
Plot
Ren and Stimpy are hitchhiking in the desert and play roadkill to catch a ride in the RV of the perpetually clueless couple, Mr. and Mrs. Pipe. The Pipes provide Ren and Stimpy a collection of disgusting food. Mr. Pipe warns the duo about "the Phantom"-a serial killer who first bores people with his tales of his show business in the 1930s and then dismembers them. "The Phantom" arrives who turns out to be Wilbur Cobb. Everyone fells asleep while the RV is driving. Ren wakes up, but the RV crashes into a lake. As the RV sinks to the bottom of the lake, Ren, Stimpy and Cobb escape.
Howard Baker, who directed Road Apples, joined the newly founded Games Animation studio in October 1992.[1] Baker was one of the few Games artists who had not worked for the Spümcø studio and was treated as outsider except by the showrunner, Bob Camp.[1] Baker was promoted to a director by Camp in 1993.[1] Baker recalled that directing Road Apples was a difficult experience, saying: "I wished there was more help from the crew, who didn't want to help me for some reason. Despite the wonderful, talented artists, Games was a strange place with a lot of odd ego trips going on. I was hoping to have a longer relationship with the show, but the angst after it left Spümcø was too caustic for me".[1] Camp felt sorry for Jack Carter, a once prominent comedian of the 1960s who had fallen on hard times, and tried to write in the Wilbur Cobb character as often as possible to give Carter work.[2] Camp had insisted on adding Cobb to the script of Road Apples, which other Games artists felt to be shoehorning him in, and took the story on an "inexplicable tangent".[2]
Reception
The American journalist Thad Komorowksi rated Road Apples as a bomb, stating the story was entirely unfunny and unamusing.[3] Komorowski wrote: "Road Apples itself represents everything that went wrong in the Games era of Ren & Stimpy. The storylines took on a regular formula: downtrodden Ren and Stimpy stumble into some inescapable circumstance in which a third party takes center stage, subjecting the duo to wacky abuse that angers Ren and entertains Stimpy".[4]
Books and articles
Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN978-1593931100.
Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN978-1629331836.
