I just want to let you know that this episode ends with everyone dead and in hell. There, that should set the mood for this episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show called “Sven Hoek”, which originally aired on Nickelodeon on November 7, 1992. Before we get to the main story, there’s a commercial for every kid’s favorite toy, Log! This one features new costumes and playsets for more great Log adventures, like:
- Action Log (with realistic facial moss)
- Log Of Arabia
- Officer Log
- Athletic Log
- Cheerleader Log
- Sgt. Log of the Yukon
- Agent 00-Log
- The Log Lion Tamer Playset
- Singing Log
- The Mysterious Log from Mars
- The Armchair Quarterback Adventure Playset
- The Log Authentic Civil War First Aid Station
With that out of the way, let’s get to the main story.
Ren is sick & tired of sitting around all day with a pea brained idiot like Stimpy as his only company. Thankfully, his cousin Sven is coming to visit and should arrive any minute now. He hasn’t seen Sven in years but he’s sure that any relative of his would be a dignified dog of class & intelligence. Finally, someone to have an intellectual conversation with! Ren’s reminiscing about his early childhood with cousin Sven is interrupted by an alarm from Stimpy’s wrist watch to remind him that it’s time for his appointment. Side note, this scene does something that I always love in cartoons, which is when the character only wears a wrist watch when it’s important to the story. It shows up for the moment it’s needed and then promptly vanishes. Anyway, back to Stimpy’s appointment. Apparently, they’ve had a vending machine installed in the house and for the low price of twenty five cents you can get a horse to kick you in the head. I can think of several people in real life who probably have a similar appointment on their schedule.
After flying across the room, Stimpy begins shaking and laughing hysterically. When Ren is about to beat him to death with a bat, the doorbell rings to signal cousin Sven’s arrival. Ren’s mood instantly changes and he’s thrilled that finally there’s someone else here to break up the monotonous idiocy that is life with Stimpson J. Cat. However, Ren is in for a huge disappointment.
Sven turns out to be exactly like Stimpy, only somehow even stupider. While Ren goes to make some refreshments & try to process this, Stimpy helps Sven unpack. The two immediately become best friends. Sven shows off some of his cherished possessions he’s brought with him; his jar of spit (which he’s been saving since he was a boy) and his ball of band-aids, which collects every single band-aid he’s ever used. He shows off a particular band-aid from 1986 the way someone would show off a vintage wine. Stimpy, who is wildly impressed with all of this, shows Sven his collection of magic nose goblins, which he picked himself. At one point Stimpy’s brain (which is about the size of a kidney bean) just falls out of his head, which prompts Sven to pull out his own brain (which is about half the size) for comparison. All of these items get lingering, uncomfortably detailed close-ups that are staple of The Ren and Stimpy Show.
Ren has to go to work. He tells Stimpy & Sven not to do anything stupid while he’s gone, but that’s like asking the sun to not shine. They play a game of hide & seek, in which Stimpy hides in the closet and then announces “I’m hiding in the closet! Like an idiot!” while Sven is looking for him. Sven finds Stimpy sitting in his litter box, which he’s immediately enthralled with and asks, “What is this beautiful thing?”. Stimpy tells him to hop on in. Then, still in the litter box, they “play circus” in which they pretend to be a bearded lady, a juggler, and a sword swallower all through the creative use of kitty litter. Thankfully we don’t get to see any of this, as Stimpy breaks the fourth wall to let the audience know that he & Sven are sharing a private moment and shuts the closet door.
After the kitty litter circus, they grow bored and look for another game to play. They look through a cupboard of board games through boring options like Scribble, The Game of Loaf, Monotony, Purecheesey, and Misery Date before they find the funnest game in the whole wide world: Don’t Whiz On the Electric Fence!
They never explain the rules of the game, but the object seems fairly simple. The two don’t get to play for long though, as Ren has come home and discovered that Stimpy & Sven have apparently gotten into a lot of mischief today that we the audience didn’t get to see. At first, he sees that the house is absolutely trashed with kitty litter scattered everywhere. The curtains also seem to have been on fire at some point. Surprisingly, Ren decides to just let all this go and to focus on one of his intellectual hobbies as a means of relaxation. But, as you might’ve guessed, those were trashed along with the rest of the house. Sven & Stimpy have plastered Ren’s opera records to the wall with bubblegum, painted his prize winning collection of dinosaur droppings to look like Easter eggs, and (in Ren’s words) violated his collection of rare, incurable diseases.
The funniest part of all of this is the brilliant animation of Ren’s reaction to seeing all this, which I’ll post a few screenshots for your enjoyment.
It would be an understatement to say that Ren is upset about all this. Have you ever been just so unbelievably goddamn angry about something that you transcend anger and move to a state of calm in which you quietly and politely, with the occasional chuckle, explain all the ways you’re going to brutalize a person for their transgressions against you? That’s where Ren’s at here. With a smile on his face, Ren tells Sven & Stimpy that he’s going to tear their lips off, gouge their eyes out, and tear their arms out of the sockets. He slowly & methodically, drawing out the last word in each sentence, says “I’m gonna hit you. And you’re gonna fall. And I’m gonna look down. And I’m gonna laugh.”
But first, before we get to any of that…Ren’s gotta take a whiz. He tells the two of them that he’ll be right back and that they better not go anywhere. Walking away, he comes to the game that they’d had set up in the living room floor. Ren asks them what it is and Stimpy replies “It’s a game.” and Sven says “It’s our favorite game in the whole wide world!” This news makes Ren absolutely giddy. Here’s a board game that these two idiots love and he’s got a bladder that needs emptying. But Ren doesn’t know what the game is and doesn’t know the one rule you have to follow, which is right there in the name. Ren begins gleefully whizzing on the electric fence, which causes the whole house to blow up and kill everyone. The three of them suddenly find themselves in hell, where the devil calmly asks, “You whizzed on the electric fence, didn’t you?”
Comicdom Wrecks! 