Reigning Cat And Dog -- Nickelodeon Has A Hit In `Ren & Stimpy Show'

One minute and forty-five seconds.

That's how long it takes Stimpy, that cartoon cat with all the svelteness of a bag of charcoal briquettes, to demonstrate that success hasn't changed him.

One minute forty-five. Stimpy inserts a finger into his left nostril as unself-conciously as ever and begins fishing for, let's see, how might he put it: "magic nose goblins."

Beside him, his buddy Ren, the rheumy Chihuahua, is vigorously scratching his private parts.

"The Ren & Stimpy Show," welcome back. Finally.

During the past year, the animated series on cable's Nickelodeon network became the hit that caught everyone with a finger up his nose.

Not least of all Nickelodeon, which had only six episodes on hand.

The half-dozen episodes aired. Kids started watching. TV critics started noticing. The six episodes aired again. More kids watched, and parents, and childless adults. "Ren & Stimpy" T-shirts started selling. MTV began airing the 6 episodes. College students organized "Ren & Stimpy" viewing parties. The six episodes came on again. And again.

For the guileless cat and the skinny dog with the Peter Lorre-like voice there developed a near-religious devotion out of all proportion to the size of the canon. Demand for Ren & Stimpy outstripped supply of same.

We can only imagine what might have happened if Nickelodeon had waited any longer to premiere the first new episode of the show's second season. Ren & Stimpy sightings in a Kalamazoo grocery store; the image of Ren & Stimpy appearing on a tortilla in Encino. Anything's possible.

Ren & Stimpy follow a different set of rules than the rest of TV, along with defying the laws of gravity, Robert's Rules of Order and the guidelines of Miss Manners. Forget the traditional conventions of narrative. A Ren & Stimpy cartoon is more like 10 minutes of leaping from one ridiculous trapeze to another, the end of a process that begins with funny ideas jotted on cocktail napkins in a bar.

Nickelodeon promises 13 new "Ren & Stimpy" episodes this season, to air during the network's prime-time experiment at 9 p.m. Saturdays, and again the next morning at the usual 11 a.m. slot in Nick's Sunday cartoon block.

Nose-picking is only one of the highlights of the very first new cartoon, which finds Ren & Stimpy joining the Army.

We never learn why; maybe they like olive drab.

Creator John Kricfalusi, director Bob Camp and the rest of the troops at Spumco (the show's production company) seem determined to push their characters where no `toons have gone before. Farthest-out may be the moment where Private Ren is taken by surprise by his burly drill sergeant. Ren's face drips off his skull like hot wax, his vertebrae fly apart, his tongue sails out of his mouth, his bloodshoot eyes wiggle outside their sockets and his brain shoots up out of his skull.

Just one of the things you'd never see in an Audie Murphy movie.

Kids, by the way, love the show, with no apparent harmful side effects. My neighbors' kindergarten-age son watches on Sunday mornings with his dad, then crawls through the hedge and tells me about his favorite parts. Occasionally I perform my Ren imitation ("Pull yourself together, man!"). Eventually, he wanders off to find his Nerf arrows.

We have come to expect certain things besides extreme body language from "Ren & Stimpy." Among them: whoopee cushion noises; throbbing anatomical parts; foul-colored clouds of gaseous odors; sudden mood swings; incongruous music (here, listen for the hymn "Just a Closer Walk with Thee"); maniacal laughter; and finally, reaffirmed friendship. Ren & Stimpy are buds for life; something keeps drawing them back together.

Ren & Stimpophiles will not be disappointed by "In the Army," and those left scratching their heads after the first season will probably not be recruited.

Unlike a past cult cartoon hit such as "The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse," or even the classic "Bullwinkle," "Ren & Stimpy" seldom relies on puns or sly references aimed at the grown-ups in the audience. It's content to remain a simple escape from a complex world - a retreat to the days when humor didn't require sarcasm or irony, when you could still buy a laugh at a novelty shop for the price of fake dog doo.

To describe any more of Ren & Stimpy's antics in this, their triumphal return, would be like trying to explain the joy of a joy buzzer or the bite of clacking teeth.

When the cartoon ends, though, Ren & Stimpy have become full-fledged "tank paratroopers," hurtling through the sky singing "America the Beautiful." For members of the Ren & Stimpy brigade, it will be hard not to stand, remove all fingers from nostrils to salute, and think: What voices. What a show. What a country.