Circus Midgets

Plot

Ren and Stimpy try to hitch a ride across a desert highway, but no cars stop for them. Eventually, a small car abducts them, forcing them to leave their luggage behind. Inside are two clowns, Schlomo and Momo, who laugh in a threatening way. When Stimpy laughs along, they warn him off, then introduce themselves.

They torment the duo with a series of practical jokes, capping it off with a laugh track. They force Ren and Stimpy into clown costumes and make them perform circus stunts like trapeze work and diving into a pool, even though the car is far too small for such acts. At a gas station, the clowns steal things. Ren and Stimpy attempt to flee but discover a third clown driving.

The clowns hit Ren with bags of money, car tires, and a character named Kowalski when he asks to leave, then drive off, also kidnapping a cow and a singing blue whale. The clowns humiliate their captives, but police cars start chasing them. Momo disables the police car by stealing parts, but the clowns’ own tires go flat. The car goes over a cliff, and everyone jumps out to escape—except Ren and Stimpy, who stay stuck inside as it crashes into a large rock.

They try hitchhiking again, and the Fire Chief picks them up. Because their clown outfits make them look like circus midgets, the Fire Chief beats them up offscreen while driving.

Production

The script for "Circus Midgets" was written by Peter Avanzino and was heavy with references to the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas, which Avanzino was a huge fan of. Jim Gomez was assigned to direct "Circus Midgets", a story that he had no interest in directing as he felt that the script was too violent and unnecessarily full of references to the film. Gomez was told to direct "Circus Midgets" if he wanted to be a director on the series. Gomez said: "I absolutely did not want to do it.

I hated all the referential shit. Ballantine said, 'Well, there's not going to be any more opportunities for you directing if you don't do this one first'. Their whole thinking was that this script had already been approved. I just wanted to throw it out, but there was a bunch of bullshit attached to the delivery requirements at the time that we weren't privy to, and that seemed to be the driving force for a lot of it".

Gomez was clearly unenthusiastic about the story that he directed, which impacted the finished product; he would put substantially more effort on "An Abe Divided", after which he gave up directing for the series. Due to his lack of involvement and dislike of the episode, series creator John Kricfalusi did not commentate the episode in its DVD release, replacing it with humorous commentary by Ren (voiced by Kricfalusi) and Stimpy (voiced by Eric Bauza) where they try to remember what actually happened in the episode. This was used as an easter egg for the initial DVD release.

Reception

American journalist Thad Komorowski gave "Circus Midgets" two stars out of five, calling it a meandering and mean episode leading up to a single ineffective joke. Komorowski stated that the basic problem with "Circus Midgets" was that Ren and Stimpy were "merely punching bags for a domineering third party" with Ren and Stimpy merely reacting instead of acting as was the case with the two cartoons from 1992 with George Liquor as an antagonist. The show's executive producer, Vanessa Coffey, admitted that the episode was a failure, saying: "It probably crossed some violent lines that we won't want to do again. We probably won't be using those circus midget characters in future episodes either".