City Hicks

Did You Know?

• American journalist Thad Komorowski gave the episode zero out of five stars, calling it one of the worst in the series.
• The only saving grace noted by critics was Richard Daskas' color styling.

Plot

Ren and Stimpy are farmers with intellectual disabilities who take pleasure in famine, desert locust plagues, and harvesting dust. For their evening meal, Ren eats a turkey called "dirtkey" that is actually edible, along with "hot dust puppies," which are slabs of dust. They ask God for a plentiful harvest, though the crops they pray for were taken from Indigenous people. When rain begins, Ren panics that it will ruin their crops; seedlings sprout in the soil, making it fertile, but the pair are too dim to grasp that plants can be eaten.

Plants grow on Ren's hat as he weeps; he curses God, who then hits him with lightning for his extreme foolishness. The next day, they abandon their farm riding their sheep, repulsed by the sight of fruits and vegetables. In the city, they steal women's clothes, but later find their sheep either shorn or towed away. Thugs assault them and take the stolen garments to dress as women.

They notice the road is composed of grime, which they begin collecting until animals confront them, explaining the city is a "union town." They start at the lowest level as "grime collectors," enduring buildings constructed on their bodies, working in a factory where they play cockroaches being exterminated, and later fishing and processing immigrants in New York City. An immigrant they approved eventually takes over their job. The two complain about city life and try to kill themselves by lying in the street, hoping to be run over.

Dust falls from the sky; Dusty Claus, Stimpy's hero, appears and invites them to the "dust mines." They agree, and the three leave the city through the sewers.

Production

City Hicks was produced for the series' fourth season and aired during a Nickelodeon-commissioned fifth season. It was storyboarded at Character Builders in Ohio, a less costly alternative to studios like Rough Draft Studios, by Jim Kammerud and Arthur Filloy, formerly of Mr. Big Cartoons, to save costs. The low quality of its storytelling was worsened by director Ken Bruce being assigned responsibility after the episode had been animated at Toon-Us-In, which was the main criticism of the episode.