“Oh my God, they killed Kenny! You bastards!” You may well remember that catchphrase fromSouth Parkas it’s been uttered by its characters following the death of their friend Kenny McCormick well over 100 times via the show’s series, film, and video games.
A staple in the earlier years, the orange parka-wearing muffled-voiced Kenny would find himself getting electrocuted, shot, zapped, and exploded by Canadians, touched by death himself, and eaten by rats… so why and how did such a certainty for the show (and sucha well-recognized catchphrasefor fans or otherwise) ever stop?
Kenny Was Merely a Prop
Season 5, Episode 13 “Kenny Dies” saw the ever-unfortunate Kenny die for good, finally. Airing in 2001, the episode saw Kenny begin the episode with a cough before being taken to hospital and told that he has a muscular disease that cannot be cured, while the B story sees simultaneously Cartman happening upon a cargo of fetuses from a crashed truck. While the three remaining boys come to terms with the fact that Kenny is probably going to die, Cartman attempts to sway Congress into lifting the law on using aborted fetuses for medical science in an attempt to cure his friend.
By the end of the episode, Kenny does die and Cartman reveals that he was only pretending to aid Kenny but really just wanted to essentially “clone” his favorite restaurant with the science granted via the aborted fetuses. And there’sreal black humorin the episodes' (ahem) execution. Whereas previously Kenny’s death was a bit that the friends would shrug off only to have meant nothing by the next episode, here, once the bad news drops, Stan and Kyle break down realizing the severity of the situation (despite already having seen it happen so many times before).
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With the episode’s laugh track intro, the story apes the medical drama series for this particular outing and treats its story of the week as something any of the characters in those sorts of shows would just as sincerely. Take when Cartman is summoned by Kyle and Stan. He has just gotten off the phone with a seafood restaurant after trying to flog aborted fetuses — but upon hearing that Kenny is in the hospital, he immediately drops that venture and fetches his coat so he can accompany them to the hospital (even though this does turn out to be a selfish ruse by the final scene).
Ironically, Kyle was originally planned as the one to be killed — arguing that his character was already too similar to Stan and that the blond-haired (and quickly rising in popularity)Butters would take his placein the main foursome. But practicality would ultimately make the decision for who was to go. Speaking on theSouth ParkSeason 5 DVD commentary, Trey Parker said the following.
“We were basically sick of killing Kenny right, so we were like ‘let’s have him die and he’ll be gone forever,” he eleborated “Cuz he’s really just a prop anyway… and we kill him every episode.”
And it’s just another example ofSouth Park’s own irreverence. Yet one more aspect that proves that literally nothing is off limits for the show, The series can kill off one of its most beloved characters (or at least its one with the most notable iconography) while essentially both ignoring and mocking his singular contribution to the show up until this point — that Kenny dies and comes back, but this time it was real.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butters!
The episode that immediately followed and closed out Season 5, titled “Butters’ Very Own Episode,” dedicated its whole 22 minutes to Butters' story and excluded any mention or image of Kenny — effectively saying that Butters had replaced him from here on. The change marks the series becoming a stronger entity overall. A growing up of sorts, as the characters (notably through Butters and Randy in particular) would gradually with time become more nuanced, with Kenny’s sacrifice being a direct reason for that.
Although Stone and Parker may chalk it up (wisely) to simply not wanting to have to create a new elaborate death each episode (then at least 150 episodes and a feature film in no less), this decision to kill Kenny also meant they could discard a running gag that had become very stale while freeing up a new slot for a character and stories that contributed a lot more to that world. Kenny before his untimely death in this particular episode was nothing more the incomprehensible poor kid with a bad home life who would die and then come back. He was a gag that you knew was coming and had zero character to his person really.
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Kenny would return properly in the Season 6 finale, “Red Sleigh Down.” By this time, Butters had been established now as a main character and more than a solid replacement for Kenny. Asking where he’d been, Kenny reveals he’s “just been over there.”
Back From the Dead
And it’s ironically this (sort of real, ultimately not) death that would remind fans how beloved Kenny actually was. It’s also this stepping back for the stronger character in Butters where Kenny’s few but important episodes could arise. By having a hiatus on the Kenny character he could be resurrected properly and played with in (admittedly few, but) important off-shoot episodes. Like Kevin Smith’s Silent Bob ofClerks, Kenny returning to the series gave his few moments where he would actually contribute — speak even — all the more weight, finally.
From here, Kenny could go have a whole episode dedicated to himvia drug tripin “Major Boobage” and keep fans guessing in the excellent superhero spoof in the Coon Trilogy and the real identity of Mysterion. It’s here that the creators could even add lore ten years on from Kenny’s proper death that his ability to die and resurrect without anyone remembering is down to his parents inadvertently pledging themselves to Cthulhu (by way of free booze).
Formerly an incoherent entity, created only to die and come back, ironically for Kenny to thrive he had to be killed off properly (at least for a little bit anyway) because sometimes you don’t know how good something is until it’s gone.
