"The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen" is the thirteenth episode and season finale of the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on May 23, 1993, and is the final episode conceptualized under Spümcø to be aired.
Plot
Screenshot from "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen"
In a satire of the 1874 March West of the Northwest Mounted Police (known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police since 1920), Ren and Stimpy are members of the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen in the 19th century. The duo are sent out on a pointless mission riding their ungainly yaks by Commander Jasper to find the Great Barren Wasteland in the far north of Canada. After surviving a winter trek and various hardships such as attacks by insects and First Nations peoples, Ren becomes dejected. To cheer him up, Stimpy sings the "Kilted Yaksmen Anthem", which despite its depressing lyrics lifts Ren's spirits. Ren and Stimpy become lost in a steaming jungle and then in a desert, both environments showing complete disregard of Canada's actual climate. Facing starvation, Ren devises the idea of eating dirt, which provides enough nourishment to keep them alive. Ren and Stimpy plant a flag to claim the wilderness for Canada, salute the flag and then die. Their skeletons are shown as resting in the same spot, which is now beneath an underpass in an unnamed city in Canada circa 1993. The ending implies that Ren and Stimpy's sacrifice of their lives made possible the modern city, which is ironically depicted as an urban wasteland full of pollution and endless traffic jams.
The showrunner of The Ren & Stimpy Show, John Kricfalusi, had wanted to do a story set in his native Canada, which was the origin of "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen". The March West is a famous episode in Canadian history, depicted in Canada as an epic of endurance and courage as the Northwest Mounted Police marched across the Prairie provinces to reach what is now Alberta. Production started on the episode that became "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen" in the spring of 1992.[1]Chris Reccardi of Spümcø was assigned to direct the episode, but had only reached the layout stage when he was fired by Kricfalusi in late July 1992.[1] Michael Fontanelli was then assigned to direct the episode, but little was accomplished between July–September 1992.[1] On September 21, 1992, Kricfalusi was fired as the showrunner and Spümcø lost the contract for The Ren & Stimpy Show.
Nickelodeon assigned the newly founded Games Animation to take over the work of finishing the episodes that Spümcø had started. Reccardi, who joined Games Animation in October 1992, was assigned to once again direct the episode.[1] Reccardi later said: "I was still learning and just never took charge of that thing. Back when I was storyboarding it, I really didn't get the feel of a story for it and John was really preoccupied with other challenges at the time."[1] After the draft was completed, much of the drawings for the episode was done at Carbunkle Cartoons in Vancouver.[2]Bob Jaques, director of Carbunkle Cartooms, complained that "Yaksmen" had no real plot, being a collection of comic incidents loosely built around the story of Ren and Stimpy's pointless quest to find the Great Barren Wasteland.[2] The episode was finally finished in the spring of 1993, a year after it had been started.[3] The Los Angeles Gay Men's Choir provided the chorus for the "Kilted Yaksmen Anthem".[4] The line in the Kilted Yaksmen Anthem that says "And we're probably going to hell" was censored by the Nickelodeon network, which felt that lyric was too dark for children.[4]
On 18 May 1993, Kricfalusi's lawyer sent a letter to Nickelodeon threatening a lawsuit because the directing credits for "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen" were co-credited to Kricfalusi and Reccardi.[5] In his letter, Kricfalusi's lawyer wrote that Reccardi had not directed the episode and did not deserve that credit.[5]Jim Ballantine stated that the letter and the legal threats were due to jealousy as Reccardi was dating Lynne Naylor, who was the former girlfriend of Kricfalusi.[5] Balantine stated: "Since Chris was in a serious relationship with Lynne Naylor, anything having to do with Chris made John extra nuts. Our response was something like, there was no specific prohibition against adding a name and John had shared credits in the past. I certainly don't fault anything Chris did. He finished that cartoon, and we (me, Vanessa [Coffey] and Mary [Harrington]) thought he deserved the credit".[6]
Reception
American critic Paulie Von Doom wrote that "Yaksmen" story had a weak plot, but a number of gross-out gags that made it amusing.[7] He wrote: "The brilliance also lies with the animation: it borders on crude, but is entirely necessary for the mood of the cartoon. While some might consider it lazy by today's standards, anything more sleek and sophisticated would have cheapened the show."[7] The American critic Bill Gibron wrote that "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen" "...featured a fabulous song (sung to the tune of 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee') that really propels the action/adventure plotline over the top."[8] Gibron complained about the rather inconsistent way that censorship was applied, as "Man's Best Friend" was banned from airing on Nickelodeon for violence and scatological content while an intestine passing out feces in this episode was not censored in any way, which he felt to be more vulgar than anything in the entire episode of "Man's Best Friend".[8]
Books and articles
Dobbs, G. Michael (2015). Escape – How Animation Broke into the Mainstream in the 1990s. Orlando: BearManor Media. ISBN978-1593931100.
Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN978-1629331836.
