The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen

Plot

In 1856, Ren and Stimpy join the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen, a parody of the Northwest Mounted Police's 1874 March West. Their motto is "We always get our butts kicked!" Their boss is Jasper, first seen in "Big House Blues." Ren lacks enthusiasm, but Stimpy believes in the group's future.

They land the role after Stimpy pays Jasper a five-dollar bribe taken from Ren. The other new members hide behind women, earning them a "shame" label they ignore, while Ren slaps Stimpy for his foolishness. The pair are given a useless task: riding clumsy yaks to locate land for settlers, in a setting that ignores real Canadian geography. They travel for months.

Ren falls ill, needing medicinal leeches, and gets hit by arrows from First Nations. A Kodiak marmoset, the smallest primate on Earth, attacks them. They receive aid from a nearby town and later get struck by lightning. They enter a jungle, where mosquitoes bite them.

Ren tries to drink from their water bottle, but bees have taken it over, stinging his tongue. They reach a barren wasteland, and Ren wants to quit. To lift his mood, Stimpy sings the "Kilted Yaksmen Anthem," whose sad lyrics oddly cheer Ren up. They move into a desert.

Stimpy keeps singing, driving one yak crazy, but Ren slaps it back to sanity. With no food, Ren suggests eating dirt, claiming it could keep them alive. He wastes real food to test for dirt, while Stimpy greedily eats the dirt alone, annoying Ren. The other yak gives up and sleeps, but accidentally uncovers a dirt vein; the dirt flow is a lucky break.

They hold a dirt feast, with Ren saying grace first. Ren, Stimpy, and the yaks plant a flag to claim the land for Canada, salute it, and then die from malnutrition caused by the dirt they ate. The spot they claimed is now a crowded, polluted city with bad traffic. People kept the duo's skeletons where they fell, but the yaks receive no recognition.

Production

The idea for "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen" came from series creator John Kricfalusi, who wanted to create a story set in his home country of Canada. The episode draws inspiration from the March West, a well-known event in Canadian history often portrayed as a story of endurance and bravery, in which the Northwest Mounted Police marched across the Prairie provinces to what is now Alberta. Production on the episode began in the spring of 1992.

Chris Reccardi, working at Spümcø, was initially assigned to direct, but he was fired by Kricfalusi in late July 1992 after only completing the layout stage. Michael Fontanelli then took over directing duties, but little progress was made between July and September 1992. On September 21, 1992, Kricfalusi was removed as showrunner, and Spümcø lost its contract for The Ren & Stimpy Show. Nickelodeon brought in the newly formed Games Animation to finish the episodes Spümcø had started.

Reccardi joined Games Animation in October 1992 and was again assigned to direct the episode. He later admitted he was still learning and never fully took control of the project, noting that while storyboarding, he struggled to find a story for it, and Kricfalusi was distracted by other issues. After the draft was finished, much of the drawing was done at Carbunkle Cartoons in Vancouver. Bob Jaques, Carbunkle's director, criticized the episode for lacking a real plot, describing it as a series of comic incidents loosely tied to Ren and Stimpy's pointless search for the Great Barren Wasteland.

The episode was finally completed in the spring of 1993, a full year after it began. The Los Angeles Gay Men's Choir performed the chorus for the "Kilted Yaksmen Anthem." Nickelodeon censored the line "And we will probably go to hell," deeming it too dark for children, though the word remains visible in the subtitles due to a humorously sloppy censorship job.

Reception

Critics have weighed in on "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen" with mixed but notable praise. Thad Komorowski awarded the episode four and a half out of five stars, calling it one of the series' best, if not the very best. Paulie Von Doom found the plot weak but enjoyed the gross-out gags, noting that the crude animation was essential to the cartoon's mood and that a sleeker style would have cheapened the show. Bill Gibron highlighted the episode's song, sung to the tune of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," which he said propels the action-adventure plot. Gibron also pointed out an inconsistency in censorship: while the episode "Man's Best Friend" was banned from Nickelodeon for violence, this episode features an intestine passing feces without any censorship, which he considered more vulgar than anything in "Man's Best Friend."