This is an interesting one. South Park made the words, "They killed Kenny!" "You bastards!" famous, when they killed off little parka-clad Kenny in increasingly inventive ways pretty much every episode. Pretty soon you went into the episodes expecting to see him blown up or stabbed or shot full of lead, and people started to eagerly look forward to his death scenes. But while they made death meaningless by killing him off hundreds of times over the years, they restored its meaning a couple years ago, when they revealed the truth about Kenny: he's immortal. Well, sort of. He dies every day, in any number of gruesome and painful ways, and then wakes up the next morning. Every. single. day. Kenny then uses this power to become a guardian of the town of South Park, watching over its citizens as the masked hero Mysterion. The genius of it is that it gives a tremendous poignancy to something that was originally just a sight gag and running joke.
Audrey Fox is an ex-film student, which means that she prefers to spend her days in the dark, watching movies and pondering the director's use of diegetic sound. She currently works as an entertainment writer, joyfully rambling about all things film and television related. Add her on Twitter at @audonamission and check out her film blog at 1001moviesandbeyond.com.
