Kenny vs. Spenny is a Canadian reality comedy television series starring Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice where they face against each other in competitions. The loser of each episode performs an act of humiliation, usually selected by the winner. Hotz and Rice created the series in addition to serving as executive producers, and it was typically shot in their hometown of Toronto (the pilot was filmed in Los Angeles), based mostly out of the house they shared. As of November 2008, the show aired on CBC, Global and Showcase in Canada, Comedy Central in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, The Comedy Channel in Australia, Animax and later, Sony MAX, in South Africa, Italia 2 in Italy, FX in Portugal, and on Jim in Finland. The series concluded with an hour-long Christmas special that aired on December 23, 2010, at 9 pm ET/PT on Showcase. It aired in Latin America on Sony Spin for a short time.
The series was nominated for the Canadian Comedy Awards in 2010 and 2011 and for Gemini Awards in 2005, 2006, and 2008 as the best Canadian comedy series, and received a Rose d'Or nomination in Switzerland for "best international comedy series". The show has spawned several replicas of its format, including a family-friendly French Canadian version called Frank vs Girard that airs on VRAK.TV. Also following the format are Ed vs. Spencer in the United Kingdom, Juan vs. Roman in Colombia, Elton vs. Simon in Germany, Katja vs. Bridget, Dennis vs. Valerio in the Netherlands, and Sid vs. Varun in India. In 2009 the show was named #8 among the top 10 Canadian television shows of the decade.
Contents
Premise
Kenneth "Kenny" Joel Hotz and Spencer "Spenny" Nolan Rice are two childhood best friends who compete against each other in a series of competitions. The loser of each competition must suffer a humiliation chosen by the winner.
The show's comedy depended on the polarizing personalities of Hotz and Rice, who are respectively extroverted and neurotic. Hotz embraced devious tactics during the show and often cheated, found loopholes in the rules for a competition, and intimidated Rice with insults, elaborate schemes and manipulation.
In contrast, Rice rarely cheated and tried to compete honestly. He felt he could retain some dignity if he promoted awareness of social or political causes, such as promoting awareness of climate change during "Who Can 69 The Longest?" or Irritable bowel syndrome during "Who Can Keep a Dump in their Pants the Longest?"
However, Hotz's strategies and jokes made Rice increasingly paranoid and short-tempered towards both Hotz and the production crew as the show progressed.
Common strategies used by Hotz and Rice
A repeating trend as the show progresses is how cheating is tolerated as long as the person is not caught, eventually becoming an unspoken rule, much to the chagrin of Spenny.
Part of the drama involves the multiple instances in which Kenny and Spenny argue about what the nature of the show should actually be. Spenny has argued that the point of the competitions is to find out who is the better man, and that while Kenny at times manages to genuinely outsmart Spenny, the moments in which he goes over the line ruins the purpose of the show. On the other hand Kenny holds less value in the "sanctity" of these competitions, repeatedly stating that the reason they compete is to humiliate the other person on TV.
Ultimately it becomes clear that their perspectives on what the nature of the show should be is motivated by creating a playing field that is biased towards their respective strengths.
Kenny’s approach to problem solving is to think outside of the box and to find a clever workaround, thus causing him to prefer rules that are minimal and vague. Spenny on the other hand prefers rules that are concrete, and tends to employ admirable if reductive strategies that rely on hard work as well as physical/mental endurance.
Hotz cheated during 27 out of 56 of his victories, while Rice cheated during 5 of his 27 victories. In some cases, both Rice and Hotz were helped by their production crew, families and friends in their attempts to cheat. While Rice would cheat out of desperation, Hotz justified his cheating by arguing the loser is ultimately whoever does a humiliation.
Hotz regularly tried to make Rice annoyed during competitions so he would lose focus. Hotz regularly joked that Rice was a violent and emotionally disturbed man with a micropenis; that he engaged in rape, pedophilia, necrophilia, zoophilia, and incest; and that he was racist, an anti-Semite and related to Adolf Hitler.
Rice's family were also often the victims of Hotz's insults and jokes. Hotz regularly joked about having sex with Rice's mother and accused her of being sexually promiscuous and morbidly obese. In "Who Can Imitate the Other Guy Better?" Hotz—while pretending to be Rice—performed a song about being sexually abused as a child by Rice's grandfather.
Production
Starting with the fourth season, Kenny and Spenny were both executive producers and received credit separate from five other executive producers. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the TV show South Park, joined the show for the fourth season and were given their own separate credit as executive producers for the ten episodes in which they were involved. Instrumental and electronic music is frequently used throughout episodes scored by Composer Richard Pell. Ride of the Valkyries, Ravel's Boléro, Sergei Prokofiev's Montagues and Capulets and Peter and the Wolf, Gioachino Rossini's La gazza ladra, Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor – 4th Movement, and music by Toronto electronica band Holy Fuck are very frequently used.
Kenny and Spenny each had their own production assistant, camera operator, and sound engineer, who filmed their independent exploits for each episode. In the earlier seasons, the crew was shared between Kenny and Spenny. Crew members eventually split up into two teams, some joining Kenny's "side", and others joining Spenny's.
During the Industry Standard podcast, Kenny stated the series had a budget of 100,000 CAD per episode for the first season and 350,000 CAD per episode thereafter.
Broadcasting
During an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos, Kenny states that Kenny vs. Spenny was originally made for MTV, where the duo was given $8,000 to develop a 3 minute pilot. However, MTV ultimately passed on the show for unknown reasons. He then states USA Network gave them $40,000 to shoot a full 22 minute pilot, but pulled the plug while the pilot was still in production. Kenny and Spenny both decided to finish the pilot anyway and eventually brought it to CBC Television where the show would first air. Despite the claims made by Kenny, the DVD release of Pitch states that the pilot for Kenny vs. Spenny was actually picked up by Canada's Life Network where the show was to go into production in 2001. This ultimately never happened. CBC cancelled the show after the first season, and Showcase Television picked up the series in late 2005. The show has switched broadcasters and been cancelled many times, including by Showcase, and again by CBC, when one of its commercials aired by accident during the network's "toddler block". Spenny has stated in multiple interviews that the main reason for CBC's cancelling of the show was because it aired right before CBC News, and news viewers tuning in early were offended by the show's humiliation segment.
It was produced by Breakthrough Films and Television since its inception. Re-runs of the first two seasons air on CBC late at night, and on CBC's Bold station weekday afternoons. Re-runs also aired on Showcase, and episodes of the show have aired on Shaw Media's Action. The show has aired on GSN in the United States. It is shown internationally on TV 2 Zulu in Denmark, Jim in Finland, the now defunct ZTV Norway, Comedy Central in Sweden, FX (repeats on Challenge) in the United Kingdom (no longer airing), The Comedy Channel in Australia, FX in Portugal, Comedy Central in Germany, Italia 2 in Italy, Comedy Central in the Netherlands and The XtraHOT channel in Israel. Fox Entertainment Group in Latin America has distributed the episodes, which can be seen on the Latin American versions of FOX channel and FX.
Episodes
Christmas special
The series finale Kenny vs. Spenny Christmas Special aired December 23, 2010, at 9 pm eastern time on Showcase.
DVD releases
Video Service Corp has released all six seasons of Kenny vs. Spenny on DVD in Region 1 (Canada only). Beyond Home Entertainment has released the first three seasons on DVD in Region 4.
Streaming availability
Between November 7, 2012 and December 22, 2012, Hotz uploaded the series to his personal YouTube account. On January 22, 2016, Hotz took down the YouTube series (by setting the clips to private), as Rice objected to the episodes being available for free. Hotz stated in a tweet a few days later he was not happy with the removal.
In March 2018, all the videos were made available again on his channel. Following the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, the two-part episode "Who Do Black Guys Like Better?" was privatized briefly by Hotz.
Hotz began re-uploading the series upscaled to 4K resolution in January 2022. These episodes were removed from the channel towards late March 2022, but re-uploaded later that summer. The episodes were also available on Breakthrough Entertainment's YouTube account but removed in December 2022. In July 2024, Kenny’s channel got a community guidelines violation and he moved some episodes to an alternative channel, Kenny Hotz TV.
Season 1 of the show is available on CBC Gem.
Statistics
The records and winning percentages vary depending on the definition of a win used by each competitor. The interpretation of what constitutes cheating also varies depending on the competition and may lead to some discrepancies in the statistics.
If competitions where Kenny cheated (16) or arguably cheated (3) and won are not counted, the record would be 40-21-5 for Kenny; If they are counted as wins for Spenny (as Spenny suggests they should), then Kenny and Spenny would be tied, each with a record of 40-40-5. Note though that Spenny cheated 8 times.
If the competition ends in a draw, there is either no humiliation, or a double humiliation. Although there have been exceptions to this rule.
Other media
Kenny vs. Spenny: Versusville
After the show first aired on CBC, a game was released based on the first season called Kenny vs. Spenny: Versusville. Versusville is a first-person shooter with 3D environments and 4 main game modes. It was released sometime between June and July 2004 on Windows and had online leaderboards and online multiplayer functionality.
The game was assumed lost after 2006 when the television show Kenny vs. Spenny moved from the CBC to Showcase. However, on November 4, 2021, Versusville was found by Reddit archivists Ben, Carson, John, and Metalock and has since been made available online with permission from Kenny Hotz, Ira Levy and Mark Greenshields.
Kenny vs. Spenny: Versusville contains 4 main game modes, with each having a unique gameplay style and 3 of which having once supported online multiplayer. Each game can be played from a first-person or third-person perspective.
Residence Evil: A singleplayer-exclusive stealth game mode that originally acted as a tutorial, requiring the player to complete it in order to unlock the other 3 game modes. The map is a rough recreation of the house from Season One, where the player must open the vault without getting caught by Kenny or Spenny. Eventually a v2 was released, which no longer required the player to beat Residence Evil in order to unlock the other game modes.
Wasteball: A multiplayer shooter where players would compete in slime-filled matches. The map is described as a disused building that has been transformed into a chemical waste paintball arena.
Grave Rave: A multiplayer shooter where players must throw zombie parts in order to dispatch each other. The map is described as a late night cemetery filled with a gruesome array of weapons.
Kart Dart: A multiplayer racing game where players must complete a certain number of laps and end with the most points. The vehicles are a selection of different shopping carts, with 3 unique maps all based on food markets.
Other appearances
A Flash game was released in early 2004 called Kenny vs Spenny: Quest for the Family Jewels on GSN's website.
Another Flash game was released in 2008 called Kenny vs Spenny: Best Friends/Worst Enemies. However, this game was only a demo for a larger mobile game of the same name. The full game is no longer available.
Kenny Hotz appears as a non-playable character in the 2014 video game Goat Simulator for Windows PC and the protagonist of the game is a playable goat named Pilgor who is modeled after Kenny's goat from the season 4 episode "Who Can Be Tied to a Goat the Longest?" Kenny also makes an appearance in Journey to the Savage Planet through in-game commercials.
On January 2, 2023 Kenny Hotz posted a teaser of a new game to his Youtube channel, titled Super KvS. The game is designed by developer Dark Pixel Studios, with no specified release date.
Revival attempts
Both Hotz and Rice have expressed interest in a film adaptation of Kenny vs. Spenny. In a 2013 interview, Rice elaborated, "if it happens I don't think I will live through it but it will be good entertainment." Later on March 7, 2014, Hotz began the Facebook and Twitter campaign #BringBackKvS in an effort to encourage Netflix to commission a seventh season of the show. Netflix had recently resurrected the Trailer Park Boys series from its 2008 finale, and it was Hotz's intention to replicate this success. Between March and May 2014, Hotz and Rice embarked on a 13-city Kenny vs. Spenny vs. Canada comedy tour, showing and discussing rare and unseen Kenny vs. Spenny footage that had been rejected by broadcasters. The tour was filmed for a Kickstarter-funded film titled Kenny vs Spenny: On The Road, however the campaign failed to meet its goal and the film was not released.
Hotz and Rice revisited their onscreen antics in the 2020 CBC Gem special Paldemic, which directly referenced Kenny vs. Spenny and its effect on their friendship and careers in the years since. They jointly received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Host in a Web Program or Series at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
