Beavis and Butt-head are Dead

Daria is asked for her reminiscences.

Beavis and Butt-head are Dead was the final episode of the original run of Beavis and Butt-head, and aired on November 28, 1997. It features the final appearance of Daria in that franchise until the 2022-present Paramount+ revival.

Synopsis

Mr. Van Driessen takes attendance in his class and Beavis and Butt-head are once again, absent, now for the third consecutive week. Van Driessen discusses the situation with Principal McVicker, now a wreck of a man who wants no more involvement with Beavis and Butt-head whatsoever. Having to work with Beavis and Butt-head has driven McVicker to becoming a prescription-pill taking nervous wreck.

Van Driessen convinces Principal McVicker to have his secretary, Miss Tress, contact Beavis and Butt-head's parents (on the assumption they do have parents). Meanwhile, Beavis and Butt-head are watching television as usual while the phone rings. Butt-head tells Beavis to make the ringing stop. Miss Tress speaks to Beavis (not knowing who he is) and asks why Beavis and Butt-head haven't been in school. Beavis simply tells the secretary "they're dead" and goes back to watching TV with Butt-head.

Miss Tress reports to McVicker and Van Driessen that Beavis and Butt-head are dead. Van Driessen is distraught, but to McVicker it's great news - he always thought either him or them who would die, and he survived! He even stops shaking and throws his pills away. He announces the news by school tannoy system, as well as the "brief party" in the staff conference room to celebrate their deliverance, while van Driessen tries to console his class - which treats the news with complete indifference.

From this point on, it becomes a clip show as Van Driessen first reminisces (with a series of clips of his own) and then asks for other students to "let their feelings flow". Desperate to find any student who'll talk about them, he turns to Daria on grounds that:

• Van Driessen: Daria, I've seen you talking with them.
• Daria: Well...I guess it's kind of sad that they're dead and all, but it's not like they had bright futures ahead of them. I mean...I remember this time when I was walking home from school, and there they were....

(Daria's memories are scenes from Babes 'R' Us, Butt is it Art? and U. S. History.)

• Daria: I rest my case.
• Van Driessen: Thank you for your honesty, Daria.

As Van Driessen hopes that Beavis and Butt-head find "whatever it was that they're looking for", the two are still looking for good TV and finding nothing. They're starting to get pissed off.

Meanwhile, the faculty is busy having a champagne celebration, with Mr. Herrera returning from character limbo solely to toast their demise, and Van Driessen complains about the lack of respect shown to Beavis and Butt-head. Coach Buzzcut replies that it took "every ounce of my self-control" not to kill them (illustrated by more clips - Daria is seen laughing at the predicament of the two in clips from "No Laughing"). He hopes their deaths were "slow and painful", causing Van Driessen to frostily tell him that if the way he speaks of the dead is any relation to how he treats the living, "I kindly ask you to keep your distance from me".

Van Driessen wants to take up a collection in Beavis and Butt-head in order to create a memorial scholarship for other "unique, ah, students". McVicker thinks the idea is a great one, happily saying the school can exploit their deaths to get some money - "those two owe the school for all the damage they caused" (and they need a new teacher's lounge). McVicker calls the TV station to broadcast the memorial.

Finally, Beavis and Butt-head see something good on TV - the memorial to them broadcast from Highland High, as it brings up the possibilty of seeing dead bodies on TV. One girl remembers how the two were always hitting on her (cue clip). Butt-head recognises her as a chick he "did it" with (cue what Butt-head wishes happened in that clip); Beavis tries to call up a memory of his own but the "cue memory music" hits a sour note as Beavis's brain fails him.

The on-site reporter interviews a crying Stewart Stevenson, the "best friend" of Beavis and Butt-head. Stewart 'remembers' one time when Beavis and Butt-head where at his house, being nice and helpful and polite (his memories are a little inaccurate). Seeing Stewart on TV "sucks", and Beavis and Butt-head conclude that the only way to see dead bodies is to go to school and see them first-hand.

Van Driessen begins to collect money - a small amount, but McVicker is still happy because Highland High has not had so much excitement since President Clinton visited. (Clips from Citizen Butt-head follow.) The reporter asks for McVicker's reaction to the deaths of "Gravis and Head-Butt" - when put on the spot, McVicker displays the jar of cash that Van Driessen collected and states that "no amount of money can make up for their absence...I would gladly give back all the money to see Beavis and Butt-head one more time...!"

Sure enough, Beavis and Butt-head barge through the crowd and demand their money. A horrified McVicker wrestles the two for the jar of money, suffering flashback upon flashback... and then falls to the ground, the victim of a heart attack. Beavis and Butt-head think he's dead, but Buzzcut screams "he's not dead yet" and begins CPR. As a ambulance arrives at the scene, Beavis suggests that they show up at school the next day to see if anyone else dies, but Butt-head reminds Beavis that "they're rich" from the jar of money and the two walk away into the sunset.

Trivia

The first series of Daria had already aired before this, despite being set before.

The day before this first aired, Beavis and Butt-head were part of MTV's live Thanksgiving show and talked about the upcoming final episode:

• Beavis: We had this cast party afterwards, and I got so drunk even Daria looked good.
• Butt-head: Beavis, you didn't get drunk and Daria didn't look good and you're never going to score.

Tracy Grandstaff's voice for Daria is now the same used in Daria itself. The clips from earlier episodes can show how the voice has changed from being 'normal' to the flatter, more amused monotone we're familiar with.

This episode aired after the first season of Daria, but (obviously) is set before it.

Daria's choice of examples is strange, as they're not her most significant interactions with the duo and the latter two aren't even the buttmunches at their stupidest (these are people who were confused by the concept of planting seeds). But they are short, which is handy for a clipshow!

The TV shows Beavis and Butt-head are watching are taken from earlier episodes, with the two angry that they've seen this before and "do they really expect us to watch the same crap over and over?!" (they do).