Raisins (South Park episode)

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This article is about the South Park episode. For other uses, see Raisin (disambiguation).

South Park episode
"Raisins"

Episode no.	110
Airdate	December 10, 2003
South Park - Season 7 March 19, 2003 – December 17, 2003
I'm a Little Bit Country Krazy Kripples Toilet Paper Cancelled Fat Butt and Pancake Head Lil' Crime Stoppers Red Man's Greed South Park Is Gay! Christian Rock Hard Grey Dawn Casa Bonita All About Mormons Butt Out Raisins It's Christmas in Canada

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"Raisins" is episode 714 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on December 10, 2003.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The boys are playing football when Bebe tells Stan that his girlfriend Wendy is breaking up with him. Stan tries to get Wendy to be his girlfriend again, asking Kyle and Jimmy to talk to her for him. Jimmy's speech impediment worsens the situation when Stan suggests calling her a "continuing source of inspiration for him". Jimmy stutters and says, "Stan says you are a cunt..." before he can get out the whole sentence, Wendy has already walked away.

Stan starts to withdraw from life, and all he thinks about is the breakup. In an effort to stop Stan from thinking about Wendy, the boys take him to Raisins (a parody of the Hooters restaurants) where all of the employees are attractive, young girls. Being taken to Raisins doesn't help Stan with his problems. Meanwhile, Butters falls in love with one of the waitresses (Lexus), and obsesses over her throughout the episode, even though she obviously doesn't like him back. Stan then asks Bebe to talk to Wendy, but she tells him to do something romantic to show Wendy how he feels. He asks her what he should do, and she tells him to "stand outside her window, and play Peter Gabriel." When Stan does this, both Wendy and Token appear at the window. Stan's bad mood is intensified as he discovers that Wendy left him so she could be Token's girlfriend. Kyle angrily tells Stan that, if he is so depressed, he might as well hang out with the Goth kids. Stan then becomes friends with the Goth kids, who are obsessed with non-conformity, while paradoxically forcing Stan to conform to their ways.

Butters runs out of money because he is spending it all at Raisins. Butters' parents decide to come with Butters to meet his "girlfriend." When they arrive at Raisins, Butters' parents realize that Lexus doesn't really like him. They tell him that these girls know that they can make men do whatever they want by flirting, and that these girls do this for a living, but he doesn't believe them and offers to stay with Lexus. However, Lexus tells Butters that she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. She leaves to deliver curly fries.

Butters begins to go outside and cry in the rain. Seeing Butters cry, the Goth kids invite him to join their clique; but Butters says that, even though he's sad, he's happy that something could make him feel so strongly. He must accept the bad things in life as well as the good. He also adds "Besides, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy Goth kid." Stan agrees with Butters and leaves the Goth kids with the phrase, "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" Stan is back to normal as he is playing football. When Token and Wendy walk by, he calls Wendy a bitch and gives Token the finger. Afterward, he goes back to playing football.

[edit] Trivia

This episode implies Butters thinks the anus is an exclusively male body part; when Bebe calls the boys assholes, Butters replies "Well, at least we HAVE assholes, you dumb girl!"
Stan tells Jimmy to say that Wendy is a "continuing source of inspiration" to him. Jimmy tries to tell Wendy this, but because of his stuttering, he ends up repeating the syllable "cont" multiple times. Wendy gets mad, thinking that Stan is calling her a cunt. This marks the second time that South Park says "cunt" uncensored.
If you watch carefully, Maury (the security guard at Raisins) walks right through the Raisins fence when he enters the scene.
The edifying role Butters has in this episode in which he explains the "moral of the story" is the second time he has a central role in an episode, the first time being when he starred in Butters' Very Own Episode.
At the end of the episode, Stan says Cartman's catchphrase "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Like Cartman in "Scott Tenorman Must Die", Stan matures and undergoes a slight change in character.
Since this episode, Wendy has become a very minor character.

[edit] References to Pop culture

"Raisins" is a play on the popular franchise "Hooters". Raisins is a slang term referring to the breasts of a pre-pubescent female.
The Raisins girls are all named after expensive luxury cars (Lexus, Mercedes, Porsche, Ferrari).
In one of the Goth kid's room, there is a poster that says, "Blauhaus" which seems to resemble Bauhaus' Singles: 1979-1983, Volume One album. There is also a "Skippy Puppy" poster in the room an obvious parody of the industrial band Skinny Puppy, and when the mother enters the room you can see a "Bleeding Frog" poster on the wall that could be a parody of the band Bleeding Through. Next to the "Skippy Puppy" poster, a red poster with a black crow on it is visible with the words "Nothing Matter World Tour" written above the crow similar to the defunct goth/nu-metal Family Values Tour.
When Stan joins the Goth Kids, he starts to wear a t-shirt featuring the face of Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe with the word "Nevermore" written above it - a reference to the Poe poem The Raven
The scene where Stan holds up a boombox playing a Peter Gabriel song mirrors the famous scene from the movie Say Anything; the major difference is that in the movie, John Cusack's character, Lloyd Dobler, plays the song "In your eyes", which is romantic, and Stan plays "Shock the Monkey", which is anything but.
Another Say Anything homage can be seen when Stan seeks advice from the Goths; the scene's set up like Lloyd's encounter with the guys outside the Gas 'n' Sip.
In one scene during the montage of Stan grieving about the lost love, we see him standing on a brick bridge looking into the water below. This resembles a commonly used scenario on Peanuts.
The song playing after Wendy breaks up with Stan is Cinderella's "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)." The song in the school scenes, after Jimmy tries to talk to Wendy, is Air Supply's "All Out of Love."
The scene depicting a depressed Stan lying in bed after being dumped by Wendy is a visual reference to the Cameron character in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"