Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes
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| South Park episode | |
| "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" | |
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| Episode no. | 120 |
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| Airdate | November 3, 2004 |
| South Park - Season 8 March 17, 2004 – December 15, 2004 |
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| ← Season 7 | Season 9 → |
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| List of all South Park episodes | |
"Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" is episode 809 of Comedy Central's South Park. This episode originally aired on November 3, 2004.
A Wall-Mart opens in South Park. Everyone in town starts shopping there, since it is so much cheaper than the other stores. This forces some local businesses to shut down, as well as making some of the now-unemployed residents work there. The townspeople decide they no longer want the Wall-Mart in South Park and agree to boycott. The boycott fails, however, because many townspeople surreptitiously break the boycott in pursuit of good deals. The townspeople burn it down, only to see it rebuild itself. The boys (except Cartman) realize how evil the Wall-Mart is, and decide to destroy it. Cartman on the other hand, decides to stop them. They find out they need to destroy its heart. They eventually succeed. At the end of the episode, the townspeople decide to support a local store instead of big chain stores. The people shop at the store so much that it becomes the next "Wall-Mart", which the townspeople once again burn down.
[edit] Trivia
- This episode features a running gag about how people "crap their pants" when they die. Throughout the episode, an expiring character defecates upon death (including the imploding Wall-Mart at the end).
- The "simple economics" that Randy Marsh refers to is the principle of mass bulk buying to form "economies of scale", lowering the average cost per unit.
[edit] References to other works/Pop culture
- Walmart's Ms Williams states that South Park was right on target this episode, in that Walmart's existence is due to customers shopping there. (Wall St Journal)
- The title (and some of the plot) comes from the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, the title of which, in turn, comes from a line in Macbeth.
- The "Heart of Wall-Mart" scene is lifted from the Architect scene in Matrix Reloaded.
- When the townspeople talk to the boss of the store for the first time, he acts like Agent Smith during his conversation with Morpheus in The Matrix.
- At the end of the episode, the Wall-Mart vanishes the same way that the house did in the movie Poltergeist. However, it also "craps its pants" when it vanishes.
- Randy says "Come on, there's something you all need to see in Lasgur's Field". This is a reference to Yasgur's Farm, the site of the Woodstock Music Festival.
- Near the end, when the people find out Wall-Mart's weak point lies in the "heart", Chef says, "Spread the word to other towns" to a military telegraph operator in a parody of the end of Independence Day.
- The sound used to display time passing (such as when Jim's drug increases in size during the last few minutes) is the sound used in Heroes of Might and Magic III when a new week starts.
- The part in which the Wall-Mart manager writes on a piece of paper that it's not safe to talk there, this is very much like a scene from The X-Files episode Little Green Men.
[edit] External links
| Preceded by: "Douche and Turd" |
South Park episodes | Followed by: "Pre-School" |
