Butt Out
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| South Park episode | |
| "Butt Out" | |
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| Episode no. | 713 |
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| Airdate | December 3, 2003 |
| South Park - Season 7 March 19, 2003 – December 17, 2003 |
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| ← Season 6 | Season 8 → |
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| List of all South Park episodes | |
"Butt Out" is episode 713 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on December 3, 2003.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
An overly upbeat anti-smoking group called Butt Out, which incorporates elements of dance and hip-hop into its routine, performs at South Park Elementary, which brings out a mixture of boredom, annoyance, confusion and fear in the boys (Kenny starts eating his own hand).
Afraid that they will grow up to be as lame as the people in Butt Out if they choose not to smoke, the boys decide to take up smoking. When caught by Mr. Mackey, they discard their still-lit cigarettes into a nearby dumpster, which causes a fire and proceeds to burn the whole school down. The parents all come into the burned down school and are initially very angry at their children (not for burning down the school, but for smoking), until Mrs. Broflovski blames it on the tobacco companies brainwashing them. The other parents follow suit, and the boys are happy to transfer the blame in order to avoid being grounded for three weeks, although Kyle, recognizing the classic pattern of a South Park story line, foresees it getting out of hand.
The town then calls in Rob Reiner in order to combat the spread of smoking among children in South Park. Despite the fact that Reiner is against smoking, he is seen eating large amounts of junk food (another unhealthy pursuit) on an almost constant basis. He is loved by Cartman because "He just goes around imposing his will on other people; he's my idol." The rest of the boys are suspicious of him as he attempts to use them in order to get Colorado to pass a ban on smoking in public.
Reiner, disguised as a woman named "Rita Poon," gets a tobacco company to give them a tour around a factory near South Park. Reiner planned to sabotage the company by taking the boys there and then taking a picture of them in the factory and photoshopping it ("You've just been Reiner'd!"). However, the tobacco company offices look really nice and everybody employed there looks really happy and friendly. By contrast, Reiner's anti-smoking group is a group of Boris-and Natasha-style madmen who speak in Peter Lorre esque voices, who try to kill Cartman with a poisoned cupcake, after Reiner gets him to appear in an anti-smoking commercial in which he says he is dying of second hand smoke. Cartman escapes, and seeks the help of Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, who after much convincing, agree to help him. Eventually, as Kyle predicted, they end up back at the cigarette factory where the townspeople, bearing torches, demand the factory hand them over. Reiner reveals his plan to the townspeople, at which point they turn against him. Cartman stabs Reiner with a fork causing mass amounts of goo to come out of him, killing him. The boys then admit to their moms that they had smoked on their own free will, and are then grounded.
[edit] Trivia
- The episode's title is a double entendre. "Butt out" also means "mind your own business."
- After predicting the typical episode ending of the boys having learned a lesson and being the voice of reason in the town, Kyle begins his usual line, "Because, I've learned something today. You just hate- (turns to Stan) See, I knew it." To which Stan replies, "Yup".
- This episode defends smokers, although both Trey Parker and Matt Stone are non-smokers (Stone admits that he used to be, but quit). They explained that they did the episode mostly because they think Rob Reiner is a "big fat ass", and because they were tired of loved ones being assaulted by people criticizing them for smoking.
- Rob Reiner was previously criticized for "using children to pull at the heart strings of the public" in the episode Gnomes, but this time a full episode is devoted to it.
- Reiner's dependence on junk food is strikingly similar to that of his All in the Family co-star Sally Struthers in previous episodes.
- When the boys enter the non-smokers tent you hear a sound clip from "Heroes of Might and Magic III"
- In this episode, Cartman remarks that Rob Reiner is his idol. This is ironic considering how similar Cartman is to the All in the Family character Archie Bunker, who was a complete opposite to Rob Reiner's character Michael Stivic on that same show. A further irony is that Rob Reiner is Jewish and Cartman is Anti-Semitic.
[edit] References to popular culture
- The episode pokes fun at the formulaic storyline of some South Park episodes (including the movie), which start with the boys getting themselves in trouble and incite a controversy between the townsfolk and a national interest group (or a major catastrophe) while trying to avoid punishments, subsequently learning a lesson from this conflict.
- The depiction of the workers in the cigarette factory is a reference to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
- The people working for Rob Reiner bear a resemblance to those the character Winston Smith describes working at the Ministry of Truth in the novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
- The man who first tells Cartman to eat the cupcake greatly resembles Gríma Wormtongue, and even shares some of his characteristics.
- Reiner's cry of "My goo! My precious goo!" is also reminiscent of Oogie Boogie's final words in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.
- Rob Reiner tells the tobacco company "You've just been Reiner'd!", a reference to Punk'd.
[edit] Goofs
- In the bar, the ice cubes rest at the bottom of the boys' soft drinks, instead of floating.
| Preceded by "All About Mormons" |
South Park episodes | Followed by "Raisins" |
