Simpsons Already Did It
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| South Park episode | |
| "The Simpsons Already Did It" | |
 "Behold! You all see my tiny minions groveling at my likeness! I am Eric Cartman, god." |
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| Episode no. | 86 |
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| Airdate | June 26, 2002 |
| South Park - Season 6 March 6, 2002 – December 11, 2002 |
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| ← Season 5 | Season 7 → |
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| List of all South Park episodes | |
"Simpsons Already Did It" is the seventh episode in the sixth season of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on June 26, 2002.
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[edit] Plot
In this episode, Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Tweek see an advert in a comic for "Sea People" (a parody of Sea Monkeys). Cartman (led along by images from the advert) imagines them to be a race of fishy people who will "take me away from this goddamn planet full of hippies," and so he convinces the others to chip in and buy some.
When "Sea People" turn out to be nothing more than brine shrimp, the boys are disappointed, so in order to get at least some fun from their purchase, decide to put them in Ms. Choksondik's coffee. She then dies (as had been announced in the previous episode two months before).
Upon hearing on TV that semen had been discovered in the teacher's stomach, the boys come to the conclusion that they inadvertently killed Ms. Choksondik with their "sea men." That night, they go to the morgue to steal the sea men evidence, fearful that they'll "find the sea-women next!" Eventually, Chef explains to them that there is a difference between "sea men/semen" and "Sea People", and that the brine shrimp couldn't have killed their teacher (it is never adequately explained how she died, although her name, along with a televised news broadcast mentioning Mr. Mackey, may provide a clue). By this time, the semen they recovered had been added to the Sea People remaining in Cartman's aquarium, and in the morning, he awoke to find they had combined to make a smaller version of his original image, that of sapient creatures who begin to make their own civilization (in Cartman's own Theory of Composite Dynamics about this, "Sea-People" + "Sea-men" = "Sea-Ciety").
Meanwhile, Butters, in his role as Professor Chaos, has been trying to figure out a way to bring disarray to the town. When he plots to block out the sun, his assistant, General Disarray, informs him that it mirrors a plot by Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Not wanting to do a repeat of something already done on "The Simpsons," he then decides to cut the head off of the town's central statue — which mirrors Bart Simpson's decapitation of Springfield's Jebediah Springfield statue, and on the news report, the newscaster interprets Butters' vandalism as an homage to The Simpsons. Butters then attempts to devise other evil schemes, but Disarray keeps pointing out that every one of Butters' plans (aside from being ridiculous) has also already been done by the animated series The Simpsons. Butters watches every single Simpsons episode to try and do something that the show hasn't done yet, creating a stupid device. Right as he is explaining the device, a Simpsons commercial announces that Bart is going to do the exact same thing in that night's episode. Butters finally goes insane, seeing the entire town as if it were the Simpsons' town of Springfield.
When Butters sees the Sea People, and discovers that they believe Cartman to be a god, he screams out joyously that it is a copy of the Treehouse of Horror VII short "The Genesis Tub", where Lisa Simpson brings to life a civilization in a tooth, and they worship her as a god. It is then pointed out that The Simpsons have done everything, so worrying about that is pointless, and that they had in turn stolen their ideas from elsewhere. Butters recovers from his paranoia. At the end of the episode, the Sea People all kill themselves, when suicide bombing between different sects (one worshipping Cartman, the other Tweek) escalates into the use of nuclear weapons that destroys the entire tank.
[edit] Censorship
- The part where Cartman explains how he got the semen from the guy on the street ("He just made me close my eyes and suck it out of a hose") is removed in the syndicated version.
[edit] Trivia
- This episode marks the first time Trey Parker and Matt Stone paid homage to "The Simpsons". The next time The Simpsons returned on South Park would be in the two-parter "Cartoon Wars" where Bart Simpson, who was never actually referred to by name, teamed up with Cartman to pull "Family Guy" off the air.
- At the beginning of the episode Stan and Kyle are trying to convince Tweek to finish off their snowman. Tweek remarks "But what if when I'm putting on the nose, the snowman comes to life and tries to kill me?!" Stan replies "Tweek, when has that ever happened except for that one time?" This is a nod to an early rendition of South Park, "Jesus vs. Frosty".
- According to episode commentary, creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker made this episode to express their real life frustration of often pitching new South Park episode ideas, only to discover that the idea had already been done on The Simpsons (for a specific example, see The Wacky Molestation Adventure). Parker and Stone have stated that originally Cartman's "Sea-ciety" was separate from Butters' Simpsons plot. It wasn't until the staff recognized Cartman's "Sea-ciety" as an inadvertent parody of a Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror VII" episode that they had decided to intersect the two plots.
- When the tank containing the sea-people smashes on the floor of his room, Cartman exclaims 'Oh the humanity!' This is an echo of radio commentator Herbert Morrison's reaction to the loss of life in the Hindenburg disaster.
- Butters remarks that he's seen all 132 episodes of The Simpsons twice. At the time of airing, The Simpsons were approaching their 300th episode. This is referenced in the Simpsons episode "Bart of War" where Bart and Milhouse are watching an episode of South Park and Bart wonders how they keep it fresh after 43 episodes; this episode was the 86th.
- Although the plotline of fathering a tiny society was previously done in The Simpsons, Bender repeated the action in a later episode of Futurama (Godfellas), which is created by Simpsons creator Matt Groening. During that episode, the tiny people living on Bender nuke each other, as they did in the aquarium. Ironically, the Simpsons sketch was inspired by the 1962 Twilight Zone episode called "The Little People" and the Outer Limits episode "Wolf 359," which in turn, were inspired by Theodore Sturgeon's "Microcosmic God" (1941).
- A minion can be seen near the wood cart when Professor Chaos is describing his plan to block out the sun.
- A news report in this episode states that Hilary Rodham Clinton has a large rear; this was followed up in "The Snuke", where it was explicitly shown.
[edit] Schemes of Professor Chaos
Butters' schemes and the Simpsons episodes they reflect:
- Block out the sun ("Who Shot Mr. Burns?")
- Cut off the head of the town statue ("The Telltale Head")
- Offer to build the town an unsafe monorail and skip town with the money ("Marge vs. the Monorail")
- Start a website that spreads rumors about the townspeople ("The Computer Wore Menace Shoes")
- Plant a fake angel skeleton as an artifact ("Lisa the Skeptic")
- Bring the World Cup to South Park so the fans riot ("The Cartridge Family")
- Shake up all the beer cans as to cause a massive explosion ("So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show")
- Forget world domination and just run away and join the circus ("Homerpalooza" and "Bart Carny")
| Preceded by "Professor Chaos" |
South Park episodes | Followed by "Red Hot Catholic Love" |
