Trapper Keeper (South Park episode)

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South Park episode
"Trapper Keeper"
Episode no.	60
Airdate	November 15, 2000
South Park - Season 4 April 5, 2000 – December 20, 2000
Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000 The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000 Quintuplets 2000 Timmy 2000 Pip Cartman Joins NAMBLA Cherokee Hair Tampons Chef Goes Nanners Something You Can Do with Your Finger Do the Handicapped Go to Hell? Probably 4th Grade Trapper Keeper Helen Keller! The Musical Fat Camp The Wacky Molestation Adventure A Very Crappy Christmas
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List of all South Park episodes

"Trapper Keeper" is episode 413 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on November 15, 2000.

[edit] Plot

Kyle comes to school with a Dawson's Creek Trapper Keeper, and then is joined by Cartman who reveals he has an extremely technologically advanced Dawson's Creek Trapper Keeper, and Kyle is immediately jealous; around the same time, a mysterious man named Bill Cosby (who bears no resemblance at all to the real Bill Cosby) appears and begins to ask about Cartman's Trapper Keeper, which he then attempts to steal. He is caught by Officer Barbrady and Cartman, and Officer Barbrady says, "I'm not going to shoot somebody for stealing your school folder", and when Bill Cosby is caught, he explains his actions: It seems this binder, which has several advanced, computerized features, is destined to conquer the world in the future and wipe out all traces of humanity (or "hu-monity" as Cosby calls it). Cosby himself is a cyborg from the future named BSM-471, sent backward to destroy the binder before it could rise to power; Cosby manages to destroy it, but Cartman then buys another one, which, according to the laws of time travel, would be the one that is actually destined to destroy the world, and Cartman refuses to allow this one to be destroyed.

Meanwhile, Mr. Garrison has been demoted to a kindergarten teacher, and his class holds an election for class president. Kyle's brother Ike runs against a boy named Filmore, the result being a tie that would be broken by the vote of a little girl named Flora. Unfortunately, she cannot decide who to pick. After she picks, the kids protest about an absent student, then demand recounts, then involve Rosie O'Donnell, who comes to protest that Filmore (her nephew) hasn't won. While this is going on, Stan, Kyle and Kenny have gone with their robotic companion to Cartman's house to convince his mother to help them, but she goes off with Bill Cosby to have sex; Cartman's Trapper Keeper, meanwhile, integrates itself into Cartman's computer and most of his belongings, and then absorbs Cartman himself, becoming a twisted bio-mechanical blob monster in a vaguely Cartman shape. It sets off to Cheyenne Mountain, to absorb a secret military base's (Ostensibly NORAD, whose main facility is actually located beneath the mountain) computer that will make it unstoppable.

Kyle sneaks within the gigantic Cartman-Trapper Keeper through a ventilation pipe, but is stopped within the beast when Rosie O'Donnell appears and yells at the Trapper Keeper for blocking the road, which leads to much confusion over which one was the amorphous blob. The creature then eats her and suddenly becomes sick. This gives Kyle the chance; he disconnects Trapper Keeper's CPU, and the beast returns to its powerless state. The creature's destruction causes Bill Cosby to disappear, as the robot needs not be created in the future to fight it if it is unable to take over the world, therefore he cannot come back in time (see Grandfather paradox). Stan tells Cartman to apologize to Kyle, who just saved his life, and Cartman starts to just as the episode ends.

As for the kindergarteners, after countless lawyers come in and legal forms and endless meetings, Filmore concedes because "this game is stupid." With Ike as president, the kids decide to go fingerpaint.

[edit] Kenny's death

Stan, Kyle and Kenny are outside Cartman's room where they decide who should destroy the Trapper Keeper, by saying "Not it!" Stan and Kyle get to it before Kenny does, leaving him to enter Cartman's room. Right as he is about to open the door, however, the Trapper Keeper's mutations slam the door off the hinges, crushing Kenny in between the door and the wall behind him. After he dies, Stan says "Oh my God! They killed Kenny!" without interruption, but Kyle just says "You BAAAAAAAA!!!" before being forced to run out of the house by the ever-growing Trapper Keeper.

[edit] Trivia

• The kindergarten election storyline is based on the United States Presidential Election of 2000, the results of which were eventually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. "Flora" represents Florida, the undecided state, and the "Absent Kid" represents the "absentee ballots", those of overseas Americans, which come in later than other ballots.
• Two different versions of the audio track have been aired. In the original airing of the episode, when Bill Cosby fades into nothingness (since Cartman/Trapper Keeper was stopped, and Bill Cosby is thus never needed or created), he says, "Goodbye humans! Oh, oh, it hurts!" In the second version, he says "Look! I'm fading! It must have worked! I don't exist!" The DVD includes the latter quote.
• Kyle McCulloch supplies the voice of "Bill Cosby".
• When "Bill Cosby" asks to be Cartman's friend, Cartman replies that he can't be friends with men over 30, because he "kinda got screwed on that one once," a reference to when he joined NAMBLA.
• Bill Cosby's model "BSM" is a short form for bondism.

[edit] Censorship

• In the syndicated version, the brief shot of Mrs. Cartman having sex with the android known as "Bill Cosby" after the assimilated Cartman destroys the house is cut.

[edit] References to Pop culture

• The Bill Cosby/Trapper Keeper storyline is based on the Terminator movies. Bill Cosby is based off of Kyle Reese (even down to some elements of his clothing) and the T-800 with his odd accent, as a parody of Arnold Schwarzneggers Austrian acccent. A soundalike of the theme from the films plays when Cosby reveals his true nature.
• Bill Cosby's continued pronouncing human as “hu-mon” is a reference to the Ferengi of Star Trek.
• When Bill Cosby is telling the story of how in the future Trapper Keeper takes over the world to Officer Barbrady and the boys, you can hear a barely audible Trey Parker singing his own rendition of the Dawson’s Creek theme song.
• The Cartman-shaped bio-mechanical blob monster is a reference to the anime movie Akira as is the fashion in which Rosie O’Donnell is killed. The music playing when the Trapper Keeper moves toward the base resembles the music played when Akira awakens to stop Tetsuo.
• Kyle must disable the creature Cartman becomes from within its core, which resembles the core of HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kyle even tells Cartman what he’s doing and Cartman responds, “I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Kyle,” which parodies HAL. Side note: this is not the only episode that has parodied 2001. “Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society” features a parody of the moment when the monkeys learn to use bones as weapons, and “The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000” parodies the famous fetus image from 2001.
• When Cartman crashes the police cruiser into Cosby, he says "Book 'em, Barbrady," A reference to the line "Book 'em, Danno," of the show Hawaii Five-O.
• The line "We are Trapper Keeper" is a possible reference to the Borg of Star Trek. The Borg are a cybernetic race that expand through the assimilation of weaker species and always refer to their selves in the first person plural.
• Another possible reference to Star Trek is when Cartman says to trapper keeper: "Please initiate music. Country. High volume." Captain Picard is well known to request earl grey tea from the ship's computer: "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."

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