Cripple Fight

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“Cripple Fight”
South Park episode
Jimmy performing his stand-up routine.
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 67
Written by	Trey Parker Matt Stone
Directed by	Trey Parker
Production no.	503
Original airdate	June 27, 2001
Season 5 episodes
South Park - Season 5 June 20, 2001 – December 12, 2001
Scott Tenorman Must Die It Hits the Fan Cripple Fight Super Best Friends Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow Cartmanland Proper Condom Use Towelie Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants How to Eat with Your Butt The Entity Here Comes the Neighborhood Kenny Dies Butters' Very Own Episode
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List of South Park episodes

“Cripple Fight” is episode 67 of the animated series South Park. It originally aired on June 27, 2001. This episode did not feature Kyle. The fight scene resembles a fight scene from They Live.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cultural references 3 Reaction 4 Kenny’s death? 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Plot

The boys have joined Mountain Scouts Troop number 69 (except Kyle, presumably because he is a Jew Scout), and are on their way to their first meeting. When they arrive, they find that their scoutmaster is Big Gay Al, and some parents take objection to this, fearing that he may exhibit pedophilia. Big Gay Al is quickly thrown out of Mountain Scouts, after a lifetime of membership. A controversy erupts as the Mountain Scouts are called a hate group by the media and prominent supporters like Steven Spielberg withdraw their support. A new scoutmaster named Mr. Grazier (also known as “Mr. Slippyfist”) is appointed, who turns out to be a real child molester and begins to take pornographic photos of his scouts, with a threat to beat them up if they let this slip.

Meanwhile, Jimmy, a new handicapped boy, comes to town and also joins Mountain Scouts. Jimmy is a stand-up comedian and immediately becomes very popular. Timmy, the other handicapped boy in town, becomes incredibly jealous of the adoration given to the new kid. Timmy tries to undermine Jimmy in any way possible, including offering him an orange parka as a gift, in order to make him resemble Kenny. However, his efforts prove futile (the parka even fails to attract Kenny’s intended usual tragic death, although several near misses occur).

In an effort to get Big Gay Al back as their scout leader, the boys, including Timmy and Jimmy, assemble their own protest march all the way to the grocery store parking lot, and attempt to use Jimmy’s stand-up comedy as a crowd-teaser. However, the performance goes sour when he tries to enlist Timmy’s participation, and Timmy refuses. Quickly, they break out into a lengthy fistfight, which Cartman dubs “cripple fight” and announces to several large gatherings of people, who come to watch the spectacle, which is dubbed by the South Park media as a "Gay Rights March." Coming Close to the end of the fight, you can see, that Timmy is standing.

Under pressure from gay rights groups and with help from prominent lawyer Gloria Allred, Big Gay Al sues the Mountain Scouts, while Mr. Slippyfist is revealed as a criminal and arrested. Although Big Gay Al wins in court and the court orders the Mountain Scouts to take him back, he refuses, saying that he loves scouts too much to impose his will on them, and while they should be talked into changing their mind and he begs people not to cut their funding or support for the scouts, adding that as the Scouts are a private organization, he believes it is their libertarian right to form their own policies on homosexuality. This causes Gloria Allred to brand Big Gay Al as a homophobe.

At the scouts meeting at the end of the episode, Timmy brings up a photoshopped picture of Jimmy's head on a man's body, having sex with another man. Due to the scouts' views on homosexuality, Jimmy is kicked out of the scouts.

[edit] Cultural references

In the DVD commentary^[1] Parker and Stone talk about how the Mountain Scouts’ branding as a hate group is a reference to the controversy of the BSA banning homosexual members, particularly the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale case in 2000.

They also specify that the fight between Timmy and Jimmy is almost a shot for shot remake of the fight between Nada and Frank Armitage (Roddy Piper and Keith David) in the 1988 John Carpenter film They Live^[2], initially overdubbing the audio from the movie to the images from the episode to create an almost exact copy of the original scene.

[edit] Reaction

In the recent UK poll Paramount Comedy's Top 10 Episodes, this episode was ranked number 8. "Park Life", the documentary accompanying the countdown, showcased how the positive characterisation of Big Gay Al in this episode is what earned it so much respect.

[edit] Kenny’s death?

Kenny presumably dies when he is plucked out of a lineup of the boys by a giant eagle, but he is seen again at the end of the episode. This has occurred a few times in past episodes.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Episode page at IMDB
• Episode script at Spscriptorium

Preceded by “It Hits the Fan”

South Park episodes

Followed by “Super Best Friends”