Fat Butt and Pancake Head
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| “Fat Butt and Pancake Head” | |
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| South Park episode | |
 "I don't come from no Mexico! I'm Puer'ah Rican!" |
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| Episode no. | Season 7 Episode 101 |
| Written by | Trey Parker |
| Production no. | 705 |
| Original airdate | April 16, 2003 |
| Season 7 episodes | |
| South Park - Season 7 March 19, 2003 – December 17, 2003 |
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| ← Season 6 | Season 8 → |
| List of South Park episodes | |
"Fat Butt and Pancake Head" is episode 705 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It was originally broadcast on April 16, 2003. In this episode, Trey Parker and Matt Stone make plain their scorn and contempt for Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
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South Park Elementary School is holding a cultural diversity day. Kyle gives a report on the role of Latinos in American technology. A board of Latino community leaders (who are the judges) seem pleased with Kyle's report.
Cartman goes on stage to report on the effect of Latino culture on the arts in America. He says he has a special guest, Jennifer Lopez. However, Jennifer Lopez does not show up; Cartman merely does a ventriloquist act with his hand acting as the head of "Ms. Lopez". The racism of Cartman's report is quite obvious and upfront. His "Ms. Lopez" hand puppet has a heavily caricatured Mexican accent and constantly talks about eating tacos and burritos which are Mexican dishes despite the fact that Jennifer Lopez is Puerto Rican. "Ms. Lopez" is also nearly incapable of pronouncing the "J" in her name (which Cartman tries to correct unsuccessfully). Despite this, the board of Hispanics inexplicably give him first place for having the best report, and he wins a $20 gift certificate at the mall. This angers Kyle, as he thinks Cartman's speech is racist and immature, and because while Kyle had spent two weeks labouring over his speech, it is implied that Cartman spent very little time in preparation.
Cartman further enrages Kyle by insisting that his hand has a mind of its own. When the children go to the mall, Cartman -- at the apparent behest of Ms. Lopez -- uses his gift certificate to record a music video (in which Ms. Lopez sings of her love of tacos and burritos, and of giving "taco-flavored kisses"). The video gets sent to the record company representing the real Jennifer Lopez. The executives decide to replace the more difficult human performer with the puppet because they cannot have two Jennifer Lopezes.
When Jennifer Lopez learns she's being fired, she gets angry (all throughout the episode she is shown as extremely mean and swears at random people), especially when she learns that her job has been replaced by a puppet. Jennifer Lopez and her husband-to-be, Ben Affleck, show up at South Park Elementary. Jennifer starts to beat up Cartman until he pleads that he'll stop his Ms. Lopez ventriloquist act.
As the two celebrities leave, Ben catches sight of (Cartman's hand) Ms. Lopez. He immediately falls in love with her.
The rest of the episode focuses on Cartman and Ms. Lopez. Originally, Cartman is happy because he was right about Ms. Lopez and Kyle was wrong.
Cartman begins to become insane due to the tension between Lopez and Cartman fighting for control of her actions. He starts to suffer from insomnia because Ms. Lopez forces him to stay up all night (she is writing and recording songs for her album).
When not working with her music, Ms. Lopez becomes involved in an increasingly romantic relationship with Ben Affleck. Cartman hates the relationship; he doesn't like Ben Affleck. After waking up one morning to discover Ben naked in his bed (Ben apparently had sex with Ms. Lopez which disgusted Cartman because it was his hand), Cartman learns that Ms. Lopez and Ben are planning to get married.
The news of the wedding angers the real Jennifer Lopez. At the end of the episode, Cartman decides to make a run for it. At a bridge, Jennifer Lopez, the police, Ben Affleck, the people from the recording company, Kyle, Kenny and Stan catch up with Cartman and Ms. Lopez.
Everyone (except the boys) starts to argue about Ms. Lopez. Ms. Lopez screams for everyone to be quiet. She then makes the confession that she is not Jennifer Lopez, but Mitch Connor, a con man who has been moving around from town to town. His voice is different from Ms. Lopez's, as well as identical to Cartman's, and he has no hair, unlike Ms. Lopez. He apologizes to Ben for playing around with his love and states that he will die, as he has recently consumed a cyanide pill.
The last thing Mitch does is look at the sunset and wonder if he will dream. He then "dies", and everyone goes away except for the boys. Kyle asks who Mitch Connor is. Cartman says, "Look, I don't care what you guys believe. But with all the crazy stuff that goes on in this town, isn't it possible, just possible, that something' I don't understand happened here?"
When Kyle admits that he believes it's possible, Cartman starts screaming, "Ha ha ha ha haa haa! I got you kind of!"
The episode ends with Jennifer Lopez working at a La Taco restaurant. She complains she had several platinum records and starred in several Hollywood movies. The Mexican next to her is her only sympathizer, saying that he had too.
[edit] Censorship
- In syndication, the scene where Ms. Lopez performs oral sex on Ben Affleck in the car and the scene where Cartman reacts to the statement that Ben and Ms. Lopez were “up all night making love” are removed.
- In the “VH-1 Goes Inside” special about South Park, there was a clip of the scene where Cartman wakes up and finds that his Jennifer Lopez hand puppet had sex with Ben Affleck. When Cartman yells, “Ew, Ben Affleck spooge!,” the word “spooge” was bleeped out.
[edit] References to popular culture
- This episode is a parody of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s relationship during their much publicized engagement. The title refers to Jennifer Lopez’s large buttocks and — according to episode commentary — Ben Affleck's head, which is as flat as a pancake.
- According to Matt Stone, the Taco Flavored Kisses was a parody of Mexican singer Thalía who released her own own line of Chocolate Kisses at Wal Mart in 2003. They chose to do a parody on Jennifer Lopez instead, as she is more international.
- Some say that the character of Ms. Lopez is somewhat based on the characters of “Johnny” and “Pedro” in the ventriloquism of Señor Wences; while this may have had some influence, the basic joke of the hand talking with a Latina accent is directly out of the 1979 movie The In-Laws. The scene at the mall, where Cartman has Ms. Lopez kiss Kyle, is taken directly from this film. Matt and Trey came up with the " 's all right" exchange on their own.
- The last spoken ventriloquist line of Cartman’s hand (“I wonder, will I dream?”) is an homage to the movie 2010, where the two computers HAL-9000 and SAL-9000 pose the same question at times when facing shutdown (which in turn can be regarded as an homage to a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "To die to sleep - perchance to dream; for in that sleep of death; what dreams may come?").
- The scene in which Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck pull up to the school is a parody of the scene in A Christmas Story, in which one of the boys gets his tongue frozen to a flag pole. It's also seen in many other television shows and movies where people in schools look out of windows at stuff.
[edit] Continuity
- Liane Cartman says that Ben Affleck being in Eric’s bed was because the Tooth Fairy had been extra nice to him. However, she had previously admitted to him in “The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000” that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist.
| Preceded by “Cancelled (South Park)” |
South Park episodes | Followed by “Lil' Crime Stoppers” |
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