Pre-School (South Park)

"Pre-School" is the 121st episode and the 10th in season 8 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on November 10, 2004.

Plot

A terrified Stan announces to Kyle, Kenny, Cartman and Butters that Trent Boyett, a notorious bully from their preschool years, is being released from juvenile hall after a five year sentence.

In flashback, the boys got the idea on day to play "Fireman", and hoped to put out a fire by urinating on it. Wanting to put out a real fire, they ask delinquent and bully, Trent Boyett, to start one. However, the fire gets out of the control, and their teacher, Miss Claridge, is badly burned. After she is taken away in an ambulance, the boys tell the police that Trent started the fire, and that it was entirely his idea. When Trent tries to tell the police that the fire was the boys' idea, Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny deny this, as does Butters, who witnessed the event. As a result, Trent is taken away to juvenile hall, where he will spend five years.

Now that Trent is free, the boys consider telling their parents about Trent wanting revenge, but Kyle explains that they lied to everyone for five years and would get in worse trouble.

Miss Claridge is burned so badly that she is forever confined to a motorized wheelchair (resembling Christopher Pike from Star Trek). She can only communicate by using an electronic beep: once for "yes", twice for "no". She is shown moving throughout the town, and is crossing the street when the battery to the chair dies, leaving her stranded in the middle of a crosswalk, and unable to move or communicate.

Butters is the first of the boys that Trent confronts, which results in a hospital stay for Butters, who sustains, according to the Doctor, a number of childhood pranks, including a massive snuggie, two Indian sunburns, a charlie horse, a second degree titty-twister, a "colossal" swirlie, a noogie and something called a "Polish bike ride".

The boys try to ask the sixth graders for protection from Trent, but the sixth graders demand that Stan produce a photo of his mother's uncovered breasts. The boys improvise by taking a photo of Cartman's buttocks, which they dress up to look like breasts, including drawn-on nipples. The sixth graders agree to protect the boys, but only after taking the photograph behind a set of bushes. The boys are initially relieved, only to later discover that Trent dispatched all of the sixth graders single-handedly, sending them to the hospital with injuries similar to Butters'. With no one left to turn to, the boys ask Stan's sister, Shelley, to defend them, but she only agrees to help them on the condition that they confess to Miss Claridge what really happened five years ago.

The boys meet Miss Claridge who is still stuck in the middle of the street, and attempt to make peace with her, but Trent arrives to confront them.

Cartman takes out his mom's taser gun, and fires it at Trent, but the electrodes land on Miss Claridge's chair instead, charging it to such a degree that it runs out of control, crashing into a propane shop, creating an explosion that destroys the shop and sets Miss Claridge on fire. After she then crashes into a fire hydrant, which puts out the flames, the police arrive and ask Miss Claridge if Trent tried to kill her again. She replies "no" with two beeps, but the police misunderstand this to mean "Yes, yes", and arrest Trent. The boys, having learned nothing from the experience, make the same mistake that they made five years before, claiming that they were not involved with the incident at all. When Kyle points out that Trent will be angered when he gets out of juvenile hall, Cartman dismisses this, saying, "Whatever, that's like, five years from now!" As Cartman moons Trent, the sixth graders happen upon the scene, and see Cartman's buttocks, still with nipples drawn on them. Recognizing them as the breasts from the photograph, they pick Cartman up, saying, "I'm taking them to the bushes".

Cultural Reference

After Miss Claridge is burned she is forever confined to a motorized wheelchair resembling Christopher Pike from Star Trek

External links

• Pre-School Full episode at South Park Studios
• Pre-School Episode guide at South Park Studios