Entertainment Blog

We all know that Cartman is fat. We've all known it, and it has been one of the longest running jokes in "South Park" history. But Cartman’s never admitted it. Until now.

After all these years, Cartman finally came to terms with the fact that he is fat on this week’s episode, but in typical Cartman fashion, that didn't mean exercising or doing something about it. No, it meant gaining weight so insurance would cover a Rascal scooter. Yep, Cartman now had his own set of wheels on which he could ride around. (His first stop: Kyle’s to try to take a shit, and then threatening Kyle with a lawsuit if he didn't widen his bathroom entrance and make it accessible.)

The show kind of speed-ran through the rest of Cartman’s fat-Rascal-riding antics, which they probably could have built a whole episode around if they wanted, with him taking a trip to Disney World, before ultimately suing Best Buy because its bathroom entrance wasn’t accessible, either. It all led to a great montage by Cartman (while riding around the entire class on his Rascal) talking about how he may be fat, but he certainly wasn’t Honey Boo Boo.

Honey Boo Boo, incidentally, felt like the oddball out in the episode; the piece that didn’t really fit in or get off the ground. It’s probably because I’ve never watched that show, nor do I ever plan to, but the writers here didn’t treat her too kindly: her heart gave out and she had to get a transplant from a pig, which made her even more of a piggly little animal then she already was.

Multiple plots ran though this episode. Kyle was trying to stop Cartman from taking advantage of the system and find a way to educate everyone about how easily the weight-handicap system can be abused. He teamed up with Token to make a documentary, but Token edited it into a new reality TV show, "Fatty Doo Doo," which actually lost to "Honey Boo-Boo" in the ratings and led to a showdown between Cartman and the hog-hearted Honey Boo Boo herself (I’m curious if "Honey Boo Boo" beat "South Park" in the ratings last week, and that spawned this whole thing).

The best parts were centered around James Cameron, who was off diving deep into the sea, trying to find and “raise the bar,” which had several of the largest laughs of the week (“I have now sunk deeper than any human ever has before!”) but had limited screen time against everything else that was going on. His plot and the whole raising the bar/lowering the bar metaphor could have played out a lot more, but it just got lost.

It’s been a long time since the show has aimed at this many targets at once (Randy Newman got burnt several times as well), with it usually sticking to two plots per episode. But the writers managed to pull it all off. The jokes were well executed and ranged from dead-on funny (Rascal tipping!) to quietly amusing if you noticed them (like Cartman using a grabber to grab a Kleenex during the trial), and even included a brief moment of clarity for the show at the end (Kyle tells Stan that maybe it was *them* who lowered the bar).