After a six month hiatus, South Park's fourteenth season returned with a whimper. Earlier in the year, Trey Parker and Matt Stone tackled prickly subjects like literary censorship, Facebook, Tom Cruise's rumored homosexuality and religion with the trademark deftness that has earned them the respect of discerning viewers including Lorne Michaels. But in the show's mid-season premiere, "Poor and Stupid" (appropriate title), Parker and Stone shied away from the usual hard-hitting topics and pointed their animated arrows at an easy bulls eye that has been hit tens of hundreds of times before: NASCAR. Let's take a look at this week's South Park carnage.
The episode opens with Cartman crying at his locker because, as he tells Stan and Kyle, he will never attain his dream of becoming a NASCAR driver. "I'm just not poor and stupid enough," he weeps.
"Dude, you're so retarded," Stan says.
"Thanks Stan," Cartman offers. "But even if that was true, I'd still be too rich."
After more back-and-forth about how "no one smart and rich belongs on a race track," Cartman decides to do whatever it takes to become stupid and poor enough for his NASCAR dream. So he gives Butters his life savings (approximately $59) and watches a marathon of Two and a Half Men, where he notices a Vagisil ad that warns viewers that one of its possible side effects is short term memory loss.
Cartman darts to the nearest drug store, guzzles Vagisil in the aisle (a doctor will later tell him, "You're developing three small vaginas in your stomach but they are all sparkling clean.") finds his way to the nearest race track, convinces a driver that his wife has been raped and then hijacks the car.
Later, after making national headlines for killing eleven innocent bystanders while high on Vagisil, the Vagisil spokesman thanks Cartman for the free publicity by sponsoring Cartman in his next race. Cartman adopts his best hick accent for interviews and drives so poorly in the next race that all of his competitors drive into the wall willingly to avoid Cartman's destruction. At this point, the Vagisil founder's humiliated wife (she is constantly berated on news for having a feminine odor so horrific that it necessitated the invention of her husband's product) jumps onto the track, takes control of a car and beats Cartman to end the Vagisil promotional spree. Now onto the body count.
Here lie the 5 public figures skewered in last night's episode, along with NASCAR fans everywhere:
Dale Earnhart Jr., Jimmie Johnson, Danica Patrick, Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth.
Obligatory Anti-Semitic Slur:
Miraculously, none. There were plenty of insults about the poor and stupid though. (See below).
Kenny's Cause of Death:
N/A. Again, Kenny was spared.
Best insults:
1.) "I need to get stupid Butter. I'm getting all of the blood to rush to my head and watching Two and a Half Men."
2.) "NASCAR is only for poor and stupid people. I don't have what it takes."
3.) "I have to become poor on my own! I wasn't born with a plastic spoon in my mouth."
Movieline Rating:
2/10