Last week, Trey Parker and Matt Stone mercilessly parodied Jersey Shore and this week, the pair moved onto another reality epidemic plaguing the airwaves: Hoarders in "Insheeption." When a leading hoarding specialist visited South Park, he determined that Stan and Mr. Mackie were suffering from advanced stages of hoarding psychosis and demanded that they undergo dream regression therapy, which trapped them both in Mr. Mackie's subconscious Inception-style. Freddy Kreuger was there. And Matt Hasselbeck too. Cue the hazy dissolve...
When Stan gets a note from Wendy saying, "We need to talk," he expects the worst. Instead, Wendy talks to him about his locker hoarding problem and introduces him to Dr. Chinstrap, a leading authority on the subject.
Dr. Chinstrap begins to treat Stan in front of a crowd of students, explaining, "As part of Stan's therapy we have to be careful not to throw away anything that Stan does not want us to. He has to be in control or else his psychosis will come out."
After Stan refuses to let Dr. Chinstrap dispose of a maggot-infested sandwich and a broken toothbrush, Stan goes to guidance counselor Dr. Mackie to further discuss hoarding, only to realize that Dr. Mackie is a hoarder, too. Dr. Chinstrap calls Stan's parents and suggests more serious treatment.
"I don't know if you realize how serious locker hoarding is," Dr. Chinstrap explains. "It can lead to room hoarding, then house hoarding and in some cases, people even hoard animals, like cats."
So Stan, Mr. Mackie and a local sheep herder ("But I'm actually herding sheep." / "Yes, you are hurting sheep by hoarding them. It's good you realize that") undergo childhood regression dream therapy to find out what in their unconscious makes them hoard, but Mr. Mackie's dream is so vivid that it sucks Stan and the sheep herder into it.
Stan's dad volunteers to help his son by also submitting to Mr. Mackie's subconscious at the risk of becoming trapped there forever. When's Stan's dad is transformed into a butterfly in Mr. Mackie's subconscious though, the hoarding experts send firemen and Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck into the dream to try to retrieve everyone. When that fails too, the experts continue piling insane stakes onto the convoluted situation ("If they don't, it'll be the end of Europe as we know it!").
Finally, the experts track down "the most powerful dream infiltrator in the world," Freddy Krueger, who is able to save everyone except for the sheep herder from Mr. Mackie's subconscious.
Meanwhile, it is revealed that as a child, Mr. Mackie was sexually abused by a psychopathic Woodsy the Owl mascot, who preached "Give a hoot, don't pollute." Mr. Mackie internalized the trauma by doing the opposite of polluting his whole life: hoarding.
Casualties Claimed at the Hands of Matt Stone and Trey Parker Last Night:
Matt Hasselbeck, Freddy Krueger, Inception
Kenny's Cause of Death:
N/A. Kenny survived...again.
Best Insults:
1.) "Just because an idea is overly convoluted and complex does not make it cool. Going to multiple dream levels sounds like a really stupid idea." -- Stan's mom, who probably would have agreed with Stephanie Zacharek's review of Inception.
2.) "What kind of hoarding specialist are you? You trapped our son in his guidance counselor's subconscious and now you're saying he can die there?!" -- Stan's dad.
Movieline Rating:
6/10