South Park has a vaccination rodeo, and Randy tries to get his Tegridy back in a strong 300th episode
TV Reviews South Park
It’s been just shy of a decade since South Park’s 200th episode, and considering how much controversy that episode stirred, as well as just how perfectly it embodied the show’s irreverent style, tonight’s 300th outing had quite a bit to live up to. Thankfully, “SHOTS!!!” was more than up to the task. While it wasn’t quite as epic a story as that classic two-parter, it made up for that in spades by being the funniest episode of season 23 by a wide margin, and honestly, probably the best episode for pure comedy since Season 21’s “Sons A Witches.”
The main story focuses on Cartman and his terrible fear of getting shots. Knowing what a tyrant he can be, seeing Cartman at his weakest can often be quite satisfying. This is best exemplified by his legendary beating at the hands of Wendy in “The Breast Cancer Show Ever,” as well as when he was tamed by Cesar Millan is “Tsst.” The thing is, while Cartman’s fear of shots reminds us that he is just a boy, the efforts he goes to avoid them are quite Herculean. When faced with a needle, Cartman essentially turns into a pig, making it impossible for the doctor to catch him—going so far, at one point, to cover himself with Crisco. Each scene of him frantically running and shrieking around the room was gleefully absurd, and gave me a solid belly laugh. But when Cartman dodges the shot over and over again, it begs the question of what, precisely, can be done about him.
Here, naturally, is where the ongoing and frustrating discourse about the safety of vaccinations comes into play. South Park doesn’t seem too interested in really litigating this conversation. Liane Cartman woodenly reads from a script about the supposed effects, while Cartman feigns concerns about immunizations making him “artistic,” but the show seems to know that the actual debate is long settled, and focuses more on handling the specific question of how to get Cartman immunized. This works to the show’s benefit; it’s far more interesting to watch the increasingly elaborate efforts to get Cartman his shots than to explain why Jenny McCarthy is a dunderhead for the 10 trillionth time.
When the other parents at South Park Elementary don’t buy Liane’s feigned anti-vax concerns, she admits that it’s just because she can’t get her son to sit down for a shot, but also challenges them to do any better. This is a surprisingly emotional scene; while Liane’s character was initially limited to a couple of jokes (she constantly spoils her bratty son, and also she’s quite sexually active), the show has made admirable efforts to show her a sympathetic parent, who tries her best both to stand up to her son’s cruelty, while also doing what’s best for him. We saw this in “Tsst,” as well as “Human CentiPad,” both episodes where Cartman’s behavior spirals out of control even more so than usual. In this case, Cartman doesn’t appear to just be acting up; getting a shot genuinely terrifies him. In either case, though, Liane’s evolution from mere punchline to a human character just trying to be a good mom has been one of the show’s more subtle growths over the years, and it works quite well here.
When the town tries to immunize Cartman while he’s sleeping, it fails pretty quickly. Cartman wakes up, figures out what’s going on, and immediately greases himself, and bolts out the door. Desperate for help, the town calls Mesquite Murph, an elite pork wrangler who also happens to sincerely believe the science on vaccines. This character was hilariously off-the-wall in a quintessentially South Park fashion. Murph manages to entrap Cartman, but can’t quite administer the shot. This leads him to his big idea: a full-fledged vaccination rodeo, where he can immunize not just Cartman, but every single kid in town who’s afraid of needles. Classic South Park.
While Murph is concocting his plan, Liane has to deal with the fallout of trying to trick Cartman. He’s incensed at his mother’s dishonesty, and kicks her out of the house, which, of course, he can do because he’s Cartman. With nowhere else to turn, Liane knocks on the door of Tegridy Farms, and finds a friend to confide in with Randy, who’s been struggling with family problems of his own. Despite making $300,o00 in profits from the farm, his family is fed up with him, and the way he’s compromised his principles. Randy and Liane share a joint together, and momentarily, we can’t help but wonder if the pair might have an affair. Instead, however, the pair’s heart-to-heart conversation inspires both of them to do what must be done to earn back the trust they’ve lost.
In Randy’s case, we assume that would mean working things out with Sharon, but instead, we find him reaching out to Towelie, who abandoned him in “Mexican Joker.” Realizing Tegridy Farms won’t have any tegridy without him, he agrees to stop bullying homegrowers, and to no longer sell weed to the Chinese government, who are only buying it to plant on their own citizens so they can arrest them. In this scene, Randy, at Towelie’s urging, loudly utters the line “fuck the Chinese government,” removing any doubt as to where Matt and Trey stood on this. With the show banned in China following last week’s “Band In China” (perhaps they saw it coming), they had nothing to lose, and it was nice to see Comedy Central have their back and air the line as clearly as intended. With Towelie back on board, Randy’s next objective will be making things right with the family, who have grown to hate not only him, but marijuana as well. This sets us up for some potentially heavy moments in the next few episodes. The Marsh’s marriage already fell apart once before in the excellent “You’re Getting Old/Ass Burgers” two-parter. Can they survive yet another test?
As for Liane, she makes her way to the vaccination rodeo as fast as possible, and saves Cartman from a shot in the nick of time, receiving an accidental immunization herself. What follows here is interesting; at first it looks like Liane is beginning to genuinely worry about the effects of vaccinations, or at the very least, the fact that legally, she has no choice in the matter. But just when it looks like South Park might be starting to make a contrarian point about parental choices (one that would perhaps fit in the libertarian wheelhouse of their earlier episodes), the show makes things clear: This is simply about Liane wanting to get Cartman vaccinated her own way, not through the elaborate circus that Mesquite Murph has concocted. When we think we’re about to see Liane embrace her son, she instead screams “NO SHOT NO TOY,” calling back to an earlier moment, when she still let her son take a toy from the chest despite failing to sit for a shot. This is a cathartic moment of Liane standing firm as a parent, without the help of Mesquite Murph or Cesar Millan. Or at least it would be, if not for the surprise ending.
Just as Cartman is about to go for his shot (and he looks serious about it this time), the doctor calls him in for some bad news about his mother, who is sitting at a canvas, painting fruit. Thanks to her unintended inoculation, vaccines have indeed made her artistic. In an episode full of great gags, this was the funniest one by far. Calling back to an earlier malapropism by Cartman, and using it to set up a great plot twist is South Park at its absolute best.
After a shaky premiere, each of the last two episodes have been better than the last, at the season now appears to be on the right track. “SHOTS!!!” was both funny, and surprisingly layered, giving us reason to empathize with every central character. Randy screwed up, but he still wants do what’s best for his family. Liane is just a mother struggling with the unexpected struggles that parenthood creates. Even Cartman—for all his antics—earns some pity here; what kid isn’t scared of just how much a shot is going to hurt? This episode gave us plenty of room to understand and relate to its characters, as well as giving us plenty of great jokes along the way. While so many of its contemporaries have gotten stale, giving viewers fewer and fewer reasons to care, South Park remains as sharp as ever. What better way could there be to celebrate 300 episodes?
Stray observations
- As many of you noticed, I made a critical error in my review of “Band In China.” In the scene where Randy kills Pooh, I mistakenly wrote that Mickey Mouse was in the scene as well, which he clearly was not. Needless to say, I’m quite embarrassed by this. I don’t know what caused my confusion here, other than the fact that Mickey and Randy had appeared together in earlier scenes. Either way, it was a careless mistake on my part, and an insult to the readers who expect and deserve better. I sincerely apologize, and promise to be more careful and thorough from here on out.
- As terrified as Cartman is of getting a shot, he nonetheless laughs when the doctor tells him “it’s just a little prick.” This is so perfectly in character for him, and I love it.
- Beyond the shot itself, Cartman begins to express genuine fear of the effects of vaccinations, leading to this gem: “What if vaccines made my friend Timmy who he is? What if they made Jimmy who he is? What if they made Token who he is?”
31 Comments
To be fair, Jimmy, Timmy and Token are probably the most artistic of the kids.
“What if immunizations made my friend Timmy the way he is? What if they made Jimmy the way he is? What if they made Token the way he is?” Every once in a while, this show can still make me laugh.
I did not think this was their funniest episode this season. I laughed way more at the last one. Cartman as a squealing pig was great the first time it happened, but they kept using it over and over, to diminishing returns. The line about Token was very funny. I also liked Randy’s “…and I started acting like a towel.”The ending reveal, though. Wow. That was brilliant. Really, genuinely surprising in the best way. They do so much that you can see coming a mile away (like Randy apologizing to Towlie not Sharon), it was great to see them pull that out of their hat. All I noticed as we were going along was that a lot of people were using the wrong words for stuff, it never occurred me they were doing that to obfuscate the one they’d planted for their ending.
Cartman as a squealing pig was great the first time it happened, but they kept using it over and over, to diminishing returns
With you except for this part. It did start to diminish a little bit at first but picked back up again when it got to the rodeo. They fully leaned into the joke and it paid off.
I completely agree with you (except about Cartman’s squealing, which actually got funnier to me as it kept happening). The ratings for this and the last episode should be reversed. Band in China was iconic and the best episode they’ve done since season 19.
I though Band in China was extremely disappointing. I appreciated the content and who they went after, but aside from Winnie the Pooh, it was extremely unfunny. I got excited when Mickey showed up because he’s great, but he didn’t make me laugh at all either. The music biopic stuff all fell entirely flat for me as they’ve done similar stuff much better in the past.
The best part of Band in China was the aftermath of the episode and that doesn’t make the episode funnier.
It got another one out of me from Big Mesquite Murph yelling sooiee
The ending was another really cool call back to “Tsst”. When Eric starts behaving in that episode, Liane thanks Cesar because she has more time to paint again. I read the ending as her trying to make Cartman feel guilty for her becoming “artistic”.
Fuck the Chinese government![Reaches for ‘made in China’ one hitter & ‘Tegrity’ weed while posting from‘made in China’ phone]
You made a bunch of mistakes. You’ve been making them for a while. Not just one. Don’t throw it to “confusion”… you just were half-assing your job and not paying attention. You were holding some childish grudge against the show because you thought last season was about you. You’re only even admitting it now because a few people had enough and emailed your Editors, me included, about your constant mistakes.At least be honest in your “apology”
calm down
Cartman wearing a “My Body, My Choice” t-shirt is one of the greatest images in the show’s history. There is nothing that little sociopath won’t co-opt for his own agenda, which somehow makes him more endearing.
“it’s just a little prick”
That is a quote from Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb, “ from the Wall album.
I saw the final moment as a big toothless whiff. They had a chance to attack the autism-vaccine link argument for the ableist trash it is and they just let it just play off as plausible that becoming “artistic” is a side effect. Attacking those that need to say they would prefer risking their child be a disease spreading corpse over risking them being an autistic child can be so rich for material. For all of the deep writing they can do to develop Lianne, they undid it by letting her child do what I saw as vaccination schedule outside that of recommended professionals. There were a lot of good points in this episode (Cartman’s knowledge of the different kinds of legal immunization exemptions, Mesquite Murph’s familiarity with anaphylaxis likelihoods…) but anything that makes anti-vax (or in this case anti-vax-like) characters sympathetic leads to more people doubting lifesaving procedures.
I think the vaccine causing artism thing might—follow me here, ‘cause this one gets nuanced—might just be a joke to ridicule the whole vaccine/autism myth. Because of the obvious ridiculousness of it and all. Yeah, pretty sure.Not 100% though, because this was the show that did a hard-hitting expose on how eating gluten makes your dick fly off, and how if you shove food up your butt you’ll poop out your mouth, and we all know _that’s_ true.
You misunderstand, I am concerned this could be taken for a “both sides” take. Lianne saying she is worried about vaccines causing “art-ism” is only proven correct. The narrative of an anti-vax mom being vindicated (even for a joke disease) is irresponsible. If an anti-vaxxer can look at this and see themselves as the hero, then something went wrong.
It is not our responsibility to teach stupid adults the errors of their ways, only to out vote them and create systems that create less stupid people. To yell at clearly tongue-in-cheek comedians for not explaining their joke for the people in the dumb seats shifts the blame away from people who should be responsible for themselves but aren’t.
And especially since a significant portion of the episode was a farce about how incredibly difficult it is (and unethically-if-skillfully-sneaky we would have to be) to force these idiots to take their medicine, well, we should remember that smart people can miss the point of an episode of television too if they’re not in the right mind for it.
In other words:
“If an anti-vaxxer can look at this and see themselves as the hero, then something went wrong.”
That would be the anti-vaxxer, no?
Given that South Park has consistently taken a libertarian stance, and given the ending of this episode, it would be wishful thinking to conclude it wasn’t actually anti-vax
Liane isn’t an anti-vax mom.
Yeah why didn’t the show stop focusing on comedy and instead focus on advocacy for your pet issue.
Eh, I’m not ready to go there yet. It seems, based on the end, that they may not be done with the subject. I think I wanna wait a while before I jump on them for it.
During the scene with Randy and Towelie, it occurred to me that the most consistently funny thing so far this season has been Towelie. When the best thing about your season is the character who was introduced as ‘The Worst Character Ever,’ that seems like a bad sign.
Aside him thinking that a vaccine would make him artistic, I thought it was particularly funny that Cartman called himself a “consciousness objector” instead of a “conscientious objector.”
The main story focuses on Cartman and his terrible fear of getting shots.Am I mistaken or didn’t he purposely shoot himself up with apple juice to enhance his torturous farts in season 11’s “The Snuke”?
I was confused about the ending so appreciate the clarification on the artistic vs autistic thing. That is pretty funny but I clearly missed it when i watched the episode this morning. I was sort of wondering why it ended that way but just assumed I missed something or it wasn’t that funny to begin with.
As much as I liked the previous episode (and I still prefer it to this one) this episode had one good point, which is that very little of the plot involved Randy Marsh. I am getting real tired of so much of this show being taken up by someone who is intentionally vapid, shallow, idiotic, and overall one of the worst characters. This is the show which has a relatively-major character as President (who is probably getting impeached, for that matter), and yet only gives us glimpses of him, and some indirect attacks on his policy. On the other end of the spectrum, this is also the show which has spent years developing a varied cast of fourth-graders, and is about children at its core, and yet refuses to make any actually school-centric episodes anymore, even though if, done correctly, their complete apolitical-ness could be quite refreshing (as the “Cartman as pig” stuff clearly demonstrates). Either way, I think this “Randy or die” mentality is really stopping the show from being as good as it could be. Heck, I mean Satan died or something when he fought Manbearpig, I’d love an arc focusing on what happened to him, that could make for some classic South Park, but I guess that’s just not what this show is about anymore (which I find very sad).
When Randy was on the float at the very end of the parade I’m pretty sure he totally pulled down his pants and starting Windmilling, it’s right at the top right corner of the shot, it’s super odd.
You didn’t mention what I thought was the funniest part – Randy throwing himself a parade (with official police escort) to celebrate earning $300,000 while he tried to sing along with “China” by the Red Rockers. Classic Randy Marsh – glad he has been such a big part of recent episodes. His enthusiastic hubris is always hilarious.
I think what I found most endearing about that was that for all of the fanfare its reception was uniformly of the underwhelmed variety…& given that they went with 300k rather than a bigger number when Sharon asks how much all this stuff cost it seems plausible that he might have blown most if not all of his profits…given the 300th episode thing it seemed pleasantly self-deprecating all in all…
I’m surprised that Sons of Witches is considered to be so funny by people. I thought it was a pretty weak episode aside from the Cartman/Heidi stuff. Definitely not the funniest episode of the past two years, that’s for sure.
Mexican Joker was a funnier episode than episode 300, but Episode 300 told a better story.
I thought the ending was brilliant. I saw it as being a big F You to anti-vaxxers, showing that South Park thinks the worst side effect of vaccinations is that someone would become “artistic.” As opposed to the fears most of the characters have about people not getting their kids vaccinated.