Shame on You, Comedy Central! (...For Not Also Censoring That Lousy Cartman's Dad Reveal)

By: Adam Quigley Posted: April 23, 2010 Filed under: Non-News

This past week's episode of South Park (entitled "201") has understandably been generating a lot of controversy over its excessive censoring by Comedy Central—yet again—of all things relating to the prophet Muhammad. In light of this, everyone seems to have overlooked a far graver issue...

Seriously? They retconned the "Cartman's dad" storyline for that?

What puzzles me is, despite the lackluster and not particularly funny reveal, Parker and Stone somehow managed to arrange the exact elements necessary to pull off an elaborate, hilarious Star Wars homage, and yes, a perfect reveal to the mystery of Cartman's father. I am in disbelief that they failed to act on it.

Here are those elements, without which this potentially awesome gag would not have been possible:

• Storyline: Who is Cartman's dad?
• Running Gag: Bringing back old characters
• Old Character: Chef, now Darth Chef
• Show History: Chef was one of the potential fathers in the original Season 1 finale, "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut"
• Returned Character: Mitch Connor/Cartman's hand

See where I'm going with this?

Had Parker and Stone actually realized what a golden opportunity they had, they could've recreated—in mockingly epic fashion—the ending of The Empire Strikes Back. They even could've had Scott Tenorman cloaked like Emperor Palpatine, and had him be the one to bring out Darth Chef. A conflict would then ensue, resulting in Mitch Connor being decapitated by Darth Chef's lightsaber. Cartman, now hand-less, would fall to his knees, and Darth Chef would reveal the truth: he is Cartman's father.

This gag would've been thematically appropriate too, given how self-deprecating these past two episodes were, recycling tired gags as a way of poking fun at the show for... recycling tired gags. And what's more tired than a Star Wars parody, especially one that was already fairly derivative when they did it the first time?

It would've been the perfect conclusion to a perfect set-up. But they had to go and fuck it up.