Butters' Very Own Episode

Template:Infobox South Park episode "Butters' Very Own Episode" is episode 514 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on December 12, 2001.

Plot

In this episode, Butters is excited because his parents' anniversary is coming up, and the whole family is going to Bennigan's. A few days before this event, Butters' mom asks him to go and spy on his father, to find out what gift he was buying her. However, Butters (without understanding what he was seeing) finds his father going into a gay movie theater and bath house. He reports back what he finds to his mother, who goes completely insane, painting over everything and talking about making "everything clean, everything new..."

When Butters' father discovers that Butters knows, he advises Butters not to tell what he's seen, saying it's okay to tell a little white lie (echoing the justification Butters' mom used for having Butters spy). Butters, unfortunately, has already blithely spilled the beans to his mother, who decides to kill herself, but first sends her car with Butters in it into the river, expecting him to drown. Butters still does not realize what's going on, and when his car is washed ashore, he tries to go back home. Meanwhile, Mr. Stotch walks in before Mrs. Stotch can kill herself, and prevents the suicide; finding out that Butters is "dead", he agrees to help cover up the deed, and the two concoct a story about Butters being abducted by "some Puerto Rican guy."

As the media centers on the "missing child" case, the pair are inducted into a "club" of people whose loved ones have "mysteriously vanished", including Gary Condit, O.J. Simpson, and the Ramseys. Butters reappears and, when the parents instruct him to tell , he scolds them for lying and trying to teach him to as well. Agreeing with their son, the two go out and reveal everything that has happened; the father's affair, the mother's attempted murder and the whole cover-up. This is followed by a lengthy and rather notable scene in which Butters' father repeatedly screams about "slimy scumbag liars" and "murdering murderers" while the camera cuts to the smiling faces of Condit, Simpson, and the Ramseys. Butters, being aware of none of this, is somewhat shocked and traumatized. Nevertheless, they all get to go to Bennigan's in the end.

Trivia

• Sonique's "It Feels So Good" plays in the gay bathhouse.
• The old man Butters meets on the road in the woods is a take off the Judd Crandall character in Pet Sematary. The same character returns in "Asspen" and most recently in "Marjorine", where he is a near-carbon copy of the original Crandall character.

• While Butters is walking through the woods, the laser-sight that targets him is a reference to the movie Predator. The Predators infrared POV is also used.

• When Butters' parents are accepted into the "club" of vanished people, Gary Condit, O.J. Simpson and the Ramseys start singing "One of Us! One of Us! Gooble gobble, One of Us!" This is a take-off on director Tod Browning's movie Freaks, where a group of circus freaks sing the same song to a beautiful trapeze artist who married a midget from their group.

• Butters' father holds a newspaper with headline "Towelie Ban Lifted." This is a reference to the previous episode "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants", in which Towelie makes a very bad pun on the word Taliban, when the boys announce that he cannot come to Afghanistan.

• This episode is perhaps most notable for making Butters a popular and important character. Before, he had been little more than a background character. With Kenny dead (having died "permanently" in the previous episode), a spot had been opened, temporarily at least, for a new major character, which he was for about half of the sixth season. He still remains a common character today, appearing in large roles in many episodes even after Kenny was resurrected. In fact, his part is arguably more notable than Kenny's even today.

• Usually at the end of a season, Matt Stone and Trey Parker would do a Christmas episode, except for this season and season 9. The only inkling of the Christmas season is that when Butters' mom attempts to murder him. The song on the radio is "Jingle Bell Rock."

• While the episode has aired routinely, it barely airs on Comedy Central anymore. This is most likely due to the controversy of how Butters is treated in some episodes; however, this episode was most recently aired on May 2nd

• Butters' mom sending the car down the river and then saying that "some Puerto Rican guy" abducted him is a take-off of the Susan Smith case in Union, South Carolina, where Smith drowned her two sons in her car and then said a black guy pulled her out of her car and took off with them.

• The reference by the farmer to a man who killed children and buried them in the crawlspace under his house is most likely a nod towards serial killer John Wayne Gacy.