Simpsons Already Did It

"Simpsons Already Did It"

"Simpsons Already Did It" is the seventh episode in the sixth season of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on June 26, 2002. This episode debuts an alternate version of the opening sequence for season 6. It is mostly the same as the one used up until the episode Professor Chaos, except for inclusion of clips from that episode, and the inclusion of Tweek in the spot of Butters. Butters, as Professor Chaos, comes in and knocks down the “South Park” sign at the end.

Plot

Cartman shows Kyle, Stan, and Tweek an advertisement for "Sea People" (a parody of Sea-Monkeys). Cartman (led along by images from the advert) imagines them to be a race of fishy people who will "take me away from this crappy god damn planet full of hippies," and so he convinces the others to chip in and buy some.

Cartman is disappointed when the "Sea People" turn out to be nothing more than brine shrimp, but in order to get at least some fun from their purchase, the boys decide to put them in Ms. Choksondik's coffee. She then dies (as had been announced in the previous episode two months before).

Upon hearing on TV that semen had been discovered in the teacher's stomach, the boys come to the conclusion that they inadvertently killed Ms. Choksondik with their "sea men." That night, they go to the morgue to steal the sea men evidence, fearful that they'll "find the women too!" Eventually, Chef explains to them that there is a difference between "sea men/semen" and "Sea People", and that the brine shrimp couldn't have killed their teacher (it is never adequately explained how she died, although her name, along with a televised news broadcast mentioning Mr. Mackey, tend to suggest that she actually died while performing oral sex on him). By this time, the semen they recovered had been added to the Sea People remaining in Cartman's aquarium. In the morning, he awakes to find they had combined to make a smaller version of his original image, that of sapient creatures who begin to make their own civilization (in Cartman's own Theory of Composite Dynamics about this, "Sea-People" + "Sea-men" = "Sea-Ciety").

Meanwhile, Butters, in his role as Professor Chaos, has been trying to figure out a way to bring disarray to the town. When he plots to block out the sun, his assistant, General Disarray, informs him that it mirrors a plot of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Not wanting to do a repeat of something already done on The Simpsons, he then decides to cut the head off of the town's central statue — which mirrors Bart Simpson's decapitation of Springfield's Jebediah Springfield statue. On the news report, the newscaster interprets Butters' vandalism as a homage to The Simpsons. Butters then attempts to devise other evil schemes, but Dougie keeps pointing out that every one of Butters' plans (aside from being ridiculous) has also already been done on The Simpsons. Butters watches every single Simpsons episode to try and do something that the show hasn't done yet, creating a stupid device. While he is explaining the device, Disarray remarks, "I think The Simpsons would be more clever than that." Right as Butters is about to put his device into use, a Simpsons commercial announces that Bart is going to do the exact same thing in that night's episode. Butters finally goes insane, seeing the entire town as if it were The Simpsons' town of Springfield.

Stan and Kyle invite Butters to see the Sea People, and when he does and discovers that they believe Cartman to be a god, he screams out joyously that it is a copy of the Treehouse of Horror VII short "The Genesis Tub", where Lisa Simpson brings to life a civilization in a tooth, and they worship her as a god. The boys agree with him, but don't care, pointing out that The Simpsons has done everything, so worrying about that is pointless, and that they had in turn borrowed their ideas from elsewhere. Butters sees the point and recovers from his paranoia. At the end of the episode, the Sea People all kill themselves, when suicide bombing between different sects (one worshipping Cartman, the other Tweek) escalates into the use of nuclear weapons that destroys the entire tank.

Censorship

Two lines are completely removed from the syndicated version:

• When Cartman explains how he got the semen from Ralph, the guy on the street "He just made me close my eyes and suck it out of a hose." After they finish transferring the Sea-Ciety into a larger tank, Stan asked Cartman about it and he confirms it by saying "Yeah, out of a little hose." Although these lines are in the PAL version of the DVD.

Cultural references

• In the beginning of the episode, Stan, Kyle, and Tweek make a snow man, up until Tweek refuses to put on the snowman's nose because he fears it might come to life and kill all of them, Stan comforts him by saying, "C'mon, when has that ever happened, except for that one time?" This is a reference to the very first South Park animated short, "The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs Frosty."
• In the morgue is a fetus labelled 'Hitler'.
• While in the morgue, two M.C. Hammer songs are discussed.
• Cartman's exclamation of "Oh, the humanity" when the sea people destroy their tank following the suicide bombings, is a direct quotation from Herbert Morrison, in his commentary at the destruction of the LZ 129 Hindenburg.
• Cartman's 'Sea People' shows striking resemblance to the short story "Sandkings" by George R.R.Martin (Omni August,1979) about a race of insect like creatures in a terrarium who fight wars and "worship" their owners by carving faces in the sides of their castles.

Simpsons References

Schemes of Professor Chaos

Butters’ schemes and The Simpsons episodes they reflect:

• Block out the sun — “Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part One)”
• Cut off the head of the town statue — “The Telltale Head”
• Offer to build the town an unsafe monorail and skip town with the money — “Marge vs. the Monorail”
• Start a website that spreads rumors about the townspeople — “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”
• Plant a fake angel skeleton as an artifact — “Lisa the Skeptic”
• Bring the World Cup to South Park so the fans riot — “The Cartridge Family”
• Shake up all the beer cans as to cause a massive explosion — “So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show”
• Forget world domination and just run away and join the circus — “Homerpalooza" and "Bart Carny”
• Have the cherries in chocolate covered cherries replaced with two-month-old mayonnaise — A fictional episode of The Simpsons advertised to air during the events of this episode