A Ladder To Heaven
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- This article is about the South Park episode. For the ladder to Heaven in the Bible, see Jacob's Ladder (Bible).
"A Ladder to Heaven" is episode 612 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on November 6, 2002.
Plot
The boys won an all-you-can-grab candy prize. But they realize that they gave the ticket to Kenny to hold to before he died.
The boys decide to build a ladder to heaven to find Kenny so he can tell them where the ticket is. The adults, who only know that the boys want to see their dead friend again, are touched by their concern for their friend. The whole country gets involved in supporting the ladder to heaven. The military starts to build a reinforced tower in order to beat the Japanese to heaven.
Suspicious photos taken of heavenly clouds are reported to the President as indicating a potential factory making WMDs run by Saddam Hussein, now dead and permanently living in Heaven. The US decides to bomb heaven, believing Hussein to be building nuclear warheads there.
Meanwhile, the boys find out that Kenny was cremated. Not understanding what this means, the boys hope to find the ticket in the urn that Kenny's parents say he is now in. They steal the urn and are disappointed to find it only contains black powder. Cartman (without knowing what it actually is) assumes it must be some kind of chocolate milk powder. He mixes the ashes with milk and drinks Kenny.
Cartman starts channeling Kenny and remembers where the ticket is. The boys lose interest in the ladder after they get the ticket and their candy. Meanwhile the adults are still building the ladder and preparing an attack on heaven when they spot the boys. They are disappointed to find out the boys were "only interested in candy", to which Cartman replies, "I've never heard the word 'only' and 'candy' in the same sentence before."
The boys explain that heaven is not some white fluffy place. In fact, Kyle adds, "Maybe heaven is this moment right now." To which the general responds by ordering his subordinate to hold off on firing on heaven, and instead he issues an order to "Fire on this moment right now." But before he does, Randy Marsh stops him and says, "Instead of waiting to get into heaven, we should be trying to create heaven here on earth." The crowd sighs in acknowledgement of this pithy truth and disperses.
The episode ends with a shot of heaven, where Saddam Hussein is in fact building a WMD factory, disguised as a chocolate chip factory. Hussein, using circuitous logic, successfully convinces God that he is not building one.
\"Ladder to Heaven\" Lyrics
Once the boys gain national media attention by building the ladder to heaven, country singer Alan Jackson shows up, singing a song he wrote about the ladder. As noted in the episode, Jackson wrote a song called "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" about 9/11, and the song he performs, "Where Were You When They Built The Ladder To Heaven," is a parody. The parody song's lyrics are:
Where were you when they built the ladder to heaven?
Did it make you feel like cryin'
Or did you think it was kinda gay?
Well I, for one, believe in the ladder to heaven.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah...9/11.
I said 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, Ni-hi, hi-hine...
...Eleven
Jackson changes the lyrics slightly to reflect developments in the ladder to heaven's construction. In such cases, only the first line is performed before the action cuts away. Some changes are:
- When the boys run out of things to add to the ladder:
- When the Army offers help to the boys to beat the Japanese:
- When the boys convince the townspeople that heaven is what they should make Earth like now:
It is after this last alteration that people lose interest in the song, upsetting Jackson. He yells to the boys "You little bastards ruined my latest song!" and breaks his guitar, leaving frustratedly. [link]
Trivia
- The tile of this episode is a take on "Stairway to Heaven", which is an iconic song of the famous rock band Led Zeppelin .
- This episode started the mini-arc of Kenny's soul being trapped inside Cartman.
- The race to Heaven between Japan and the US in this episode is comparable to the Space Race between the US and the USSR.
- The Japanese news presenter shown throughout the episode announces that the Japanese have reached Heaven ahead of the Americans and then proceeds to claim Heaven as Japanese territory. The "Heaven" shown on the Japanese broadcast is little more than a flimsy backdrop with prop clouds and actors wearing angelic costumes suspended from rope. This appears to be in reference to the common conspiracy theory that NASA faked the July 1969 moon landing.
- When the boys build the ladder to reach above the clouds, Stan mentions the lack of the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. This is preceded by another observation that the boys have not seen Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back yet, either.
- The creators were spoofing the world's sensitive emotions that were widely observed in 2002, due to the 1-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, through their caricature of Alan Jackson and his patriotic song about the attacks.
- When President Bush is asking the UN for permission to bomb Heaven, he reveals intelligence about Saddam Hussein's movements in the afterlife after he was killed. The UN treat this with incredulity, but everything he says is true and is shown in , "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" and "Probably."
- This episode is among the few not included in the Japanese language dub of South Park.
External links
| Preceded by: Child Abduction is Not Funny | South Park episodes | Followed by: The Return of the Lord of the Rings to the Two Towers |
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