Butt Out

"Butt Out" is episode 713 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on December 3, 2003.

Plot

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The boys witness an upbeat anti-smoking group called Butt Out which incorporates elements of dance and hip-hop into its routine at school, which brings out a mixture of boredom, annoyance, confusion and fear in them.

Afraid that they will grow up to be weird just like the people in Butt Out, the boys decide to take up smoking, which their parents find out about when the school burns down as a result. The parents are initially very angry at their children, but Mrs. Broflovski first ends up blaming it (and the other parents follow suit) on the tobacco companies brainwashing them into smoking, which the boys agree with in order to avoid being grounded for three weeks.

The town then calls in Rob Reiner in order to combat the spread of smoking among children in South Park. Reiner considers himself important. Despite the fact that he is against smoking, he is seen eating large amounts of junk food (another unhealthy pursuit) on an almost constant basis. He is loved by Cartman because "He just goes around imposing his will on other people; he's my idol." The rest of the boys are suspicious of him as he attempts to use them in order to get Colorado to pass a ban on smoking in public.

Reiner gets a tobacco company to give them a tour around a factory near South Park, where everyone is happy and sings. Reiner planned to sabotage the company by taking the boys there and then taking a picture of them in the factory and photoshopping it ("You've just been Reiner'd!"). By contrast, one of Reiner's anti-smoking group is some sort of vampire thing, who tries to kill Cartman with a poisoned cupcake after Reiner gets him to appear in an anti-smoking commercial in which he says he has died of second hand smoke and tries make it seem real. In the end, Reiner is shamed and eventually Cartman pierces his stomach, releasing all the goo inside it and leaving Reiner nothing more than a puddle. The boys own up to what they have done and everyone is happy until it turns out that the boys are still getting grounded regardless of what they have learned.

Trivia

The episode's title is a double entendre. "Butt out" can mean either "quit smoking" or "mind your own business" (the latter being directed at Reiner).
This episode is a partial follow up of "My Future Self n' Me", in which anti-drug companies use drastic measures to get kids off drugs, similar to Rob Reiner in this episode.
This episode defends smokers, although both Trey Parker and Matt Stone are non-smokers (Stone admits that he used to be, but quit). They explained that they both did the episode mostly because they think Rob Reiner is a "big fat ass", and because they were tired of people they loved being bombarded by people who yelled at them for smoking.
The depiction of the workers in the cigarette factory is a reference to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
The people working for Rob Reiner bear a resemblance to those the character Winston Smith describes working at the Ministry of Truth in the novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
In this episode, Cartman remarks that Rob Reiner is his idol. This is ironic considering how Cartman is largely based on the character Archie Bunker from All in the Family. On that show, Rob Reiner played Mike Stivic, who very frequently had the exact opposite opinions as Archie's. This is also ironic considering Rob Reiner is jewish and Cartman is Anti-Semitic.
At the end of the episode, Cartman puncture's Rob Reiner's stomach with a fork. Reiner begins hemorrhaging green "goo" to exclamations of "My goo!" and melts away in a manner similar to the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.
Rob Reiner rides in a 1990's Cadillac Fleetwood, which was the largest personal automobile in production when it was manufactured, despite this he needs to lubricate the door frame with butter to exit the vehicle.

Preceded by:
All About Mormons South Park episodes Followed by:
Raisins

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