Simpsons Already Did It
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"The 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.
Plot
In this episode, Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Tweek buy a collection of "Sea People", which Cartman imagines to be a race of fishy people who will "take me away from this Goddamn planet full of hippies." Much to his dismay, they turn out to be brine shrimp; nevertheless, the boys decide to put them in their teacher, 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 inadvertantly 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 sea-women next!" 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 may provide a clue). By this time, the semen they recovered had been added to the Sea People remaining in Cartman's aquarium, and in the morning, he awoke to find they had combined to make a smaller version of his original image, that of sentient 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. After he cuts the head off of the town's central statue, his assistant, General Disarray, informs him that his prank mirrors Bart Simpson's decapitation of Springfield's Jebediah Springfield statue, and guesses (correctly) that people will interpret Butters's vandalism as an homage to The Simpsons. Butters then attempts to devise other evil schemes, but Disarray keeps pointing out that every one of Butters' plans (aside from being ridiculous) has also already been done by the animated series The Simpsons. Butters finally goes insane after creating a stupid device (and watching every Simpsons episode) right before a commercial said that Bart was going to that night, seeing the entire town as if it were the Simpsons' town of Springfield.
When Butters sees the Sea People, 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 which thinks that she is a god. It is then pointed out that The Simpsons have done everything, so worrying about that is irrelevant, and that they had in turn stolen their ideas from elsewhere. Butters 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.
Trivia
- Notable buildings from The Simpsons can be seen during Butter's breakdown. From left to right they are the nuclear power plant, the comic book store, the Kwik-E-Mart (called "Wink-E-Mart" here), and the First Church of Springfield.
- While Butters is ranting about his plan to block out the sun, one of his pet hamsters (or "Minions of Chaos" as he calls them in the previous episode) can be seen popping out of the pile of logs on the left.
- At the very beginning of the episode, when Stan and Kyle are trying to convince Tweek to finish off their snowman, Tweek remarks "But what if when I'm putting on the nose, the snowman comes to life and tries to kill me?!" To this, Stan replies "Tweek, when has that ever happened except for that one time?" This is a nod to the very early rendition of South Park, "Jesus vs. Frosty" (a.k.a. "The Spirit of Christmas"), wherein the boys build a snowman that comes to life and attempts to slaughter them. However, it was the hat that caused the snowman to come to life in the short, not its nose.
- According to the commentary for this episode, creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker made this episode to express their real life frustration of often pitching new South Park episode ideas, only to discover that the idea had already been done on The Simpsons. One such example that was highlighted in this episode was Season 4's "The Wacky Molestation Adventure", where an early idea was to have Cartman block out the sun over South Park. Stone and Parker dropped the idea after discovering that Mr. Burns had the same plan in The Simpsons episode "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part 1."
- In addition, Parker and Stone mentioned that originally Cartman's "Sea-ciety" was separate from Butters' Simpsons plot. In the ultimate irony, it wasn't until the staff had recognized Cartman's "Sea-ciety" as an inadvertant parody of a Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror VII" episode that they had decided to intersect the two plots with each other.
- Many writers for The Simpsons are South Park fans and got a kick out of this episode, feeling that it was more of a tribute than a parody, as creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have indicated that they likewise enjoy The Simpsons. Dougie's response to Butters' plan for the chocolate covered-cherry machine reinforces this; "I think The Simpsons would be more clever than that."
- Ironically, in a 2005 Simpsons episode ("Milhouse of Sand and Fog"), Marge wants all the kids of Springfield to catch the chickenpox from Maggie, which greatly resembles the plot of the 1998 South Park episode "Chickenpox."
- In the 2001 Simpsons episode ("I'm Goin' to Praiseland"), it was said that rock can be converted to Christian Rock by simply changing "baby" to "Jesus"; similar to Cartman's method in "Christian Rock Hard."
- Another irony of the episode is the ending where the two microscopic civilizations destroy each other over difference of beliefs in a nuclear war is done in the Futurama episode "Godfellas", where the robot Bender drifts aimlessly in space and accidentally grows microscopic people on his chest and rear end and watch their eventual self destruction as a god-like figure to them. This episode aired not more than two months prior to this South Park episode. Perhaps it's easy to see Parker and Stone's frustration as Futurama is another creation of Simpsons creator Matt Groening.
- About halfway through the episode, when the boys tell Chef the entire story, Chef laughs like Dr. Hibbert.
- Butters' schemes and the episodes they reflect:
- *Block out the sun ("Who Shot Mr. Burns?")
- *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 ("")
- *Take the cherries out of chocolate-covered cherries and replace them with two month-old mayonnaise (not a real episode, but a promo on Butters' TV announced an episode where Bart would do just that)
- Butters' machine to replace the filling of chocolate covered cherries looks identical to Dr. Kevorkian's "Suicide Machine."
- Butters says that he's seen all 132 episodes of The Simpsons twice. The show was approaching its 300th episode at the time of airing. This is referenced in The Simpsons episode ("Bart of War") when Bart and Milhouse are watching a South Park episode and Bart wonders aloud how they keep it fresh after 43 episodes.
- Cartman comments on his underwater civilization saying, "Look, there's a library and a temple." This is a reference to the PC game Civilization and its sequels, as can also be seen in the isometric viewpoint the viewer sees the buildings in, which resembles Civilization 2.
- Cartman gets a great amount of sperm (sea-men) for free; "closing his eyes and sucking it out of a hose". This episode therefore rivals AWESOM-O as the most humiliating one for Cartman, even though he is unaware of his exploitation, and later becomes the God of the sea people.
- When the tank containing the sea-people smashes on the floor of his room, Cartman exclaims 'Oh the humanity!' This is an echo of radio commentator Herbert Morrison's reaction to the loss of life in the Hindenburg Zeppelin disaster. Kent Brockman also mimics Morrison on more than one occasion in 'The Simpsons'
- The music in the background when Chef sings his song to the children is identical to the "Prostitute" song that Chef sings in the episode "Fat Camp."
| Preceded by: Professor Chaos | South Park episodes | Followed by: Red Hot Catholic Love |
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