About Last Night... (South Park)

"About Last Night…"
South Park episode
Episode no.	Season 12 Episode 12
Directed by	Trey Parker
Written by	Trey Parker
Production code	1212
Original air date	November 5, 2008
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"About Last Night…" is the twelfth episode of the twelfth season of the animated series South Park, and the 179th episode of the series overall. The episode was first broadcast on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 10:00 PM EST, less than a day after Barack Obama was declared the winner in the 2008 presidential election. Excerpts from speeches given by Obama and John McCain the night before are included in the episode. In the episode, Obama wins the 2008 Presidential Election, setting off mass uncontrollable partying by Obama supporters and driving McCain supporters to desperation and suicide, a guise of chaos that serves as misdirection for the presidential candidates to set off their true plot: an intricately planned jewel heist.

The episode was written and directed by series co-creator Trey Parker, and was rated TV-MA L in the United States. The episode parodies heist movies, in particular the Ocean's Trilogy.

Plot

Following the announcement of the 2008 presidential election results, Barack Obama (Trey Parker) and John McCain (Matt Stone) address their supporters on nationwide TV as the South Park townspeople gather to watch. Randy and the other Obama supporters (including the Marshes and Broflovskis, except for Ike, who supported McCain) celebrate drunkenly in the streets, cheering and screaming his name as well as his campaign slogans, while McCain supporters (including the Stotches, Mr. Garrison and Mr. Mackey) sit despondently inside, fearing that it is the end of the world. Ike attempts suicide by jumping out a first-story window; he survives but appears to be badly injured, so Stan and Kyle try to take him to the hospital. The two boys search through the partying crowd to find anyone who can drive Ike to the hospital, but without success. Randy, believing that Obama's win means he will be financially secure forever, insults and punches his boss (also an Obama supporter) in the face, breaking his nose. Other revelers tip over Officer Barbrady's police car when he tries to restore order.

Stan and Kyle find the Stotches building an "ark" to hold some of the McCain supporters, thinking that Obama's win will bring about the end of civilization. The boys' plea for help leads to a brawl among the adults, so they head for the hospital on foot. The emergency room is packed with patients who have either partied too hard or tried to kill themselves to the point that the hospital nurse (who is alone because one doctor was partying and one hanged himself) can determine what has happened to Ike by simply asking which candidate he supported. Randy is found here as well, trying to still party while singing Barry Manilow's "Mandy" (replacing "Oh, Mandy" with "Obama").

Meanwhile, it is revealed in that Obama and McCain were actually jewel thieves and staged the entire election so that one of them could gain access to the Oval Office. This was to access a tunnel that would lead to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, where they would steal the Hope Diamond. They were able to accomplish the mission with the help of Michelle Obama, a computer hacker who had also faked her marriage with Obama to fool the press, and Sarah Palin, who is not only English, but actually more intelligent than the episode's original portrayal of her would suggest (she says to a bewildered press corps that she'll come back and beat Obama in 2009, then leaves saying "Oh, my phone's goin' ringy!"). Once the plan was complete, a private jet that contained dummies of the criminals was blown up near the hospital in South Park. This gives Ike, who had been working with McCain and Obama and had faked his earlier injury, a chance to alter hospital records to declare everyone involved legally dead. The next day, as the gang is at Dulles Airport about to leave the country, Obama decides that he does not want to go with them. Instead, he and his wife decide to stay behind to "give this President thing a try."

At the end of the episode, the McCain supporters emerge from their "ark" to find that society has not collapsed overnight. They admit that they may have overreacted to the election results and decide to give President Obama a chance (rationalizing that if he's a bad president that they could just vote him out in four years). As for Randy, he wakes up on his couch with a hangover to find that his pants are missing and his TV is gone (Cartman had stolen it, having taken advantage of the chaos to steal TVs from people's houses and was selling them from a cart strapped to his Big Wheel earlier in the episode). Stan then walks in and tells Randy that he has been fired. Not realizing it was for insulting and punching his boss, Randy scowls and exclaims "Goddamnit! Obama said things would be different! That son of a bitch lied to us! I knew I should've voted for McCain!"

Production

According to interviews with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, this was the only version of the episode produced, as a McCain version proved "too daunting a task." The overreaction of supporters of both Obama and McCain informed the episode's content. The episode was completed the morning of the day it was broadcast, with Comedy Central seeing only excerpts of the show beforehand. The heist plot was chosen because it was neutral with respect to who won the election, though the plot depicted Obama winning because the creators felt in the final weeks before the election that Obama would win. The scenes depicting the victory and concession speeches were animated with generic speech filler in the place of lines from the actual speeches and the backdrops behind the candidates that would be added after the real Obama and McCain gave their actual speeches, though Stone expressed amazement at how the filler they wrote matched the content of the actual speeches later heard on Election Night. The animators stated that they used a temporary lip-sync animation because of time constraints. The creators explained that had McCain won, they would've dealt with their own "Dewey Defeats Truman" situation at a later time, perhaps redubbing lines in which characters mention the election results, purposely doing it badly in the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Stone also explained some of the rationale behind deciding which characters would be depicted supporting which candidate, though he admitted that some of these choices were arbitrary.

External links

• "About Last Night..." Full episode at South Park Studios
• "About Last Night..." Episode guide at South Park Studios
• "About Last Night..." at the Internet Movie Database
• "About Last Night..." at TV.com