Night of the Living Homeless

"Night of the Living Homeless" is episode 1107 of Comedy Central's South Park. It first aired on April 18, 2007. This episode marks the end of the first half of Season 11, which will continue on October 3, 2007 Details about episode "1108" are expected to be announced at the end of September 2007. [1]

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler Homeless people have been showing up in South Park in large numbers. The boys are unable to play basketball, since homeless people are sleeping on the court. Kyle recommends that they do something about it, and Cartman agrees, and announces that he will jump over them on his skateboard, insisting that it was Kyle's idea. The town council has also taken notice of the problem, and come up with ridiculous, ineffective solutions such as turning the homeless into tires for their cars or giving them designer sleeping bags so they would look nice. Park County's expert on homelessness advises that if no one gives them anything, they will leave.

Kyle feels bad for the homeless, and gives a homeless man twenty dollars he'd been saving. The number of homeless immediately grows dramatically, and they wander everywhere, zombie-like, begging people for change. Randy, the Stotches, and Jimbo wind up stranded on top of the town Community Center, with hordes of homeless below. Chaos and confusion reign as homeless people on the street cause dozens of accidents. Gerald Broflovski panics and throws his change on the ground to dodge some homeless people, and realizes he just gave away his bus money. He now needs change for the bus, and begins begging for it, becoming "one of them".

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Homeless people beg Gerald Broflovski for change.

The boys, meanwhile, are still seeking a solution, and inquire at the home of the homeless expert, who tells them that a nearby town called Evergreen had solved a similar homeless problem, and that they should travel there and find out what they did. As the boys travel, more adults escape to the Community Center roof. One of the adults, Glenn, discovers that he has become homeless, and Randy is forced to shoot him.

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The boys visit the devastated town of Evergreen.

The boys make it to Evergreen, which has been devastated. There are only three remaining survivors, dressed in camouflage and heavily armed. They are distrustful of the boys and threaten to shoot them, since, being minors, they are not home-owners and are therefore "homeless". While talking to the survivors, Kyle finds a pamphlet on the ground, which advertises South Park as a "haven for the homeless." He realizes the Evergreen townspeople got rid of their homeless by convincing them to migrate to South Park. The kids realize that they must get rid of the homeless or South Park will be destroyed, just like Evergreen.

They heavily arm a bus and take it to the Community Center in South Park, where the homeless have gathered below the adults. They advertise California as "super cool for the homeless" by singing a modified version of Tupac and Dr. Dre's California Love, and lead them there. Before heading back to South Park, Cartman shows off by jumping his skateboard over three homeless people.

Continuity

This episode gives new information on many of the South Park adults. In the scene of the town meeting, their various titles are revealed, consistent with the same titles in "Die Hippie, Die".

• Jimmy Vulmer's father is the Chief of the Fire Department.
• Randy Marsh is the councilor in charge of parks and public places.
• Gerald Broflovski is the city attorney.
• Wendy Testaburger's mother is City Planner.
• Mr. Mackey works for the Public Health Department
• Linda Stotch is City clerk/Treasurer
• In the episode "Die Hippie, Die", Chef was the head of Public Safety Department. After his death, he was replaced by Glenn, who also died in this episode.

Allusions to zombie fiction

The episode features numerous references to a variety of zombie movies including Day of the Dead, and Dawn of the Dead. The title of the episode itself is a play on the title of the 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead.

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Both the characters from Dawn of the Dead (top) and South Park (bottom) observe zombies and homeless, respectively through binoculars while on rooftops.

• The homeless chant for "change" parodies the common zombie stereotype of chanting "brains" (as in The Return of the Living Dead films). Zombies live off of human flesh (brains) and are always hungering for more, just as the homeless in this episode require change.
• The Town's homeless expert's basement lab is reminiscent of Dr. Logan's zombie experiment lab in George A. Romero's Day of the Dead, and the homeless man chained to the wall is a spoof of the character "Bub". As he dissects the homeless man, the Advisor almost directly quotes Wilford Brimley's character from John Carpenter's The Thing as he points out the internal organs and their similarities to humans.
• In both the original and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, the townspeople are forced to retreat to the top of the mall, with the leader (Ving Rhames) carrying a shotgun, much like the residents retreat to the top of the community center, and of course, Randy Marsh keeps a shotgun handy.
• The armoured bus the boys build are parodies of the "Arks" from the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead and Dead Reckoning from Land of the Dead .
• Glenn's character has a lead up and death that very much resembles Roger DeMarco's lead up and death in Dawn of the Dead.
• Music heard through much of the episode is taken and adapted from George A. Romero's Zombie trilogy. The most noticeable of which is a recreation of the theme from 1978's Dawn of the Dead.

External links

• "Night of the Living Homeless" at South Park Studios