Child Abduction Is Not Funny

"Child Abduction Is Not Funny"

"Child Abduction Is Not Funny" is episode 611 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on July 24 2002. This episode mocks moral panics.

Plot

With the media full of school shootings, terrorist threats and child abductions, the parents of South Park grow concerned about the safety of their children. Tweek is scared the most by the media reports, and his parents serve only to exacerbate his fears by turning their house into a virtual prison and conducting random drills.

One night the Ghost of Human Kindness appears in his room and takes him through town to show him that there are still friendly people out to help each other in the town. But the Ghost of Human Kindness turns out to be a child abductor himself; he is arrested just before he can lure Tweek into his van.

Now the parents are on high alert. They buy grotesque helmet-like devices for their children named "Child Tracker" and have the owner of City Wok, Mr. Lu Kim build a huge wall around the city. Mr. Kim reluctantly agrees and builds the wall single-handedly. He is almost finished when a band of Mongols attack the wall for no apparent reason. Mr. Kim drives them off by throwing bricks, then proceeds to finish the wall. The Mongols soon return, but when Mr. Kim arrives to drive them off, he finds only their hats and cloaks propped up on branches and a tape recorder playing battle sounds; the real Mongols are back where Kim was before. They break off their attack, but only after putting a large hole in the wall. The wall soon takes effect as nobody can enter South Park, not even the opposing team for the boys' baseball game. Mr. Kim in the meantime builds himself a home-made missile launcher to fire heat-seeking missiles at the Mongols. They soon show up, brandishing a baseball, and Mr. Kim fires. The Mongols simply light the baseball on fire and throw it at the wall, causing the missile to make a round trip and put another huge hole in the wall. Again the Mongols ride off, laughing. When the news reports that most children know their abductors, the parents start to distrust each other and (much to children's chagrin) accompany their children everywhere. Meanwhile, Mr. Kim now has a new scheme: to pour sticky sweet 'n' sour pork sauce on the attacking Mongols. A Trojan Horse (gift-wrapped with a pink ribbon) is wheeled up to the city gates. Mr. Kim sees through the ruse and goes to the horse with a battle-axe, pretending not to know. When he opens the horse though, he finds himself stuck in his own trap, the Mongols having cleverly filled the horse with pork sauce of their own. After they break another hole in the wall, Mr. Kim is "freed" by a hungry dog and swears revenge.

Mr. Kim's Great City Wall of South Park

After a news report stating that the parents are most likely to abduct their own children, the parents send them out of town to live on their own, fearing they will abduct their own children despite the fact that they obviously love them dearly. A few days later, the parents wonder how their children are doing. The children are then shown sitting around a roaring campfire, enjoying meat on the bone, and dressed in fur, silk armour, and helmets; they are staying with the Mongols, and apparently able to speak fluent Mongolian, though there are no subtitles. The Mongols then move on the wall again, where Mr. Kim is dressed for battle. He then does his "war dance", but while he is doing this, the children wheel a large cart laden with explosives in behind him and blow up the wall. The parents arrive to investigate the explosion. The parents and children are reunited. Much to his frustration, Mr. Kim is ordered to demolish his wall, as Mayor McDaniels has the wall torn down in reference to the Berlin Wall.

Trivia

• When the Mayor commands Mr. Lu Kim to “tear down this wall,” it is a reference to Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev.
• Mr. Lu Kim often speaks the word “city” in a way that sounds very much like “shitty,” which is the reason why this is censored in syndicated reruns.

References to other works and pop culture

• The Ghost of Human Kindness is a parody of the Ghost of Christmas Present from A Christmas Carol. He is wearing a green robe and uses the line “You’ve never seen the likes of me before!”
• When the Ghost of Human Kindness gets arrested he semiquotes the “I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling policemen’ in reference to the commonly said line from Scooby-Doo.
• When Mr. Lu Kim pulls out his heat seeker, he says, “Say herro to my ritter friend!” (“Say hello to my little friend!”) This is a reference to Scarface.
• When Stan’s father, thinking Stan has forgotten his identity, slowly says to him ”Stan, your name is Stan,” it is another South Park nod to Star Trek. It parodies a scene from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, where Kirk tries to get Spock to remember their shared friendship in the past.
• The sound effects used when the Mongolians are attacking the city wall are the same sounds used when swordsmen attack buildings and walls in Age of Empires II. The type of attacking on the walls is the same as in Age of Empires II and other RTS games: buildings can be destroyed by blade instead of siege weapons.