Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls

This article is about the South Park episode. For the song, see Chocolate Salty Balls.

"Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls"

"Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls" is the 22nd episode of Comedy Central's animated series South Park. It originally aired August 19, 1998.

Plot synopsis

In this episode, Park City, Utah is in the midst of the Sundance Film Festival. Sundance's founder, Robert Redford, has decided that Park City has become too run down by the annual migration of the Hollywood jet-set and commercialism, so he decides to move the festival next year to another small mountain town: South Park, Colorado.

The Sundance Festival relocates to South Park, which is immediately deluged by Hollywood tourists. In school, Mr. Garrison gives the students an assignment to see one independent film during the festival and write a report on it.

That night, Kyle is using the toilet, when he thinks he hears Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo calling to him from the toilet. He becomes convinced that Mr. Hankey needs his help.

Chef has set up a sales stand for his fudge cookie recipes, and finally settles on selling his Chocolate Salty Balls, which do brisk business.

Kyle convinces Stan, Cartman, and Kenny to help him find Mr. Hankey, and they enter the sewer system looking for him. They find Hankey, who tells Kyle that he lives in the sewer during the year, but the influx of all the Hollywood tourists, with their health-food diets, have disrupted the "delicate ecosystem" of the sewer, which has made him deathly ill.

Kyle and the others appear before a film's showing, and Kyle pleads with the Hollywood visitors that their presence is causing the death of his good friend Mr. Hankey, but they all think Kyle is trying to pitch a script, and they all offer movie deals and script changes. One agent approaches Cartman and convinces him to sell the rights to Kyle's story, to which Cartman readily agrees.

The South Park locals are beginning to tire of the festival, seeing that it's causing the town to become overrun with commercialism and Hollywood kitsch. Even Chef realizes the large sales of his Chocolate Salty Balls is undercut by the fact that South Park is getting run down. Robert Redford's assistant points out that South Park is being slowly corrupted just as Park City was. Robert Redford reveals that this was his intent: to make all the small towns overrun with Hollywood culture, since he can't escape it, so he wants to inflict it on everyone else.

A new film appears overnight, based on Cartman's "treatment" of Kyle's story, starring Tom Hanks as Kyle and a monkey as Mr. Hankey. Cartman starts selling "Mr. Hankey" movie T-shirts for quick cash.

Kyle tries to show Mr. Hankey to the moviegoers, but Mr. Hankey is pale and near death. In a parody of E.T., Kyle and Chef stand vigil over the dying Mr. Hankey, but Chef feeds Hankey one of his Chocolate Salty Balls, causing Mr. Hankey to return to life.

The kids, Chef and Mr. Hankey approach Robert Redford as he is on a podium to announce the return of the film festival the next year. After he callously ignores their pleas to relocate the festival, Mr. Hankey rises above the crowd, donning a magicians hat. In a parody of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mr. Hankey causes the sewers to erupt over South Park, causing Robert Redford and his wifes car to fill up with crap killing them, and all the tourists to flee the town.

The South Park townspeople are relieved to see them all leave, and are grateful to have South Park "back to the way it was" - albeit now completely covered in raw sewage.

Kenny's death

Kenny is loitering alone outside a movie theater when the movie finishes and he is trampled underfoot by the moviegoers leaving the theater.

• In this episode, the trademark "death of Kenny" lines are spoken by two anonymous moviegoers, and are changed so that there is no actual acknowledgment of his death by any characters:

[Moviegoer picks up a coin on the ground right after Kenny is trampled]
Moviegoer 1: "Oh my God! I found a penny!"
Moviegoer 2: "You bastard!"

Cultural references

• As revealed in episode commentary, this episode was an act of revenge for Robert Redford not accepting Parker and Stone's student film Cannibal! The Musical.
• Mr Hankey's rampage, at the end of the episode, is a reference to Walt Disney's work, Fantasia.
• Mr Hankey's last words to Kyle state "there is another Skywalker" a reference to Yoda's death in Return of the Jedi
• Mr Hankey's close to death period in the hospital is a reference to Steven Spielberg's E.T.
• The line in which the boys say how all independent films are about gay cowboys eating pudding pre-dated Brokeback Mountain by at least 7 years, Trey Parker even quipped that "Well, if there's any pudding-eating in it, maybe we'll sue!" at the film's release in 2005.
• This episode criticizes both Godzilla (1998 film) and Independence Day (film), both movies directed by Roland Emmerich.
• Robert Redford is never mentioned by name in this episode.
• When in the sewer, Cartman says "This is ridiculous! What the hell are we, the Goonies?", referencing the film the Goonies. The kids tell Cartman to be "the fat kid" from The Goonies, a reference to the character Chunk.
• The scene in which Redford grabs Mr. Hankey and hurls him against a wall while uttering, "I... have had... enough... of you!" is a reference to the line William Shatner spoke as Admiral Kirk killed the Klingon commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
• While Kyle is on the toilet he sings I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash.