Dead Celebrities

"Dead Celebrities"

"Dead Celebrities" is the premiere episode of the second half of the thirteenth season of the animated television series South Park, and the season's eighth episode overall. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on October 7, 2009.

Synopsis

For a while, Ike has been seeing ghosts of dead celebrities. Because of this, the boys call the Ghost Hunters to find the problem, but the Ghost Hunters end up peeing and crapping themselves. A psychic then comes to help the boys, but she gets thrown out a window by the ghosts. Ike then wakes up, possessed by Michael Jackson. While he is in Ike, the rest of the ghosts are stuck in purgatory, which is like an airplane stuck on the runway. Ike then enters a beauty pageant because Michael Jackson always wanted to be accepted as a little white girl. After Ike's singing performance, the two male judges love him. The police then come and take the two judges away for masturbating, leaving the female judge to decide the final outcome. Cartman sees her eating Chipotle and bribes her by giving her the tool used to clean blood from underwear. Ike then wins and Michael Jackson leaves his body and goes back to purgatory. Purgatory then lifts off and takes all of the people to their destination, hell. A side plot involves Kyle trying to figure out why people would eat Chipotle if it makes them bleed.

Cultural references

• Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson from The Atlantic Paranormal Society and Ghost Hunters are called in to investigate.
• Some of the ghosts that Ike sees or are waiting on the plane in Purgatory are Billy Mays, who is advertising various products, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze, Natasha Richardson, Dom DeLuise, Ted Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, Bill Sparkman, Ed McMahon, Adam Goldstein, Arturo Gatti, Bea Arthur, Steve McNair, Ricardo Montalbán, David Carradine, Les Paul, Gordon Waller, Oscar G. Mayer, Jr., and snowboarder Karine Ruby.
• The episode also refers to The Sixth Sense when Ike tells his therapist that he sees dead celebrities, reminiscent of the quotation, "I see dead people."
• The episode features a spiritual medium reminiscent of Tangina Barrons from the film Poltergeist.
• The Child Pageant scene was very similar to the one in Little Miss Sunshine.
• The Child Pageant is similar to the reality show Toddlers and Tiaras.
• This is the second time Michael Jackson has appeared in South Park, although in "The Jeffersons," he appeared under the pseudonym Michael Jefferson. However, his design, voice, and mannerisms have not changed at all in-series.
• The waiting scenes on the plane are references to the jetBlue shutdown in 2007, when passengers were forced to stay on planes for up to nine hours.

External links

• Episode guide at Southparkstudios.com