About Last Night... (South Park)
| "About Last Night... (South Park)" |
|---|
"About Last Night…" is the twelfth episode of the twelfth season of the animated series South Park.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page). 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. The episode parodies heist movies, in particular Ocean's Eleven.[1]
Plot
Following the announcement of the 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 after drinking beer 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, and Stan and Kyle start trying to get him to the hospital.
In a secret meeting, Obama and McCain reveal that they are both members of an elite team of professional thieves who are planning to steal the Hope Diamond from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. In order to get it, they must break into the building from underground, using a secret escape tunnel that connects directly to the Oval Office in the White House. The two candidates orchestrated their campaigns to ensure that one of them would become president-elect and thus gain access to the tunnel. The thieves are counting on the whole country being distracted by the election results to buy them enough time for the heist. Sarah Palin is also in on the plan, as is Michelle Obama; Palin is, in fact, an intelligent Briton, whilst Michelle has only pretended to be Obama's wife in order to fool the media.
Obama persuades the Secret Service to let him into the Oval Office, claiming that he wants to get ideas for redecorating it before he is sworn in. McCain and the others are stationed outside the museum as a construction crew to provide cover for any noise he makes. He finds the tunnel entrance and follows it to the museum, but when he breaks through the floor, he finds that new security measures have been put in place. Retreating to the Oval Office, he informs Michelle of this complication, and she mentions that she has hated posing as his wife for so long. Michelle bypasses the new system, Obama gets the team in, and Palin gets the diamond, and they make their getaway.
In South Park, Stan and Kyle search through the partying crowd to find anyone who can drive Ike to the hospital, without success. Randy, believing that Obama's win means he will be financially secure forever, insults and beats up his boss (also an Obama supporter). Other revelers tip over Officer Barbrady's police car when he tries to restore order. Meanwhile, Cartman has taken advantage of the chaos to steal TV sets from people's houses and is now selling them from a cart strapped to his Big Wheel.
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, depending on which candidate they favored. Randy is found here as well, trying to still party while singing Barry Manilow's "Mandy" (replacing "Oh, Mandy" with "Obama"). Ike is put into a bed, but soon wakes up to carry out the last part of the thieves' plan, having faked an injury to get in there. He remotely detonates a bomb to blow up a parked aircraft containing manequins that resemble the Obamas, McCain and Palin, then alters the hospital medical records to show that they are dead, along with the rest of the criminals.
Before the group boards their plane to leave the country, Obama announces that he is not going with them; he wants to stay and try being a real president. He asks Michelle and "their" two daughters (actually only hers) if they want to be a real First Family and live in the White House, and they take him up on the offer as the others leave. At the end of the episode some supporters change sides - the McCain supporters emerge from their "ark" to find that society has not instantly crumbled, and admit that they may have overreacted to the election results and should maybe give Obama a chance. Meanwhile, at the Marsh residence, Randy wakes up on the couch with a terrible hangover, finds both his pants and his TV missing (the latter having been stolen by Cartman), and learns from Stan that he has been fired from his job for insulting and punching his boss the night before. Remembering that Obama promised change, Randy blames him for his problems, screaming "That son of a bitch lied to us! I knew I should have 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." Parker was inspired to do the episode by a scene in the Family Guy episode "Road to Germany", which shows Stewie Griffin dressed as Adolf Hitler and wearing a McCain-Palin button; Parker found that "lame" (along with numerous obscenities). The overreaction of supporters of both Obama and McCain also informed the episode's content.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page). 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 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.[1]
References
- ^ a b Fickett, Travis (2008-11-06). "How South Park Pulled off "About Last Night..."". IGN. Retrieved 2008-11-17.