Butt Out

"Butt Out"

"Butt Out" is episode 713 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on December 3, 2003.

The episode pokes fun at the formulaic storyline of some South Park episodes (including the movie), which start with the boys getting themselves in trouble and incite a controversy between the townsfolk and a national interest group (or a major catastrophe) while trying to avoid punishments, subsequently learning a lesson from this conflict.

Plot

An overly upbeat anti-smoking group called Butt Out, which incorporates elements of dance and hip-hop into its routine, performs at South Park Elementary, which brings out a mixture of boredom, annoyance, confusion, and fear in the boys (Kenny starts eating his own hand). At the end, Butt Out enthusiastically calls out "If you don't smoke, you can grow up to be just like us!"

Directly after they say this, the boys start frantically smoking. When caught by Mr. Mackey, they discard their still-lit cigarettes into a nearby dumpster, which causes a fire that burns down the whole school. The parents all come into the burned down school and are initially very angry at their children (not for burning down the school, but for smoking), until Mrs. Broflovski blames it on the tobacco companies brainwashing them. The other parents follow suit, and the boys are happy to transfer the blame in order to avoid being grounded for three weeks, although Kyle, recognizing the classic pattern of a South Park story line, foresees it getting out of hand.

The town then calls in celebrity spokesperson Rob Reiner to combat the spread of smoking among children in South Park. Despite the fact that Reiner is vehemently against smoking and willing to tell everyone how unhealthy it is, he is portrayed as extremely gluttonous and eats cheeseburgers and other junk food almost constantly, and apparently harasses people into giving up smoking. He is so large that he needs to lubricate himself with butter to be able to squeeze out of his limousine. He is loved by Cartman because "He just goes around imposing his will on people; he's my idol." The rest of the boys are suspicious of him as he attempts to use them in order to get Colorado to pass a ban on smoking in public.

Reiner, disguised as a woman named "Rita Poon," gets a tobacco company to give them a tour around a factory near South Park. Reiner planned to sabotage the company by taking the boys there and then taking a picture of them in the factory and photoshopping it ("You've just been Reiner'd!"). However, the tobacco company workers are in fact really nice and everybody employed there looks very happy and friendly; they appear to be perfectly aware of the dangers of smoking but allow people to have the freedom to smoke. By contrast, Reiner's anti-smoking group is a group of Boris-and Natasha-style madmen who speak in Peter Lorre-esque voices. They try to kill Cartman with a poisoned cupcake, after Reiner gets him to appear in an anti-smoking commercial in which he says he is dying of second hand smoke. Cartman escapes, and seeks the help of Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, who after much convincing, agree to help him. Eventually, as Kyle predicted, they end up back at the cigarette factory where the townspeople, bearing torches, demand the factory hand them over. Reiner reveals his plan to the townspeople, at which point they turn against him. Cartman stabs Reiner with a fork causing mass amounts of goo to come out of him, killing him. The boys then admit to their moms that they had smoked on their own free will, and are then grounded (though Stan and Kennys' parents never really said out-loud that they would be grounded). Stan is relieved that it's all over and that he and his friends learned their lesson, but Kyle disagrees with him.

Production

"Butt Out" was written by South Park co-creator Matt Stone and directed by fellow co-creator Trey Parker. Stone said the episode was inspired by a desire to spoof both California's strict smoking bans and film director Rob Reiner; Stone said, "We try not to be, 'All right, here's the point we want to make.' But things like California's smoking ban and Rob Reiner animate both of us. When we did that Rob Reiner episode, to us it was just common sense. Rob Reiner was just a great target."

Theme

"Butt Out" presents an anti-smoking message, while simultaneously lampooning the anti-smoking lobby. In particular, the episode satirizes anti-smoking education presentations by external providers that come across as cheesy to the young adult demographic they target. The episode also satirizes adult pretension, a common theme in South Park episodes, in their ineffective and nonsensical responses to the smoking problem in South Park. It also lampoons the pretentiousness of the Hollywood movie industry and liberalism, particularly through the use of Rob Reiner, the real-life American director widely known for advocating smoking restrictions. Reiner, and by extension Hollywood and liberals, adopt a holier-than-thou attitude with regard to smokers, and show a lack of understanding toward the poor and middle-class. The episode advocates accepting personal responsibility for smoking rather than blaming the tobacco industry or external forces like Hollywood and television; as such, tobacco executives are portrayed as reasonable and decent, while Reiner and Hollywood representatives are nasty and elitist.

Trivia

• This episode defends smokers, although both Trey Parker and Matt Stone are non-smokers (Stone admits that he used to be, but quit).
• Rob Reiner was previously criticized for "using children to pull at the heart strings of the public" in the episode "Gnomes", but this time a full episode is devoted to it.
• When this episode first aired on Comedy Central, it ended after Cartman groaned over being grounded. All reruns and the DVD version include a short scene after that where Stan tells Kyle that the boys learned their lesson, but Kyle, upset over no one heeding his warning about avoiding the big showdown near the end, calmly mutters, "No, we didn't, dude. No we didn't" and walks away.
• Cartman refers to the Kyle shying away from doing the commercial by calling him a liar and using the something called the Serbian Jew Double-Bluff
• Creator Trey Parker admits to a slight feeling of guilt in portraying Reiner so mercilessly, claiming he liked some of his earlier movies and was inspired by Spinal Tap to fuse music and comedy.

References to popular culture

• The people working for Rob Reiner bear a resemblance to those the character Winston Smith describes working at the Ministry of Truth in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• The man who first tells Cartman to eat the cupcake greatly resembles Gríma Wormtongue or Dracula, and even shares some of his characteristics. His black trench coat with an overly stiff collar and clique logo on the heart is a direct reference to Pink from Pink Floyd The Wall. Notably, Pink's character and his clique (the walking hammers) were also Fascist.
• Reiner's cry of "My goo! My precious goo!" is also reminiscent of Oogie Boogie's final words in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. His death is similar to that of the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz.
• Rob Reiner tells the tobacco company "You've just been Reiner'd!", a reference to Punk'd and The Jamie Kennedy Experiment.
• Amongst the crowd of people welcoming Reiner is a man with a sign reading "Welcome Meathead". This is a reference to Reiner's most well known performance as Mike Stivic in All in the Family, where he was called "meathead" by Archie Bunker.

Reception

Brian C. Anderson, an editor of City Journal and member of the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, praised the episode. Anderson said the portrayal of Reiner, Hollywood and their anti-smoking efforts, "perfectly captures the Olympian arrogance and illiberalism of liberal elites." Anderson said this was particularly illustrated by a scene in the episode in which Reiner yells at a sawmill worker for smoking in a bar, and tells him he relax by spending time in an expensive vacation house like Reiner does. Anderson described it as a "classic sequence".

Amanda Kiser of The Battalion praised the episode's portrayal of anti-smoking educational performances: "Watch the 'Butt Out' episode of South Park if you were not fortunate enough to witness such a spectacle as a preteen. Granted, the truth is substantially less ridiculous, but it is still incredibly, nauseatingly self-consciously hip." Richard Ives of Times Higher Education also praised this aspect of this episode: "Teachers to whom I've shown these clips sigh in recognition." The Daily Record of Scotland praised the episode, which they said was extremely "timely".