Cartmanland

"Cartmanland" is the sixth episode of the fifth season of the animated television series South Park, and the 71st episode of the series overall. "Cartmanland" originally aired in the United States on July 25, 2001 on Comedy Central.

In the episode, Cartman inherits one million dollars from his grandmother. He uses it to purchase his own amusement park, named "Cartmanland". The resulting success causes Kyle to have a hemorrhoid and lose his faith in God. However, Kyle later regains his faith in God when Cartman loses his theme park and owes $13,000 back in taxes.

Plot

Cartman's grandmother, Mabel Louise Cartman passes away and leaves Cartman one million dollars in inheritance. Rather than invest the money or donate it to good will, Cartman instead uses the money to purchase North Park Funland, an amusement park owned by Frank Fun. Signing off the deeds, Frank however clears his conscience with Cartman, revealing that Funland has been a financial failure. Cartman reassures him that he only intends to open the park for himself, expressing his disdain for park lines. Frank agrees to sell, and the park is renamed Cartmanland.

Meanwhile, Kyle upon learning of Cartman's success starts to question his faith in God, and how someone as horrid as Cartman could be so fortunate and happy. To make matters worse, Kyle develops a hemorrhoid due to the stress of knowing Cartman's glee. He and Stan attempt to sneak into Cartmanland, defying Cartman's expulsion of any guests; especially them. Kyle's hemorrhoid pops whilst climbing over the fence into the park and are then found by Cartman who angrily sends them away. The hemorrhoid becomes infected, worsening Kyle's state and being the final straw to fully lose faith in God. Desperate to rekindle hope in Kyle, his parents attempt to cheer him up by telling the story of Job. The plan backfires however, as Kyle is horrified that God would allow such a devout believer in him to suffer so greatly just to win a bet with Satan.

Cartman hires a single security guard to stop further trespassing into his park. But with his inheritance dried up, the guard refuses to work unless he is afforded a viable salary; pointing out that if Cartman lets in two people to the park per day, he could easily pay for his employment. Eventually, one of the rides malfunctions thus forcing Cartman to let more guests in to pay for maintenance. Inevitably, expenses for maintenance, refreshments, utilities and security mount up causing more and more guests to be admitted into the park, which turns out to revive the park as a success at Cartman's disdain for queues. Business experts mistake Cartman's "you can't come" technique as a marketing ploy - which proves to be fatal for Kyle, who flat lines. With Cartmanland a thriving success and with record park guests, Cartman becomes infuriated and demands his money back from Mr. Fun. With the park back in Frank's ownership, the IRS collects $500,000 in penalty fees from Cartman as he did not keep tax records of the park. The last $500,000 is taken in a lawsuit by Kenny's parents after Kenny died on one of the rollercoasters. Now $13,000 in debt and completely broken, Cartman pleads to get the park back from Mr. Fun who ultimately refuses.

Upon hearing about the events, Stan hurries to the hospital as Kyle is now on the verge of dying. He pleads with the doctor to take Kyle out of the hospital to show him what is happening to Cartman. They arrive at the park to find Cartman throwing rocks at the walls in anger over having lost his fortune before being maced by the security guard he originally hired. Seeing Cartman's misery causes Kyle's hemorrhoid to miraculously shrink away and he makes a full recovery as he watches Cartman cry after having been pepper sprayed by his former security guard, and his faith in God is now restored.

Production

In the DVD commentary to this episode, Parker and Stone highlight it as another example (after "Scott Tenorman Must Die") of the show's change in style towards simpler ideas which consisted only of an A-Plot, with no subplot, and "not try[ing] to do too many things at once". Parker mentions that they almost did not make the episode as they did not believe that there was enough going on in the episode, that it was too "basic and easy". Parker also said they were concerned that the story of Cartman inheriting a million dollars and buying a theme park was cliché. However, as it was the middle of the run and they had no other stories ready for production, they decided to run with the idea. Parker said he realised while they were making the episode that "as long as you have the basic easy cliché thing as the overall thing, then you can get into the scenes and have a lot of fun with scenes and get original in there."^[1]

Both this episode and "Scott Tenorman Must Die" appear on The Cult of Cartman DVD.^[2]

The security guard whom Cartman hires and who uses pepper spray was previously the lead mall cop in the season four episode "Something You Can Do with Your Finger". He is also featured in the 2014 South Park video game The Stick of Truth as the first boss the player must face, guarding Token Black’s mansion and using his pepper spray on the player character unless they wear a gas mask.

Home release

"Cartmanland", along with the fourteen other episodes from South Park: the Complete Fifth Season, was released on a three-disc DVD set in the United States on February 22, 2005. The sets included brief audio commentaries by Parker and Stone for each episode.^[3]

See also

• Theodicy

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Cartmanland

• "Cartmanland" Episode guide at South Park Studios
• "Cartmanland" Full episode at South Park Studios
• "Cartmanland" on IMDb
• "Cartmanland" at TV.com