Toilet Paper (South Park)
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"Toilet Paper" is the third episode of the seventh season of South Park. It was written and directed by Trey Parker, and first aired on April 2, 2003.
Plot
When Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny get detention for making an erection out of clay in art class, they toilet paper their art teacher’s house, but Kyle feels bad after doing it and gets nightmares, making him want to confess.
Why It’s Flushed Down in the Toilet
- Like many episodes of the newer seasons of Family Guy, it is full of pop culture references without any jokes or commentary whatsoever about its subject matter to go with them:
- The part of the plot about Josh, the serial toilet paperer in juvenile hall is a simple retelling of Red Dragon, the Silence of the Lambs prequel featuring the convicted serial killer Hannibal Lecter that was made into a film the year before this episode aired.
- Kyle's second nightmare has live-action footage of figure skater Nancy Kerrigan after she was publicly bludgeoned in 1994, which also fails to comment on the incident.
- The plot is extremely predictable if one has seen the movie it references, in an unusual instance of a show actually being worse if a viewer is familiar with its source material.
- Kyle becomes so guilt-ridden he does not care at all that Cartman openly wants to kill him for even thinking about confessing to the toilet papering.
- Josh falsely leads Officer Barbrady to believe Butters is the culprit, which leads to Butters being unnecessarily drugged with sodium pentothal, thrown in jail for nothing, and punished by his parents for confessing to something he did not do.
- Terrible ending: While it is nothing out of the ordinary for Cartman to be cruel, he gets away with beating the other three to confessing in order to get a lesser punishment than the rest of them, when he was not just the one whose idea the toilet papering was in the first place, but also the only one who never eventually felt guilty later.
- It sticks out like a massive sore thumb in an otherwise excellent season of the show.
The Only Redeeming Quality
- The scenes that do not involve references are all really funny, such as the opening one in their art class and when the boys buy their toilet paper.
Reception
While "Toilet Paper" is far from the very worst of South Park, it has received its fair share of criticism from fans. According to The Corner Critic, “it does not just follow the plot [of Red Dragon] – it also does not score points against the original film. South Park is known for exposing the weaknesses to various material. They did not even try here. The episode does not live up to the standards set by the show.”[1]