Pip

"Pip", also known as "Great Expectations", is episode 62 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on November 29, 2000. It is a parody of the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations.

The episode stars the South Park character Pip, who is named after the actual protagonist of Great Expectations, and features no other regular characters. "A British Person", played by Malcolm McDowell, narrates the episode.

After the first week of this episode's premiere, it did not air again on Comedy Central until December 2006. The latest appearance it has aired was on 15 December 2007, on CW11 New York (WPIX-TV). In commentary, Matt Stone and Trey Parker claim the episode is not very popular. This may be due to its somewhat esoteric nature.

Plot synopsis
The story is broken up into three acts, as the story on which it was based, Great Expectations, was in three "stages."

Act One
The episode starts off with an introduction by "A British Person" (Malcolm McDowell, in live action) talking about the great masterpieces of English literature. He states that Pip, the character from South Park, is based on the main character in Charles Dickens' book, Great Expectations. The self-proclaimed "British Person" narrates the story throughout the episode.

The animated sequence begins with Pip on his way to the graveyard to see his parents, who are dead. While at the graveyard, an escaped convict appears and threatens Pip. Not scared, Pip helps out the convict by giving him a sandwich and cutting the convict's handcuffs. Pip knows how to break the handcuffs because he is an apprentice to a blacksmith.

Pip returns to his home, where his sister and her husband (Joe Gargery) live. While his sister is very mean and abusive, Joe on the other hand is stupid, but is very kind and a superb blacksmith; he is able to make a newspaper and an orange out of metal.

In the newspaper that Joe made is an ad. The wealthiest woman in town, Miss Havisham, is willing to pay twenty quid a day to a little boy who will play with a lonely girl. Pip goes to the Havisham residence to accept the job.

At the gate, Pip meets Estella, a young girl who takes him to see Miss Havisham. She insults him the whole time. Miss Havisham is in a dark room, and asks Pip, "Does it frighten you to look upon a woman who has never seen the sun in over twenty years?" Pip says no, and (stuttering a bit) says "you meet people who have never seen the sun in twenty years a lot these days."

She tells Estella to play with Pip. Estella doesn't want to; she says, "With this boy? But he is just a commoner!" Upon learning that she can break his heart, she agrees to play "smack the blonde boy in the head with a large log."

Miss Havisham asks Pip what he thinks of Estella. He thinks she is quite pretty and insulting. Miss Havisham tells Pip to return in a week. Pip soon falls in love with Estella, and dreams about her.

Eventually, Estella is a little nicer to Pip, and lets him kiss her. They then walk in the garden. They come across a naked boy, playing in the fountain. Estella casually says that he is another playmate of hers; Pip is not the only one. This makes Pip feel bad; it seems she still does not care about him, and she resumes insulting him. Miss Havisham, who has been watching through a window, is quite happy about this, and says, "Yes, good, she will break his pathetic heart into a million pieces."

Despite Estella being mean, or perhaps because of it, Pip finds himself falling more and more in love with her every day. This is bad for Pip, because she is rich and he thinks she would never marry a commoner like him. Pip talks this over with Joe, and Joe agrees with Pip.

Luckily, a man comes in bearing an offer for Pip. An anonymous benefactor, most likely Miss Havisham, has agreed to pay for Pip to go to London and learn how to become a gentleman. Joe is paid twenty sovereigns to let Pip go. Pip is enthusiastic, because if he is a gentleman, Estella might like him. Pip has become a young man of great expectations.

Act Two
In London, Pip is sent to live with his roommate, Mr. Pocket. Pocket is the boy Pip saw earlier, naked in the fountain. Pip says this is because Miss Havisham is generous, and is paying for both of them to become gentlemen. Pocket says he has nothing to do with Miss Havisham anymore, because she is mad.

Pocket tells the story of Miss Havisham. He interrupts it to tell Pip whenever Pip does something improper, like farting at the dinner table. Each time, Pip apologizes, and Pocket says, "Not at all, I'm sure."

Miss Havisham grew up as a rich young girl. She was about to marry a man, when he failed to show up at the wedding. He left her a letter, a letter she got at 9:20. Since then, she stopped all the clocks in the house at 9:20, and never looked upon the sun again.

Pip spent the rest of his time in London learning how to be a gentleman, by learning "fencing, archery, and how to eat box."

After his time in London, he shows up at Miss Havisham's house to thank her for letting him go to London, and to see if he is good enough for Estella. At this point, Pip learns from Miss Havisham that Estella has been learning how to be a woman. Miss Havisham tells Pip that he can find Estella at a party at the palace on Friday. She sends Pip off, telling him to love Estella. Once she is alone, she again says something threatening about how Estella will break Pip's heart.

At the ball, held by Tony Blair, the King of England (when he is actually Prime minister), Pip is expected to formally ask Estella to be his girlfriend. The two dance, and talk about how Pip is now a fine young gentleman. Estella says that she has no heart, and cannot love. Pip disagrees.

Right when it seems fit for Pip to ask Estella to be his girlfriend, her boyfriend Steve comes in. Steve is seventeen, has a car, and for some reason, is not English. Estella says (seeming at least somewhat sincere) that she is sorry, but, well, he's seventeen and has a car, so this is how it has to be.

Pip, saddened, runs to tell Miss Havisham, only to find that she approves of Estella's boyfriend. She tells Pip that things aren't always as they seem. She is glad that Estella has broken Pip's heart. Estella's boyfriend is saddened to know that Estella was just using him to hurt Pip, and Miss Havisham takes joy that his heart is broken as well.

In a strange parody of a James Bond villain, which brings the tale from something somewhat in line with the book to something completely nonsensical, Miss Havisham explains why she has her daughter Estella break hearts. Miss Havisham will use the tears from the men with broken hearts to power her Genesis Device, allowing the old woman to become young again and put herself in Estella's body, and then she will continue breaking men's hearts for another generation. She then uses her robot monkeys to attack Pip.

Pip escapes and falls unconscious. He wakes up, and finds himself in his old house. Joe and Pocket are there. The anonymous person who sent Pip to London is revealed to be the escaped convict Pip met at the beginning of the story. Because of Pip's kindness, the convict led a life of goodness and became a millionaire. Sending Pip to London was his way of repaying Pip for the good that Pip did for him. The scene ends with Pip realizing that being a real "gentleman" means being good to everyone, and then declaring his intention to stop Miss Havisham's evil plot by saying (in a non english manner, probably to mimic Estella's non english boyfriend) "Let's go kick her big old ass!"

Act Three
The four of them, Pip, Joe, Pocket, and the convict, decide to stop Miss Havisham. They show up too late; Miss Havisham has already started the machine.

Joe and the convict fight the monkeys. The convict is killed by an acid-spewing Miss Havisham in the struggle, and Joe is overwhelmed the whole time.

Meanwhile, Pocket tries to get the broken hearted men, who have been hung upside-down over receptacles, not to cry, so they won't power the Genesis Device. He tells them to think of nice things, like panda bears and stamp collecting. The men find ways to make the nice things sad; panda bears are sad because they are almost extinct, and one man's father died in a stamp collecting accident. The men continue to cry and fuel the machine, and reveal that Pocket is merely boring them to tears.

Pip tries to convince Estella to leave the machine. He knows she has a heart, and to prove it, he reaches into his sack and pulls out a bunny. He states that no one with a heart would kill a bunny. He gives Estella the bunny. She breaks its neck.

Pip then says no one with a heart would kill two bunnies. She breaks the second bunny's neck. This continues until they get to the twenty-sixth bunny. She simply doesn't see the point in killing the bunny. Pip says this proves that she has too big a heart to kill twenty-six bunnies. Estella replies that she may be able to kill it after all, but Pip nevertheless gets her to leave the machine.

This disrupts Miss Havisham's transfer process, destroying the machine and killing Miss Havisham. Joe, Pocket, Estella, and all the men with broken hearts leave the mansion. Estella finally declares her love for Pip, after which Pocket asks for his bunnies back.

The episode ends with the British Person closing the episode. He declares, "Then they all live happily ever after, except for Pocket, who died of Hepatitis B."

Trivia

 * This is the only episode that doesn't show its satirical disclaimer.
 * The story remains relatively faithful to the book, up until the introduction of the Genesis device.
 * One of the blacksmith's creations is a "metal orange", a nod to Malcolm McDowell ("The Narrator" in this episode), who is most famous for his portrayal of Alex DeLarge in the Stanley Kubrick film, "A Clockwork Orange." McDowell reflects on the character of Alex De Large when he refers to himself in voice over as "Your 'Umble Narrator."