Margaritaville

Margaritaville is the third episode of Season Thirteen and the 184th overall episode of South Park.

Plot
It opens with Stan and Randy are at a local bank, because Randy thinks its important for Stan to learn to save his money. He gives the teller the $100 savings bond from his grandmother. The teller explains how he will invest it in several different ways only to reply a split second later "its gone", meaning that the money is lost. Stan is angry, and the teller asks him to stand aside for customers that actually have money. The teller does this to two more people, whose money also instantly vanishes. At dinner, Randy explains to Stan why the economy is struggling, blaming it on people who spend their money on foolish things, which he explains to Stan while making himself a margarita in an automatic-margarita-making-machine called a "Margaritaville". The machine is so loud that you can't hear his explanation (which is obviously very expensive and is ironically representative of a stupid purchase Randy himself had purchased).

People in South Park are struggling with the recent economic downturn, and many people on the street are preaching who they should blame. A wall street executive suggests the irresponsible homeowners are at fault, while a regular citizen blames the problems on Wall Street, while Cartman blames it on the Jews, and Randy continues to teach his philosophy to the rest of the city. Randy's ideas become the most popular and he starts to get a following, telling people they have angered the economy with their reckless spending and encourages people not to spend money in order to propitiate the economy's anger. People start to wear togas and try to spend as little as possible to try and earn the economy's favor.

Kyle, getting annoyed with everybody's idiocy, starts to get his own following when he preaches that the economy isn't actually angry with them, and that they should be out spending money. Word gets back to Randy and his friends (representative of the Sanhedrin Council) and they eventually decide that they need to kill "the Jew". Kyle continues to preach to people that the economy doesn't really exist except in people's mind, and that if they want the economy to be strong, they must have faith in it. He shows how easy it is to get money by showing a no-limit American Express Platinum Card that he applied for just a few days ago (to which the people shudder at the sight of it). This all happens in a setting that parodies older paintings of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount. Cartman, in his desire to obtain a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, says that he will deliver Kyle to Randy and his friends in exchange for the game and a Nintendo DS.

Kyle and his friends go out for pizza, in an obvious parody of the last supper, and laments that he feels they won't get to get together like this anymore because people can't afford luxuries like pizza. He says he worries that one of his friends will betray him. All of them act shocked while Cartman stands up and says that whoever betrays Kyle "is a dick" and "it's not cool!" Kyle admits to his friends (while glaring accusingly at Cartman) that he knows what he has to do to save everyone.

The next day, it shows everybody in the town lining up to a table with Kyle and a credit card machine, where he is "paying everybody's debts" with the no-limit American Express Platinum Card, (Jesus paying for people's sins). Kyle's mother asks him not to do it because he will be paying it off forever. Kyle agrees, but feels he must do it to help everybody in the town. After paying the last person's debt, a $17,000 bill from Randy, Kyle passes out (Jesus dying on the cross). The episode ends with a news report about how the economy almost didn't survive in South Park, if it wasn't for the efforts of one very brave person, Barack Obama. It ends with Kyle being upset at the news.

In a side story, Stan spends most of the episode trying to return a "Margaritaville" margarita mixer. The store won't accept the return because it was bought on credit. He keeps trying to find out who he can return it to, with each person saying the debt has been sold to someone else. Eventually he goes all the way to the US Treasury, who "consults the charts" and tells him the mixer is worth $90 trillion. A man approaches to tell the treasury workers that another bank is failing and asks what they should do. They say they have to "consult the charts" again. Trying to find out what the charts are, Stan follows the men inside. He sees a round board, where the men cut off a chicken's head and let the chicken run for a minute until it falls over dead. The chicken falls on the "bailout" spot, so that's what the men do. In anger at the ridiculousness of the system, Stan throws the mixer on the platform by the chicken and walks off. The mixer is representative of people's mortgage.

Cultural References

 * The entire episode is a parody of the life of Jesus Christ.


 * The name of the episode is taken from Jimmy Buffet's most famous song "Margaritaville". This is also the name of the appliance that features heavily in Stan's plot.


 * The scene in which Cartman offers to 'catch' Kyle features a reference to a similar scene from the films "Jaws", where an older fisherman makes a similar offer to catch the titular shark. Specifically, the close-up of his hand as he rakes his nails across a chalkboard is a shot taken directly from the movie.
 * A commentary/parody on the economic state of the United States

Continuity Errors

 * The Park County Community Center is referred too as the 'South Park Community Center in this episode.