Up the Down Steroid

"Up the Down Steroid" is the 113th episode of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on March 24, 2004.

Plot
Timmy and Jimmy, the two disabled children in South Park, are due to participate in the Special Olympics in Denver.

Cartman decides to fake being disabled and beat all the handicapped children in the events and win the $1,000 prize.

To pretend to be handicapped, Cartman undergoes a rigorous, "Push It to the Limit" montage, training regime of sitting on the special education bus while taking notes of how "retards" act, cutting his hair badly, studying a Kid Rock performance, modifying his shoes so it looks like he has a club foot and putting on a bicycle helmet too tight so his face is badly deformed.

Cartman's plan works, at least to a point. He gets his mom to take him to the Special Olympics (despite protests from Kyle) but he fails to win any events because, even though he is obviously not handicapped, he is so out of shape and overweight that he is still unable to win any events against the handicapped children, who have all spent weeks in intensive training before the start of the competition.

Meanwhile, Jimmy takes steroids and ends up in a steroid temper, which causes him to be very violent to the point of attacking his girlfriend, (Nancy) and his mother (with Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" playing as the atmospheric soundtrack as he loses his mind). Jimmy's training partner and best friend Timmy frowns on Jimmy's behavior, but being unable to say anything other than "Timmy!!" and "Jimmy!!", he is not in a position to fully explain the situation to his school counselor, Mr. Mackey.

Throughout the episode, Kyle tries to talk Cartman out of his plans. Kyle hates Cartman and has always seen him as a thoroughly ruthless boy, but Kyle sees Cartman's plans as so horrible that he seriously worries that Cartman will go to hell for his antics in this episode. He even goes as far as to call himself Cartman's friend. Cartman doesn't pay Kyle any attention, believing that Kyle is not in a position to preach morality because he is Jewish.

Cartman eventually comes in last in the Special Olympics. However, he gets a spirit award of a gift voucher to Shakey's Pizza. When he comes up to the stand to collect the prize, Jimmy realizes Cartman has been faking his "retardation" and ironically is about to beat him up for being a cheater, but Timmy scolds him for it. Jimmy learns his lesson, namely that taking steroids is cheating, on a par with pretending to be "retarded" in order to participate in the Special Olympics, as Cartman did and gives back his medal.

Cultural references

 * There has been some controversy surrounding this episode and the movie The Ringer, as both feature the same plot: someone pretending to be mentally retarded in order to compete in the Special Olympics. The Ringer was written and filmed months before this episode was aired, although The Ringer was not released to the public until after this episode aired. According to the episode's commentary, Trey and Matt did not think it would be a big deal, since the idea to them did not seem hard to come up with, and it was only a secondary storyline to the episode. They even expressed concern to how someone could extend said storyline to two hours.
 * The episode title refers to the 1964 young adult novel Up the Down Staircase, by Bel Kaufman, which was made into a 1967 movie starring Sandy Dennis. Trey Parker admitted he had to perform this story in a high school play and hated it.
 * This episode is based on an HBO Lifestories: Families in Crisis episode entitled "A Body to Die For: The Aaron Henry Story" starring Ben Affleck as a steroid-abusing high school athlete who ends up beating up his girlfriend.
 * During the scenes in which Cartman and Jimmy are training for and also competing in the Special Olympics, a slightly remixed version of the song "Push It to the Limit", from the 1983 movie Scarface, is playing.
 * The trio of American baseball players who present the awards at the end of the Special Olympics are Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds, and Mark McGwire, all of whom have been linked, or allegedly linked, to use of steroids in Major League Baseball. In the scene in which Jimmy confesses his use of steroids, the camera cuts to the baseball players, implying that they used steroids as well. This scene is reminiscent of the scene in "Butters' Very Own Episode" where Mr. Stotch screams about "slimy scumbag liars" and "murdering murderers" while the camera cuts to Gary Condit, O.J. Simpson, and John and Patricia Ramsey.
 * In the opening scene, the boys are playing the same "Investigative Reports with Bill Kurtis" funtime game as they did in Cartman Joins NAMBLA.
 * The scene when Jimmy's father asks Jimmy if he was masturbating is reminiscent of a scene in the American comedy film American Pie, when the father of one of the main characters asks his son, Jim Levenstein, if he was masturbating before he entered the room.
 * During Cartman and Jimmy's training montage scenes, Cartman can be seen using a Mac, however the theme of Microsoft Word is from Windows 2000.
 * The use of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings in a scene of violence mirrors Platoon and the episode of The Simpsons "Strong Arms of The Ma."
 * In Cartman's room, there's a poster of Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart as seen in the episode The Passion of the Jew.
 * During the training montage, Cartman studies the movements of singer Kid Rock. This is not Kid Rock's only connection to South Park, as he was also featured in the soundtrack to South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.
 * In the shots of Jimmy's bedroom, there is a "The Six Billion Dollar Man" poster on the wall

Trivia

 * This is the second time Cartman's mom lies to get him onto/into something. The first time was in Freak Strike.