Cancelled

"Cancelled"
[[File:|250px]]
Episode no.	Season 7 Episode 1
Production no.	704
Original airdate	March 19, 2003
Episode chronology Previous Next "Toilet Paper" "Fat Butt and Pancake Head"
List of all South Park episodes

"Cancelled" is the first episode of the seventh season of South Park. The boys learn that Earth is a reality show for aliens and must save it from cancellation. This episode first aired on March 19th, 2003. It is known as episode 704 or the 4th episode of the 7th season of South Park.

Spoiler warning! Plot details follow.

Plot

This episode begins almost identically to the first episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", with Eric Cartman arriving and talking about a dream where he was abducted by aliens. There are some minor differences from the previous episode such as Cartman calling Ike Broflovski other names after Kyle tells him not to call his brother a "dildo" and Ike saying more profane statements like "Suck my balls" and "Don't kick the goddamn baby!" When the children realize they're stuck in a "repeat," they and Chef decide to do something about the anal probe Cartman has; they first see a proctologist, then a scientist. Cartman then refuses to activate the satellite unless Kyle is the one who sticks his finger into his ass. Cartman torments Kyle by continually farting, and finally Kyle gets fed up and plugs him. The scientist, called Jeff, discovers that he can reverse the polarity of the message that the alien ship is transmitting by saying one random thing (candy bars) and working his way through Word Association (candy bars usually come in a wrapper, like wrapping a Christmas present; Christmas comes when it's cold, as in Alaska, polar bears live there, and from there the scientist reaches the word "polarity"). A group of Visitors then show up, and the children and Chef flee in Dukes of Hazzard form. However, the children are ultimately abducted.

The kids wake up on the ship, and meet Najix, an alien who looks like Randy Marsh, explaining to them that he chose an appearance that would be most pleasing to them. The disappointed children say it's like the movie Contact which "sucked." He shows his true form, a terrifying monster, so the children have him go through a series of transformations, mostly of celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, George Burns, Jimmy Walker, Michael Jordan, Don King, Mr. Roake and Tattoo from Fantasy Island, and Missy Elliott, until Cartman suggests "a giant taco that craps ice cream". Najix then explains he and the other aliens make a reality show called Earth; all of Earth's species, such as Asians, bears, ducks, Jews, deer, and Hispanics, are taken from seventeen different planets for the purposes of the show, and everyone around the world is unknowingly being filmed and watched. The scientist discovers this at the same time on Earth by translating the binary code that resulted from reversing the polarity of the message (he realized it was binary through more Word Association stemming from "butt sex"); he proceeds to tell everyone, which leads the alien network heads to cancel the show and prepare to destroy the Earth. The scientist concludes that the show is canceled thanks to associating the term "chaos theory" up to "canceled", then uses his Word Association skills with the word "jackets" to come up with a plan to send the ship a computer virus to disable their computers. Chef responds, "That doesn't make any goddamned sense!"

The boys go to Planet Fognl to meet the alien heads, who are "Joozians", a species that control all media in the universe. The aliens don't listen to the boys while explaining that after 100 episodes, series start to decline in sensibility. This is followed by scenes where they insist on taking the boys to lunch, go to a "hekma" (topless) bar, and visit a prostitute's hotel room. The two Joozians then, very drunk and high on "blach", begin sucking on each others' "jagons" and sticking their fingers in each others "thrushers", actions depicted as being highly erotic and, seemingly, inappropriate. Kenny takes a picture of it, and the boys then blackmail the aliens with it. The Joozians agree to erase everyone's memory of the truth about Earth, then send the oblivious boys back to their own planet. Kenny still has the picture, and though no one can remember what it is, Chef tells Kenny to keep it, as he feels sure that it's something very important. The episode ends with another advertisement for Earth

Trivia

• The Joozians are based on stereotypical Jews, as well as the fact that they control "all the media in the universe" is a reference to the belief that Jews secretly control the world.

• The people being an unknowing star to a television show is an obvious reference to the movie The Truman Show.

• The NASA scientist, Jeff, who is an obvious parody of Jeff Goldblum's character in Indepence Day, occasionally goes off on a tangent while deducing portions of the developing plot, much like the Independence Day character. Also, the scene where the scientist develops a plot to disable the aliens' ship using a computer virus parallels a similar scene in Independence Day.

• When the NASA scientist reverses the polarity on the signal and a blackout occurs, a number of doors can be heard being opened in the background, which coincidentally feature the same opening and closing door sounds from the popular Doom series.
• Najix makes a cameo in Imaginationland episode
• This is the second time where someone hated the movie Contact. The first being Mr. Garrison in Tom's Rhinoplasty.

"[[Toilet Paper]]"

"Cancelled"

"[[Fat Butt and Pancake Head]]"