Cartman Gets an Anal Probe

"Cartman Gets an Anal Probe"
[[File:File:CartmanGetsanAnalProbe21.gif|250px]]
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 1
Production no.	101
Original airdate	August 13, 1997
Episode chronology Previous Next "The Spirit of Christmas" "Weight Gain 4000"
List of all South Park episodes

Cartman Gets an Anal Probe is the first episode of the first season of South Park. It is noted as being the first episode, (not including the Unaired Pilot). It first aired on August 13, 1997.

Spoiler warning! Plot details follow.

Synopsis

In this first official, construction paper made episode of south park, Cartman is abducted by aliens, who give him an anal probe. The aliens also kidnap Ike when Kyle abandons him at the bus stop and he must get him back. Meanwhile, Stan has a date with Wendy.

Plot

Visitors

In this episode, Cartman details his dream of being abducted and receiving an anal probe. While the others try to convince him it was real, but Cartman dismisses it as them just trying to scare him. Chef then pulls up and asks the boys if they saw an alien spaceship, inadvertently confirming the reality behind Cartman's "dream." Chef is also wearing a t-shirt with an alien on the back stating "Believe", scaring Cartman a little more. After Chef leaves, the school bus shows up, introducing Ms. Crabtree, a scary-looking, loudmouthed, middle aged school bus driver who constantly tells the children to "Sit down and shut up!" As the bus is driving away Kyle looks back and sees his brother, Ike, being held by two aliens.

Several other aliens try to lure away cows by whistling and offering straw. The cows aren't falling for the trap as several of them have been turned inside out. Officer Barbrady explains that a cow turning inside out is nothing unusual; clearly revealing that he's an incompetent law officer. Also, when the jets fly by and the farmer asks what they were, Barbrady says they were pigeons.

Worried about his brother, Kyle asks Mr. Garrison if he can be excused to find his brother. After being asked, Mr. Garrison tells Kyle he has to ask Mr. Garrison's puppet, Mr. Hat. This is when Mr. Garrison and Mr. Hat's shared catchphrase of, "You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!" is introduced. Cartman laughs at Kyle and ends up farting fire (due to the anal probe) at one of the children, whom we later discover is Pip.

After class, the four are standing in line when Stan's love for Wendy is revealed by him vomiting when Wendy talks to him. When he asked Chef what to do when someone doesn't believe you, he breaks out into a sultry, erotic, (but off-topic) song about him "making love to a woman by the fire". This ends up being a running-gag of Chef's and the subject of his other songs in future South Park episodes.

After being told Kyle's brother was abducted by aliens, Chef freaks out and says, "What the hell do you think you're doing in school eating Salisbury steak? Go find him, dammit!" This is when a cycloptic robot pops up from behind Cartman and quickly retreats from whence it came. This ends up being the anal probe from Cartman's dream to help the children find Kyle's brother, Chef pulls the fire alarm.

When the children get out of school, Cartman still doesn't believe that he has gotten an anal probe from the aliens. When assuring his case, lightning strikes him out of nowhere as he beings to sing "I like to Singa". The children use this as proof that Cartman is being controlled by aliens. Cartman, in all ignorance, still disagrees with their idea.

To lure the aliens back, Stan, Kyle, and Wendy tie Cartman up to a tree. After Cartman farts flames several times, an 80-foot satellite dish protrudes from his butt. After the alien spaceships show up, Ike is revealed behind a door on a ship. Kyle, in trying to get his brother to jump down, tells him to do his impersonation of David Caruso's career. Before jumping out, the aliens talk to the cows. The aliens tell the cows that they are the most intelligent life form that they found on Planet Earth. The cows want to know why they turned some of their cow friends inside out, the aliens explain that it was "Carl's fault, he's new" and give them a device that makes people sing.

The next morning, Cartman lands at the bus stop with pinkeye that was given to him by Scott Baio.

Kenny's Death

The Visitors' UFO blasts Kenny after Kyle throws a rock at it, and Kenny is flung into the road. He survives, but a herd of cows run him over. He survives that, but Officer Barbrady runs him over with his police car and kills him. The boys later mess with Kenny's bloodied corpse, with Stan tapping it with a stick while Kyle removes his head, trying to convince Cartman that he's dead. Rats then come and start eating Kenny. In the unaired version, Kyle says "Rats!" when he and Stan leave the corpse.

Goofs

• When Cartman is tied up at the tree, you see Cartman "far away" three times. The first and second time, Cartman says "Really? Uh... I don't think I have to fart anymore tonight" And "I don't wanna", and in the background, it is seen small stars, but in the third, when he says "Ok... that does it", you see a big star between the small.

• When Kyle shouts to the visitors "COME DOWN HERE, YOU STINKING ALIENS!" his voice sounds exactly like Stan's. The same mistake was also made in Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society.

• Red can be seen two places at once in the classroom

• When Officer Barbrady gets hit by the cow's device that was given to them by the visitors, his inner left ear turns pink.

• When Cartman sets Pip on fire, the caption says that he is a girl.
• When the boys first get on the bus, girls similar to Bebe and Rebecca have no mouths. The same girls also disappear when the camera pans back onto their seat, then reappear moments later, then disappear again.
• Wendy's voice is a little deeper pitched in this episode than in the episodes following this one.
• In one scene where the kids are trying to figure out how to get out of school, two kids are seen standing in the cafeteria line. When the camera zooms back, they aren't there anymore.

Fun Facts

Mr. Garrison's Learning Plan

• According to Mr. Garrison, Christopher Columbus discovered America and was "good friends" with the Indians, that he had helped them win a war against Frederick Douglass, then apparently freed the Hebrews from Napoleon all this before the year 1492.

• On the chalkboard, there is an insult to Cathy Lee Gifford,(he misspelled her name) who Mr. Garrison tries to kill in the next episode.

Cartman's Diet

• Powdered Doughnut Pancake Surprise

• Chocolate Chicken Pot Pie

Trivia

• During the opening sequence you can see part of the fight between Jesus and Santa from the original short on a sign.

• This episode made #9 on the list of 10 South Parks That Changed The World.

• This episode was parodied in an episode of the children's show Arthur titled "The Contest", along with other shows such as Beavis and Butt-Head, and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.

• Though the entire series appears to be made of construction paper and stop-motion, this is the only episode that was entirely made out of construction paper and stop-motion; every single episode starting from "Weight Gain 4000", used computer animation.

• In this episode, Mr. Hat lacks eyes. In later episodes, Mr. Hat is given eyes that can even move.

• In a pan shot of the cafeteria, a voice identical to Kyle's Cousin, Kyle Schwartz can be heard, talking about his bad gas, coming from a Jewish kid with stringy black hair, which is not how Kyle Schwartz looks like. Cousin Kyle would not be introduced until several seasons in the future.

• Two Hasidic boys can be seen in the cafeteria, one of which resembles Jason, who was formally introduced in season 6. They would make reappearance in An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig, when a deleted scene from the original pilot wound up recycled.

• In the original pilot, Wendy and Pip are nowhere to be found in the classroom, another red-haired girl and a blonde girl filling their respective seats. In the aired version, the two girls remain in the classroom until Cartman farts fire, and are replaced by Wendy and Pip after that.

• Bebe and Rebecca are shown on the bus, wearing much different outfits than what they would wear for the rest of the series.

• In the original pilot of this episode, Chef gives the boys Super Hot Tamales, instead of pulling the fire alarm to let the boys sneak out.
• In the original pilot, Pip is flung off a slide, where he hits his head on a pole, and Kenny laughs the same way he laughed when he told Stan something he could do on his date. When that scene happens when he tells Stan, he laughs differently.

Pop-Culture References

• When Officer Barbrady investigates the mutilated cattle, the farmer mentions seeing black CIA and army helicopters in the area. Black or unmarked military helicopters (usually belonging to some US government department) are common trademarks of UFO and alien abduction lore, that suggest that the UFO phenomenon is being covered up by the government.

• When Stan sees Wendy in the cafeteria, his smile is similar to Charlie Brown's smile when he sees the Little Red Haired Girl in Peanuts.

• I Love to Singa, the song that plays when Cartman and Officer Barbrady are being put under alien control, is originally from a Tex Avery Merrie Melodies short. The song was written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.

• Cartman says that the crop circle looks like Tom Selleck, the actor best known for playing the character Thomas Magnum in the show Magnum P.I.
• When seeing Cartman farting fire, Wendy says that he's "just like Rudolph!", referring to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer the popular Christmas character that had a nose that would shine red light.

• When Chef is calling out to the aliens to visit him, he asks them to hurry up because the TV show "Sanford and Son" is about to come on.

• To goad Ike into jumping out of the alien's UFO, Kyle tells him to do an impersonation of David Caruso's career. At the time this episode was made, David Caruso had just recently ended an unsuccessful stint on the TV series "NYPD Blue."
• At the end of the episode, Cartman claims that actor Scott Baio, who got his claim to fame playing Chachi on the TV series "Joanie Loves Chachi", was aboard the UFO and gave him pink eye.

Continuity

• Half of the scene which takes place in cafeteria was cut and later used in An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig.

• When Wendy remembers the times when Stan throws up in front of her in Tom's Rhinoplasty, clips from previous episodes are shown, including the one from this episode.
• In "Mecha-Streisand", before the helicopter lands to the bus stop, Cartman grabs his butt and screams, "Aliens!"
• Reused clip from this episode appears in The South Park Clipshow (a.k.a. "City on the Edge of Forever").
• In the end of "Cow Days", Cartman comes to his friends, Stan and Kyle, to tell them about his 'dream' until realizing that it was real events when he dressed like a prostitute. It is the reminder of this episode.
• In "Free Hat", Trey and Matt made fun of South Park, promising that they'll redo the pilot episode... again.
• In a later episode, "Canceled", the first part of this episode is redone, with harsher language and more elaborate animation (such as Ike getting kicked and Cartman getting dragged down the alien hallway), with the boys thinking that they are experiencing déjà vu. Cartman also mentions about his 5th visit in the outer space (two of them was in this episode).

Hidden Visitor(s)

The visitors appear many times in the episode but the hidden visitor appears on the tray in the cafeteria on the far left.

"[[The Spirit of Christmas]]"

"Cartman Gets an Anal Probe"

"[[Weight Gain 4000]]"