Robert Abele is dead on in his review of last night’s South Park, and points out an element that many other reviewers have got wrong: Parker and Stone weren’t slamming Issac Hayes, they were slamming whatever Scientologist dirtbag attributed a statement to Hayes that he wouldn’t have made, and is now unable to correct.
Wednesday night Parker and Stone, using previous episodes to patch together Chef’s dialogue, showed that their beef was not with their friend, and took the fight to Hayes’ monolithic spiritual overseers by portraying them as a group of globetrotting pederasts called the Super Adventure Club who have turned the beloved Chef into an automaton whose rhythmic declarations of sweet, sweet lovemaking are now directed toward children instead of women. (The none-too-subtle idea is that Parker and Stone don’t believe those are Hayes’ words in the press release.)
What was so crazily heartbreaking was seeing the usual Parker-Stone taboo blasts — namely, a heaping dollop of crude jokes about sex with kiddies as a metaphor for religious zealotry and indoctrination — in the service of a story that was incredibly personal for the creators. Watching Cartman and the gang try to help Chef escape from the clutches of his captors was so weirdly touching it started to feel like a very real nightmare of lost friendship.
For the record, if the CFO ever goes down with any sort of malady, don’t believe a word of any press release supposedly issued on her behalf by Kjel.org.
