Well, tonight was the South Park I have been both anticipating and dreading. Parker and Stone strode the line between melancholy farewell and cruel destruction. Chef returns to South Park as a brainwashed member of the Super Adventure Club, a “fruity little club” that travels the world looking for fresh new young children to molest. They looped Chef’s dialog from old episodes, and the choppy changes in tone and volume reminded me uncomfortably of Isaac Hayes’ alleged stroke.
In the end, after Chef’s graphic death scene, the townspeople gather for a memorial and Kyle urges the people to remember Chef for who he was, and not for his final days. If you want a blow-by-blow of the episode, read it here. I for one will remember the character of Chef that occupied South Park for nine years, when he was voiced by a willing Isaac Hayes and not pieced together by editing, forced to sexually harass the children he cared about. I get the point, Parker and Stone, but this is not an episode I will enjoy watching again.
On a related note, there has been a petition started by viewers of South Park who are vowing not to see this summer’s Mission Impossible III unless the original Scientology episode that started the fight, Trapped In A Closet is allowed to air again. I signed the petition, but I feel a little disingenuous. No matter what the result of this petition, I have no intention of ever watching a Tom Cruise movie again. It isn’t because I’m angry at him or that I want to punish him for being a Scientologist. It is because the past year of Tom Cruise-related insanity has left me unable to look at him without feeling uneasy. The baggage has piled too high. Tom Cruise can no longer be a character in a movie. He can only be Tom Cruise, the babbling, enraged top gun of a science fiction religion that killed my TV friend Chef.
Goodbye Chef.
Goodbye Tom.
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