Marjorine
From South Park Archives
| South Park episode | |
|---|---|
| “Marjorine” | |
| |
| Episode no. | Season 9 Episode 9 |
| Production no. | 909 |
| Original airdate | October 26, 2005 |
| Season 9 March 9, 2005 – December 7, 2005 | |
| | |
| ← Season 8 | Season 10 → |
| List of all South Park episodes | |
"Marjorine" is the ninth episode of the ninth season of South Park.
Spoiler warning: Plot details follow.[edit] Synopsis
Butters fakes his own death to infiltrate a girls' slumber party to obtain their "future-telling device".
[edit] Plot
Cartman gathers the boys in his basement, and shows them a videotape in which he caught footage of the girls using a cootie catcher to predict the future. Not knowing it's only a game, he believes that the girls possess a high-tech future-telling device, and he tells the other boys that they must try to get it from them.
In a spoof of E.T., they construct a containment centre which contains hazardous material suits and a quarantine shower, to study the device with. They then come up with a plan on how they're going to steal it.
They figure that the girls will be using the device at Heidi Turner's sleepover party, and they arrange for one of the boys to go to the party disguised as a girl. Unsurprisingly, this unpleasant duty falls to Butters. They then have Butters stand at the top of a skyscraper, proclaiming that he is going to end his life by jumping off. In reality, the boys drop a pig carcass dressed like Butters over the edge. Cartman says that this way, no one will be concerned with Butters' whereabouts while he's pretending to be a girl. (However, when Mrs. Garrison announces the unfortunate death of their fellow classmate, everyone has a confused expression, with Bertha replying "who's Butters?").
Butters then walks in dressed as a new girl, named Marjorine. Heidi's mother later tells her that she received a phone call from Marjorine's mother (who was really Cartman) asking if Marjorine could go to the party. "She" apparently said that she work's as a governor's assistant, and that Mrs. Turner should respect her authority. The other girls don't like Marjorine, and continue to insult "her". This causes Butters to get upset, and he runs into Heidi's bathroom, crying, and locks himself in. Wendy and Bebe, who were gentler than the other girls, say that they were probably too hard on Marjorine - it must be tough being the new kid - and the girls immediately realize that they were wrong to tease "her" like that. They persuade Marjorine to come out of the bathroom, then they give her a makeover, and invite her to dance.
In the meantime, a famrer who resembles the Jud Crandall character from Pet Sematary, and who starred in "Butters' Very Own Episode" and "Asspen" - tells Stephen Stotch not to dig Butters' corpse up and re-bury it in the old Indian burial ground. In a nod towards the movie, he says, "Don't do it Stotch! Sometimes, what you take out of the ground ain't the same thing you put in!" However, Stephen performs this deed anyway, in hopes that it will bring Butters back to life.
Butters (as Marjorine) is just starting to have fun with the girls, dancing to Rock Your Body" by Justin Timberlake, when Heidi's father realizes that there are boys around the house. Butters, thinking that he's been found out, quickly snatches the device, and leaves. He then quickly gives it to the other boys, before going home to tell his parents that he's not really dead. The boys decide the power of possessing the device is too great and dangerous for them to withhold. They decide to have Kenny explode the device rather than defend it from the girls, the CIA, terrorists and Russians.
Butters' parents are convinced that he will now return as a demon, and when he comes home, they lock him in the basement. When he tells them he's hungry, they kill a woman named Rachel, who worked for the curtain company, and drop her at his feet, then leave so he can feed on her. He calls out that he would rather have some Spaghetti-O's.
[edit] Trivia
- Butters' female name, "Marjorine", is a take on "margarine", a substitute for butter.
- The scene when Butters is knocking on his parent's door after he gets the device is an allusion to the short story called "The Monkey's Paw".
- The scene at the slumber party where the girls do "light as a feather, stiff as a board" is a direct reference to the 1996 horror film The Craft and/or the 1987 horror film The Gate (1987), although it has become a common slumber party game.
- The Stotchs' basement has changed completely since "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers". They might've cleared it out to make space for Butters' chains, as they were worried he was a zombie.
| Preceded by: "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow" | South Park episodes | Followed by: "Follow That Egg!" |
