They killed Chef !

I want to blog on the new episode of South Park but I have found that it is nearly impossible for a middle aged man to explain this show to his unitiated peers without having them look at him like he is in need of therapy. We first test to see if we are speaking to fellow cogniscenti. You throw out a little Cartman impression - "I hate hippies!" - and if there is a flicker of response, we can talk. Kids have it much easier.

My prediction landed wide of the mark. Beginning with a scenes from the last (nonexistent) episode, we learn Chef had left town to join the Super Adventure Club. When he returns, they do start to goof on his voice, sampling, in an intentionally, awkward way, prior Isaac Hayes-voiced dialogue. The words say that Chef wants, basically, to make love to children, but the mechanical way that they are strung together doesn't sound right. (The fact that they can grab Hayes-voiced lines that are vulgar enough to imply this, reinforces Stone and Parker's criticism of Hayes as a guy who would go along with stepping on everyone's sensibilities but his own.) As always, "the children" (as part of the show's ongoing lampoon of the idolization of kids) investigate.

Of course, it turns out that the Super Adventure Club, apparently a take-off on the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, is a cult dedicated to child molestation in remote places. If you are slow to associate this with Scientology, the explanation of its origins, the graphics matching the show criticizing Scientology, etc., will get you there.

The children try to rescue Chef, but he dies a (literally)"grizzly" death. "They killed Chef! You bastards!" In the obligatory reprise of a televison M.O.S., Stan says they should remember Chef for the good times, but direct their anger at the nutjobs who took him away (at "the fruity little club that scrambled his brains"). Back at the Cult, Chef is resuscitated into a Darth Vadar figure who reaffirms their nefarious purposes.