Go God Go XII
| "Go God Go XII" | |
|---|---|
| South Park episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 10 Episode 13 |
| Directed by | Trey Parker |
| Written by | Trey Parker |
| Original air date | November 8, 2006 |
"Go God Go XII" is the 13th episode of the 10th season and the 152nd overall episode of Comedy Central's South Park, which aired on November 8, 2006. The episode is a continuation of the previous episode, "Go God Go". The episode is rated TV-MA.
Contents
Plot
Continuing the plot from "Go God Go", Cartman is still trapped in the year 2546, after his plan to submit himself to cryogenic suspension to avoid waiting for the release of the Wii goes awry. In the year 2546, worldwide atheism, founded by Richard Dawkins and his wife Mrs. Garrison, has eradicated religion. Atheism has in turn split into three hostile denominations at perpetual war over the so-called "Great Question": the super-intelligent otters of the AAA (Allied Atheist Alliance), the humans of the UAA (United Atheist Alliance), and a rival human faction, the UAL (Unified Atheist League). Cartman, known as the "Time Child," is considered a valuable asset by all three groups, while Cartman lives and works with the UAA. He has apparently been living in the future for some time, as he has adopted the local jargon (replacing the word "God" with "science" when cursing) and is familiar with the future technology.
Cartman is seen ending a massive quest to obtain a still-functioning Wii from a museum. However, he learns to his frustration that the Wii is incompatible with viewing screens of the 26th century. He decides to use a "Time Phone" to call the past and thereby prevent his self-freezing plan from ever happening. Although Cartman successfully uses the Time Phone to call several people in the past (including himself), they all hang up on him, and thus the attempt to prevent his do-it-yourself cryonics experiment fails.
As the vicious sea otters of the AAA complete their planning for a sneak attack against the UAA and UAL, one elderly otter, known as the Wise One, asks whether the war is worth fighting, and implies that logic and science can be harmonized with some sort of belief in the supernatural. After pondering this for a moment, the rest of the otters brutally murder the Wise One. A massive battle between the three atheist groups begins, during which Cartman discovers the nature of the "Great Question": the war is being fought over which denomination name is the most logical for atheists to call themselves: the AAA, the UAL, or the UAA (with the otters passionately defending the alliteration of the acronym "AAA").
Cartman desperately tries again to call the past, and this time interrupts passionate sex between Garrison and Dawkins, who picks up the phone. As a result, Dawkins learns from Cartman that Mrs. Garrison is actually a post-op transsexual, prompting him to end the relationship immediately in horror.
Now that the two "co-founders of world atheism" are no longer destined to marry, the future is altered significantly. Cartman suddenly finds himself in a room with members of all three factions, who live in peace with each other and explain that no one fights about abstract "-isms" anymore; instead, they are at war with the "French-Chinese" over legal ownership of Hawaii. Religion is again freely practiced; an otter present has knowledge of Zen Buddhism.
Cartman is sent back to the 21st century and merges with his present-self, but is outraged to discover that the people from the future sent him back too far: he now has a full two months until the Wii release, instead of three weeks. He then receives a phone call from another future Cartman, who vainly tries to warn him against freezing himself again. Present Cartman angrily hangs up on himself, once again thinking it is a prank phone call from Kyle.
Reaction
Richard Dawkins reacted to the two-part episode by saying, "I'm buggered if I like being portrayed as a cartoon character buggering a bald transvestite. I wouldn't have minded so much if only it had been in the service of some serious point, but if there was a serious point in there I couldn't discern it."[1] When asked about the episode in a 2012 interview with Playboy magazine, Dawkins, who said it was the only episode of South Park he had seen, thought the future war among the different atheists sects, which he felt had "a certain amount of truth in it", harbored a greater potential for satire, as it reminded him of the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea from the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but felt that too much of the episode was devoted to ridiculing him by depicting him having sex with Ms. Garrison, commenting, "That isn't satire because it has nothing to do with what I stand for. And the scatological part, where they had somebody throwing shit, which stuck to my forehead—that’s not even funny."[2][3]
References
- ↑ Nicholis, Sean; McKenny, Leesah (March 4, 2010). "Scientist parks trannie sex jibe". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- ↑ Rowe, Chip (August 20, 2012). "Playboy Interview: Richard Dawkins". Playboy. Page 1
- ↑ Rowe, 2012. Page 2.
External links
- Go God Go XII Full episode at South Park Studios
- Go God Go XII Episode guide at South Park Studios
