Butt Out

Infobox Television episode
Title = Butt Out
Series = South Park


Caption = The boys smoking behind the school
Season = 7
Episode = 109
Airdate = start date|2003|12|3
Production = 713
Writer = Matt Stone
Director = Trey Parker
Guests =
Episode list = List of "South Park" episodes
Season list = Infobox South Park season 7 episode list
Prev =
Next =

"Butt Out" is episode 713 of the Comedy Central series "South Park". It originally aired on December 3, 2003. The episode pokes fun at the formulaic storyline of some South Park episodes (including the ), which start with the boys getting themselves in trouble and incite a controversy between the townsfolk and a national interest group (or a major catastrophe) while trying to avoid punishments, subsequently learning a lesson from this conflict.

Plot

An overly upbeat anti-smoking group called Butt Out, which incorporates elements of dance and hip-hop into its routine, performs at South Park Elementary, which brings out a mixture of boredom, annoyance, confusion, and fear in the boys (Kenny starts eating his own hand). At the end, Butt Out enthusiastically calls out "If you don't smoke, you can grow up to be just like us!"

Directly after they say this, the boys start frantically smoking. When caught by Mr. Mackey, they discard their still-lit cigarettes into a nearby dumpster, which causes a fire and proceeds to burn the whole school down. The parents all come into the burned down school and are initially very angry at their children (not for burning down the school, but for smoking), until Mrs. Broflovski blames it on the tobacco companies brainwashing them. The other parents follow suit, and the boys are happy to transfer the blame in order to avoid being grounded for three weeks, although Kyle, recognizing the classic pattern of a South Park story line, foresees it getting out of hand.

The town then calls in celebrity spokesperson Rob Reiner to combat the spread of smoking among children in South Park. Despite the fact that Reiner is vehemently against smoking and willing to tell everyone how unhealthy it is, he is portrayed as extremely gluttonous and eats cheeseburgers and other junk food almost constantly, and apparently harasses people into giving up smoking. He is so large that he needs to lubricate himself with butter to be able to squeeze out of his limousine. He is loved by Cartman because "He just goes around imposing his will on other people; he's my idol." The rest of the boys are suspicious of him as he attempts to use them in order to get Colorado to pass a ban on smoking in public.

Reiner, disguised as a woman named "Rita Poon," gets a tobacco company to give them a tour around a factory near South Park. Reiner planned to sabotage the company by taking the boys there and then taking a picture of them in the factory and photoshopping it ("You've just been Reiner'd!"). However, the tobacco company workers are in fact really nice and everybody employed there looks very happy and friendly; they appear to be perfectly aware of the dangers of smoking but allow people to have the freedom to smoke. By contrast, Reiner's anti-smoking group is a group of Boris-and Natasha-style madmen who speak in Peter Lorre-esque voices. They try to kill Cartman with a poisoned cupcake, after Reiner gets him to appear in an anti-smoking commercial in which he says he is dying of second hand smoke. Cartman escapes, and seeks the help of Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, who after much convincing, agree to help him. Eventually, as Kyle predicted, they end up back at the cigarette factory where the townspeople, bearing torches, demand the factory hand them over. Reiner reveals his plan to the townspeople, at which point they turn against him. Cartman stabs Reiner with a fork causing mass amounts of goo to come out of him, killing him. The boys then admit to their moms that they had smoked on their own free will, and are then grounded. Stan is relieved that it's all over and that he and his friends learned their lesson, but Kyle disagrees with him.