Original air date: 10/3/2012
Cartman finally realizes he is too fat and decides to do something about it, while James Cameron realizes the societal bar has been lowered too low, and goes on a deep sea expedition to find the bar to raise it.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Affectionate Parody: While Honey Boo Boo is given a giant Take That!, it's clear that Trey Parker and Matt Stone love James Cameron and his work, depicting him as a bold artist and explorer who is genuinely interested in "raising the bar" and only give him a light ribbing as a Prima Donna Director who makes his crew sing (and listen to) a song about him.
- Artistic License – Physics: James Cameron's communication with the ship is impossible, as radio waves of cell-phone-transmission frequency can't reach more than a few meters below the sea surface.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- After Kyle explains to Cartman that obesity is a growing issue, Cartman sadly puts down the oreos he was interested in and leaves, upset. It gives the implication he's about to work on losing weight, only to immediately cut to him so overweight he needs a mobility scooter.
- At a symposium, Michelle Obama goes on at length about the problem of obesity before introducing the fight between Cartman and Honey.
- Bring It: Deep beneath the ocean's surface, Randy Newman to James Cameron. Cameron gladly obliges.
- Bullying the Disabled: In addition to defrauding the disabled. Cartman complains that obese people using Handicapped scooters are being victimized, but then at Disneyland he harasses an actual handicapped boy (who had both legs amputated) to get off the "Rascal Line" simply because the boy isn't fat.
- Call-Back: In the first scene, Cartman asks why he always has to be the catcher when the boys play baseball. He was the catcher for the South Park Little League team in "The Losing Edge".
- Chekhov's Gun: The tip assist device Cartman has fitted to his mobility scooter. It gets him back into the fight after Honey Boo Boo knocks him down.Yeah! Tip assist!
- The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: James Cameron's crew thinks he's crazy for trying to find the metaphorical bar. But it turns out that the bar really exists and Cameron succeeds in raising it.
- Comically Missing the Point: At first, when Kyle tells Cartman that his future is being so fat that he needs a Rascal mobility scooter, it seems Cartman will be taking that as a cue to try turning his life around. Instead, he embraces being fat, and decides to accelerate the future Kyle foresees by gaining enough weight to get his mother's medical insurance provider to buy him a mobility scooter.
- The Dog Bites Back: Given how many times Cartman has been a complete racist asshole to Tolkien, it's no surprise he would try to exploit Cartman in a very humiliating way.
- Entitled Bastard: Cartman, and all the other obese people riding on Rascal Scooters, see themselves as involuntarily handicapped and deserving special treatment from society. Cartman intentionally gained weight just to exploit government welfare and starts playing the victim card with his newfound girth.
- Everyone Has Standards: Kyle loathes Cartman and is disgusted with his latest stunt, but he considers Tolkien's trick going too far and tells Cartman what's going on. During the big fight, he's left lamenting the current state of affairs and thinking he and other observers actually contributed to this mess.
- Exact Words: After the bar is raised, Michelle Obama says she will dedicate the administration to fighting childhood obesity. She proceeds to beat up Cartman.
- Fat Bastard: There are few South Park episodes where Cartman has embodied either the "fat" or the "bastard" part of this trope as much as he does in this episode. He deliberately puts on enough weight to qualify for a mobility scooter on his mother's medical insurance plan, and unabashedly takes advantage of being able to go straight to the front of lines (except at Disneyland, where there are so many mobility scooter riders that they also have to queue up for the rides) and forcing the elementary school and local businesses to completely re-configure their bathrooms to accommodate his scooter.note
- Hypocrisy Nod: Kyle tells Tolkien if someone was doing what he was doing to Cartman with an overweight black kid as the star he would be angry. Tolkien doesn't deny it, but he doesn't stop either.
- Kids Are Cruel: As a means of revenge against the obese for imposing a "Fat scooter tax" upon the taxpayers rather than paying for the scooters themselves, the children of South Park retaliate by shoving the fatties into the ground (Rascal tipping) as they squirm and squeal like pigs.
- Literal Metaphor: No sooner has Stan told Kyle that "the bar" isn't an actual object that has been lowered than James Cameron is seen on the high seas, declaring that the bar has sunk so low that only he, in his capacity as a deep sea explorer, can go down and raise it. It turns out he's right: there is a real bar, and he succeeds in finding and raising it, and with it people's standards for entertainment.
- Manipulative Editing: Tolkien takes Kyle's secret footage of Cartman riding his scooter and being an ass to everyone he comes across and, instead of editing it into a 60 Minutes-style documentary, adds goofy commentary and a theme song by Randy Newman and turns it into the trashy Here Comes Fatty Doo Doo. Kyle is furious when he finds out.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Once the bar has been raised, Honey's mother June sees her daughter acting like a literal pig, and her own overweight appearance and reacts with horror to allowing herself to let things get like this.
- Network Decay: Referenced in-universe. Tolkien tells Kyle that he was disgusted when he first saw an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and then he saw that it was airing on TLC, the network formerly known as The Learning Channel. If they were happy with a shift from educational to exploitative television, he could be happy with it as well.
- Nutritional Nightmare: June feeds Honey Boo Boo spaghetti marinated in butter with Red Bull and Mountain Dew. It's given Honey about 3 heart attacks!
- Oh, Crap!: After talking about how he's gone deeper below the surface than anyone ever before, James Cameron is surprised to see Randy Newman beat him there.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: To showcase how much society's sense of shame has eroded, Tolkien, usually a Nice Guy, ends up becoming an Opportunistic Bastard who manipulates Kyle and Cartman for financial gain.
- Pushover Parents: Both Liane (for feeding Cartman junk food on a platter) and June for doing the same for Honey, except the food June serves to Honey is considerably greasier and nutritionally worse than what Liane serves.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Kyle delivers a truly undeniable one towards Cartman for eating too much high-caloric junk foods such as candy-corn flavored Oreo cookies and points out the long line of obese people who look to be at least 500 pounds each lined up for Rascal Scooters at the WalMart. Kyle then angrily asks Cartman that he consider changing his eating habits or else he'll end up like one of them in about a year or sooner.
- Running Gagged: In the opening scene of this episode, Cartman's still in denial over his weight, but after Kyle predicts he will be using mobile chairs in the future, Cartman visits Kyle at home to finally admit he's fat... and his plan to exploit his weight.
- Satire: Towards the obesity epidemic in the United States and the message is that obese people shouldn't feel entitled to handicapped accessibilities but rather should think more about changing their diets and being more physically active. Just scootering around everywhere just widens their waistlines.
- Self-Deprecation: When Kyle tells Stan that he has realised that the bar might have been lowered by "us", on the surface, he appears to be talking about audiences who watch trash TV, and thus persuade networks to keep churning it out. However, "us" also refers to South Park itself, with Parker and Stone admitting that a Toilet Humour-filled, construction paper cartoon about foul-mouthed elementary school kids hasn't done much to raise audience standards in entertainment.
- Shout-Out: At one point, James Cameron radios his crew with the message, "We're in the pipe, five by five." This is a reference to the Cameron-helmed Aliens, in which dropship pilot Corporal Ferro says the line as they enter the atmosphere of LV-426.note
- Skewed Priorities: Cartman is less concerned by the fact Tolkien's made a mocking show mocking his obesity than he is about the fact said show got beaten by Honey Boo Boo in the ratings.
- Take That!:
- Parker and Stone had never heard of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo until they were told it was outdrawing them in the ratings. They were clearly not impressed with what they saw, as June and Alana Thompson are portrayed as "ignorant white trash", to borrow Cartman's description. Further vitriol is saved for the audiences who keep the ratings for such series high enough to convince networks to order more of the same.
- James Cameron is initially portrayed as an egotist who only does things for personal glory. His ship is named after him, he demands that the crew play him an obnoxious theme song about his own greatness, and they in turn find him a tiresome blowhard, saying in so many words that they hope an extended silence means he has died. Cameron and his crew have complete personality changes once the bar is raised, with Cameron saying he wants no publicity for raising the bar, and his crew having newfound respect for him.
- Randy Newman is portrayed as a hack who will take any job that comes his way; he writes the theme for Here Comes Fatty Doo Doo despite admitting to only knowing five or six chords. On his way into the ocean depths, James Cameron finds Newman, who has literally and metaphorically sunk to an all-time low.
- Think Nothing of It: After successfully raising the bar, James Cameron is told by his crew that the public should know of his heroics. He demurs, saying he didn't do it for the publicity, he did it because it's just what he does.
- Third-Person Person: In James Cameron's final speech, he refers to himself in the third person... seven times in two sentences.James Cameron: James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does... because James Cameron is James Cameron.
- Would Hurt a Child: Michelle Obama beats up Cartman.
