Original air date: 12/11/2019
It’s a bleak winter in South Park this year and it’s all Santa’s fault when he single-handedly steals their Christmas Spirit. Turns out it'll take a little bit of "snow" and a lot of Tegridy to get them back on their feet.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch:
- At first it seems like Santa took away everyone's alcohol to get revenge on them for running Mr. Hankey out of town over his Twitter rants. Turns out he is dead serious about not driving under the influence.
- Speaking of Mr. Hankey, the mayor says they'll have to go to an old friend for help, and hope he'll forgive them. Turns out she was talking about Randy, calling back to "Season Finale."
- Black Comedy: The DUI montages are classic South Park.
- Book Ends: Tegridy Farms returns to play an important role in the season finale, as it did in the first half of the season.
- Brick Joke: Randy complains that Shelly has a "cocaine problem" now too.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Santa and Jesus return after disappearing for a while.
- To a lesser extent, Randy and Towelie, considering they’ve been Out of Focus for a few episodes now compared to earlier in the season.
- As for a meta-example, the regular "South Park Theme" opening finally comes back after the first 6 episodes of Season 23 focusing on Tegridy Farms and the 3 episodes after that each having a different opening.
- Christmas Episode: The latest installment of South Park’s many Christmas Specials and the first “Tegridy Farms” Christmas Special.
- The Ditz: Randy is genuinely surprised when the Mayor angrily tells him that even though marijuana has been legalized, cocaine is still out of the question.
- Drunk Driver: Parodied. The adults of South Park refuse to drive during the holidays unless they can get drunk first.
- Here We Go Again!: The ending implies that next season the Tegridy Farms plotline will continue, except with cocaine rather than weed this time, but the specials and episodes that come later debunk it.
- Hero Antagonist: Santa is vilified by South Park... for trying to curb driving under the influence.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: The townspeople boo Santa as soon as he starts mentioning the dangers of drunk driving.
- He's Back!: After agreeing to help the town, Randy and Towelie get their Tegridy on again.
- How the Character Stole Christmas: Santa of all people plays the role of the Grinch. However, he’s just trying to get the townspeople to cut down on their vices, not get revenge for the Mr. Hankey ordeal.
- Hypocrite: Santa calls out the townspeople for using cocaine, when he himself admits to having used cocaine in the past.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Implied to be one of the main reasons the adults get wasted on Christmas, with Stephen even saying that he has relatives coming in from out of state that he can't handle sober.
- Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: A rare non-video game example: the adults are completely incapable of passing a single chain blocking off an area.
- It's Snowing Cocaine: The entire goddamn episode, both figuratively and then literally at the end.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: An instrumental imitation of "You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch" appears during the corresponding scene; the only explanation for why they didn’t use or parody the actual song is a rights issue.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Randy makes many meta-jokes about the unpopularity of the Tegridy Farms plot, the perceived unoriginality of the South Park writing and the fact that Tegridy gets a “Christmas special” after their “season ended”.
- Loophole Abuse: Randy gets banned from selling his Christmas Snow due to a ban on marijuana sales. So to get around this, he starts selling "Marijuana Free Christmas Snow," in other words just cocaine.
- Montages: Two kinds, both for Rule of Funny:
- Contrast Montage: A few that shows the South Park adults cheerfully driving under the influence and mowing down everything in their path, with tons of Christmas-themed Soundtrack Dissonance to boot.
- Hard-Work Montage: Randy legalizes cocaine in less than a minute of screen time.
- Mundane Solution: After the Mayor freaks out about Randy illegally selling cocaine, Randy decides to simply petition the Colorado government to make it legal. It works.
- Not So Above It All: Santa not only did coke in the past, but does a 180 after trying Randy’s homegrown cocaine. Jesus tries some too and agrees almost immediately after.
- Only Sane Man: Santa and Jesus are literally the only adult characters who have a problem with drunk driving and cocaine abuse, and even they come around at the end. The Mayor complains as well, but she still lets Randy do his thing after giving him a single dressing down.
- Out of Focus: Since the episode focuses on the adults, particularly Randy, the kids are relegated to only a couple scenes.
- Season Finale: The real one for Season 23.
- Sequel Hook: The ending strongly suggests that Tegridy Farms is going to continue its story onto the next season, only they're now selling cocaine in addition to weed but it hasn't been brought up again in later seasons/specials.
- Shout-Out: As explained in How the Character Stole Christmas, Santa steals all of the Marijuana-Free Christmas Snow from everyone's houses just like in Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, complete with the part of keeping a peeping child quiet when Ike sees Santa stealing the Marijuana-Free Christmas Snow from the Broflovskis' house.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: After booing Santa off the stage, all the drunk adults merrily drive away, which kicks off a montage of fatal hit-and-runs, property damage, and serious car wrecks while delightful Christmas music plays in the background.
- Take That!:
- Santa offers Butters a Baby Yoda doll as his Christmas gift, but Butters declines, stating that The Mandalorian was great for the first few episodes but "has been falling apart lately."
- One of the citizens that ends up drunk driving later compares Santa's warnings about drunk driving to Greta Thunberg's climate change advocacy, though since Santa is supposed to be in the right here, it could be a jab toward people who complain about Greta Thunberg instead.
- The sheer ease with which Randy manages to get cocaine legalized in Colorado - a ten-second montage of protests, petitions and debates about if "cocaine is racist" - can be seen as a jab against drug legalization movements in general, especially given that Randy is operating from a position seeking pure profit.
- Time-Passage Beard: Randy has grown a long gray beard since Tegridy closed down for the winter.
- Too Dumb to Live: The adults want alcohol for the holidays. That's fine. However, they're intentionally getting drunk beforehand and then refusing to drive at all unless they can do it under the influence.
- Uncertain Doom: After Randy's snowmobile crashes with Towelie still wrapped around his shoulders, Towelie is seen being worn by Randy for the rest of the episode — however, Towelie has no dialogue afterwards nor is there any other indication if he's still alive...
- What the Hell, Hero?: The Mayor rightfully goes ballistic when Randy casually confirms he sold people cocaine without their knowledge.
