Original air date: 4/12/2000
Cartman is sentenced to juvenile prison after chucking a rock at Tolkien, the black kid, which has been branded a hate crime. Meanwhile, Stan and Kyle try to get Cartman released so they can win a sledding contest against a group of girls.
Examples:
- Accidental Ventriloquism: The plot of the episode kicks off when Cartman threatens to hit Tolkien with a rock if he calls him fat one more time. He turns around, Kyle calls him "fatass", then he throws the rock at Tolkien, believing him to have said it.
- Annual Title: One of four episodes early in Season 4 to have "2000" in its title, in reference to the year they first aired.
- Ass Shove: Cartman attempts to sneak various things into prison this way, including cigarettes, a game, and all of Disneyland.
- Asshole Victim: Lizzy, one of the girls that raced the boys, gets (possibly) killed by a bear at the end of the race seems more like Black Comedy, due to her rather assholeish behavior; constantly badmouthing the boys with homophobic insults and even celebrating when Cartman gets wrongly convicted and when Kenny is accidentally killed.
- Battle of the Sexes: The boys in class always hog the sleds. The girls want to use them for a change, which is the reason for the big race. Cartman returning in time makes this one of few cases of the trope where the boys win, if through cheating on Cartman's part.
- Bigger on the Inside: Cartman's ass. How else could you explain it having enough space to contain and smuggle an entire theme park?
- Borrowed Catchphrase:Clyde: For the last time, I'm not fat, so stop calling me fat, goddammit!
- Characterization Marches On:
- Similar to "Hooked on Monkey Phonics", Butters is shown to be much more foul-mouthed like the other boys such as calling the girls "skanks" and "hos". He even shows a bit of harshness since he was the one to point out Clyde being fat.
- Before this episode, Cartman never even once implied he's a racist (despite his anti-Semitic comments towards Kyle, as well as various other bigoted comments). After what Tolkien (inadvertently) got him into here, it's assumed he began his racist tendencies afterwards.
- Cartman seems somewhat softer and more sensitive than the other kids at juvenile hall. Nowadays, he'd probably fit in much better.
- Chekhov's Gun: Romper Stomper gives Cartman his platform shoes after they escape. At the sled race, Cartman throws the shoes at the girls' sled, causing them to crash and lose the race.
- Comical Overreacting: The police reacting to Kenny's Go-Go Action Bronco getting past their road blockade.
- Continuity Nod: A bear once again grabs a child by the mouth and takes it away.
- Create Your Own Villain:
- Implied with Clyde, who starts to act like Cartman when the boys deem him the new fat kid.
- Cartman became a lot more hostile towards Tolkien (and Black people in general) after what Tolkien accidentally put him through.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: After smuggling the cigarettes in his ass back to his cell, Cartman takes them out by using the toilet. He accidentally flushes the cigarettes.Cartman: *flushes the toilet* Aw God dammit!Romper Stomper: You flushed them!?Cartman: Well, when you spend eight years taking a crap and then flushing the toilet, it sort of becomes a reflex!
- Hope Spot: Cartman almost makes it to Mexico in Kenny's battery-powered toy truck. Then the batteries run out.
- Informed Flaw: Parodied. Apparently Clyde is the second fattest kid in the class. The audience can't tell since his character model is the same size as all the other kids sans Cartman. It infuriates Clyde to no end, and he hugs Cartman upon his return.
- I Will Only Slow You Down: Parodied. When Cartman and Romper Stomper escape, Romper falls and hurts his leg and tells Cartman to go on without him. Cartman obliges without second thought which annoys Romper, saying he's supposed to refuse to leave him.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Romper Stomper. Cartman also shows signs of this at the end when he brings in all of Disneyland at the end of the episode.
- Karmic Death: Lizzy (the girl with the pink parka) spends the whole episode insulting the boys over a sled race, mostly with homophobic slurs, and even cheers when Cartman is declared guilty of commiting a hate crime and mocks the boys when Kenny dies. In the end, after Cartman makes the girls' sled crash, Lizzy gets grabbed by a bear and taken off-screen.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Some of the girls cheer when Cartman is declared guilty and sent to juvenile hall. By the end of the episode, Cartman makes the girls' sled crash, causing them to lose the race. Lizzy even gets Killed Offscreen by a bear.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Once Cartman returns from juvie, a grateful Clyde hugs him and repeatedly thanks him for coming back. Confused, Cartman asks the others what's wrong with him.
- Misplaced Retribution: Cartman threatens to pelt Tolkien with a rock if he calls him fat one more time. When Kyle does so behind his back, Cartman throws the rock at Tolkien instead, thinking he said it.
- Mistaken for Racist: Played With. Cartman is accused of throwing a rock at Tolkien for being an African-American. Cartman is a racist, but in this case the motivation for the action was retaliation for Tolkien calling him fat (or rather, thinking Tolkien called him fat when it was actually Kyle).
- No Sympathy: The girls twice. Once when Cartman is wrongly convicted (for once, surprisingly) and sent to juvie, they end up cheering as the boys lost their advantage. They even mock the boys when Kenny is accidentally killed.
- Noodle Incident: It is still unknown how Cartman and Romper Stomper managed to get out of the colony.
- Not Me This Time: A variation as while Cartman did commit the crime, throwing a rock at Tolkien, he didn't do it out of racism like the FBI agents thought. Also, Cartman threw the rock at Tolkien because he thought Tolkien called him fat again, but it was actually Kyle.
- Not What It Looks Like: Because Cartman threw a rock at Tolkien, an African-American, it seemed as if he did it out of racist intentions, even though, ironically, this was not the case.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Cartman has a brief moment of this when Tolkien doesn't get right back up after being hit with a rock.
- Clyde when he realizes he's beginning to act like Cartman.
- Out-of-Character Moment:
- Wendy seems to be cheering on the girls and booing the boys, despite being in a relationship with Stan. Though granted, she has no speaking role in this episode.
- Cartman shows an almost shocking (by his standards) level of restraint towards Tolkien insulting his weight. He repeatedly warns Tolkien to knock it off, and only throws the rock when he thinks Tolkien pushed him too far. Cartman's usual response to most people's fat jokes (except for the other main boys) is to take Disproportionate Retribution to a whole new level.
- Police Are Useless: The "high-speed" chase in Kenny's battery-powered toy truck. It moves incredibly slowly, but the police keep their distance at every turn and even duck for cover when the barricade is "rammed."Kyle: What the hell are they doing?
- Pet the Dog:
- Cartman smuggling Disneyland into the prison for Romper Stomper is one of the kindest things he does in the whole series.
- Another instance of Cartman being uncharacteristically kind is when Clyde goes to hug him after he returns to South Park; the other boys had decided that Clyde is the second fattest kid after Cartman and began mocking him as a result. Relieved that he will no longer be the target of fat jokes, Clyde hugs Cartman in gratitude for coming back; Cartman is understandably confused by this response, but he allows it and even slightly hugs Clyde back.
- Running Gag: Cartman's pooping out of various objects (of increasing size) he smuggles up his ass into juvie, which is always done offscreen and with a lot of difficult grunting and straining over the course of nearly a minute.
- Serious Business: The boys are determined to break Cartman out of prison, going so far as to petition the governor to repeal the laws on hate crimes... all so they can win a sled race against the girls.
- Shout-Out:
- Cartman's prison number is 24601.
- The police cars that bump into Kenny before toppling on each other is a throwback to The Blues Brothers.
- The slow-speed police chase in Kenny's battery-powered Go Go Action Bronco is a reference to the famous OJ Simpson police chase.
- The music that plays over the prison scenes is the intro theme from the HBO show "Oz".
- Skewed Priorities: Stan and Kyle are only concerned about Tolkien‘s injury because it cost them their chance to win the race.
- Take That!:
- The juvie kids consider Cartman on their side after he says he doesn't like Animaniacs, a show Trey and Matt are not fond of.
- Cartman's overall plot mocks the concept of hate crime laws.Judge: I am making an example of you, to send a message out to people everywhere: that if you want to hurt another human being, you'd better make damn sure they're the same color as you are!
[Everyone just stares blankly]
- They Killed Kenny Again: Kenny is killed during the attempt to use cement blocks to weigh down the sled.Stan: [nonchalantly] Oh my God, we killed Kenny.
Kyle: We killed Kenny?
Stan: We killed Kenny. We're bastards. - Toilet Humor: The only way for prisoners to sneak items into jail without being caught by security is by putting them in their behinds and pooping them out. Cartman has to do this a few times.
- Truth in Television: Cartman telling Stan and Kyle he can’t take their cake (which has a file in it to enable him to escape) back to his cell is also a real-life thing to avoid situations like that in jail.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Kyle inadvertently causes the problems for the boys. Cartman threatened to hit Tolkien with the rock if he called him fat one more time. Kyle was the one who actually said it, but Cartman's back was turned at the time, so he thought it was Tolkien.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Parodied. The authorities think Cartman committed a deliberate act of racism when he really just overreacted to an insult.
