Original air date: 11/11/2009
Cartman is chosen as the new school morning P.A. announcer following the shooting death of the first one, and he uses the position to criticize Wendy Testaburger's stint as class president and the sorry state of the school because of it.
Tropes:
- Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Subverted. Cartman uses his show to criticize the state of the school and put all the blame on Wendy because she's the student council president. Mr. Mackey tries to explain that the student council president really doesn't have that much power, but Cartman thinks that he's just trying to cover up for her. In the end, Wendy, who is also fully aware of how little power her position actually has, gets revenge upon Cartman by turning his narrative against him and appointing him as her replacement after resigning from student council. Cartman is frustrated when he finds out the only power the organization has is deciding things like the decorations for the school dance.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: After having to endure Cartman making numerous ridiculous accusations about her and claiming she led a Smurf-killing plot for their berries, Wendy decides to go along with it by fabricating a story where Cartman bolstered the Smurfs' defiance and forced her to wipe them out, even writing a book about it in the process. Afterwards, she resigns as student council president and gives the title to Cartman so he can face a barrage of libel.
- Big "NO!": Ike delivers one upon hearing that Wendy wants to kill Smurfs.
- Black Comedy: The first two minutes of the episode focus on third-grader Gordon Stolski being threatened and eventually shot to death by a man who confused him for a forty-year-old trucker sleeping with his wife. The entire confrontation is broadcast over the intercom while the students react to Gordon's terrified pleas for help with varying degrees of horror, disbelief, and/or apathy.
- Bullying a Dragon: Cartman is messing with Wendy again even though she can severely kick his ass. She does in this episode as well albeit in a non-physical, manipulative way.
- Character Tic: Casey Miller winks before he finishes a statement.
- Continuity Nod: Cartman's constant attacks on Wendy could be payback for nearly beating him to death back in "Breast Cancer Show Ever". Even if not specific to that incident, Cartman has been going after Wendy since season 1.
- The Dog Bites Back: After suffering an episode's worth of libel and defamation, Wendy turns the tables on Cartman by using the Smurf genocide incident against him and names him student council president so he can face a barrage of insults from the new P.A. announcer.
- The Dragon: Butters is this to Cartman in attacking Wendy.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Cartman is one of the people horrified by Gordon Stolski's death. In fact, Gordon was one of the members of his Ginger pride movement, so Cartman would have been one of the few fourth-graders who knew him personally.
- Excrement Statement: A variation is used; Butters urinates on Wendy's doorstep in protest of her alleged Smurf murders.
- Fun with Acronyms: Cartman says that Wendy's Keywords are Integrated, Leftist and Liberal, which are turning the learning environment into a Socialist, Modern, Utopian, Reformed Farce of a School.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Wendy gets revenge on Cartman by not only going along with his bogus story about Smurf genocide, but also implies that the Smurfs wouldn't have been wiped out if it wasn't for Cartman's actions in the first place. She also reveals she wrote a book about it and sold the movie rights to James Cameron, who promptly turned it into Avatar.
- Insane Troll Logic: This episode runs on it:
- Gordon's killer doesn't seem to notice that this Stoltski is a young boy, not an adult truck driver. He forces Gordon to read the announcements to prove his identity, but his scared performance only convinces the killer more that he has the right one.
- Cartman's entire morning announcer persona is based on this. Even worse, he gets a sizable group of devout followers (led by Butters naturally) who believe his absurd claims.
- Wendy uses this to turn the tables on Cartman, admitting she killed the Smurfs, but blaming Cartman for it.
- The notion Cartman makes of comparing Avatar to Smurfs. Though this was intentional (see Take That! below).
- Jerkass Ball: Butters becomes nasty after subscribing to Cartman's libel on Wendy by verbally harassing her and even urinating on her doorstep.
- Kicked Upstairs: Wendy resigns and names Cartman the new student body president, but that costs him his position as the P.A. announcer and he finds that the student body president doesn't have any real power.
- Lack of Empathy: When Gordon Stolski is being murdered over the P.A., everyone in the classroom is listening in varying degrees of horror except for Clyde and Red, who continue to do their work.
- Laser-Guided Karma: For the extra cream on top, after Cartman is Kicked Upstairs as student body president, he is replaced as P.A. announcer by Casey Miller, the nominee for announcer he previously sabotaged, and has to listen to him mocking him just as he had Wendy every morning.
- Loophole Abuse: Cartman gets around accusations he is directly calling Wendy a prostitute (among other things) by ending his sentences with "Or is she?" He even uses this to justify his 540 page (!) book that rips on Wendy to Stan.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Cartman's Wendy disguise is him just wearing her clothes and a wig, which doesn't cover his entire hair, and large, fake breasts while Wendy's are undeveloped.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Cartman becomes student council president but Wendy shifts the blame for the Smurf genocide towards him, gets royally pissed when he thinks Avatar is an adaptation of Wendy's book, and finds that he has no power in his position while Casey Miller insults him.
- Shout-Out:
- Casey Miller is a parody of radio host Casey Kasem.
- Cartman's style of hosting his show parodies the tactics of Glenn Beck.
- Cartman's Dances with Smurfs parody mixes both The Smurfs and Dances with Wolves.
- When Wendy resigns as student body president, she announces she's releasing a new book titled Going Rogue on the Smurfs, parodying Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue, which was released after she resigned as governor of Alaska.
- Status Quo Is God: Despite the episode ending with Cartman becoming student council president, this fact is never brought up again. In fact, Wendy gets the title again when its mentioned seasons later in "Tweek x Craig".
- Take That!:
- Cartman is a clear spoof of Glenn Beck who was becoming more mainstream for his constant attacks on Barack Obama. Glenn Beck actually found the parody of him to be pretty fun, though took offense that they had to use Cartman since Glenn was sensitive about his weight.
- At Avatar, which many people compared to Dances with Wolves (the idea of an outsider going native) and The Smurfs (the strange blue creatures that live in a forest).
Cartman: You sons of bitches! "Dances with Smurfs" was my idea! MY IDEA! (flips his middle fingers outside the theater) You can't just take "Dances with Smurfs" and call it something else!- The ACLU is willing to bully an elementary school into letting Cartman spew his ridiculous lies.
- A Taste Of His Own Medicine: After Cartman harasses Wendy the whole episode with libel, she foists her duties as president of the student body onto Cartman. And then the new announcer, Casey Miller, is now attacking Cartman with fat-shaming and insults about his utter uselessness to the school, making Cartman break down and cry running home.
- Thin-Skinned Bully: True to his usual self, Cartman uses his job as announcer as a means to rip on Wendy relentlessly, but then when he is elected to school council president himself, he can't even get through one morning of the same abuse from the replacement announcer.Cartman: I'm doing the best I can!!!! *runs out the class bawling loudly*
- Villain with Good Publicity: Cartman enjoys having good publicity in attacking Wendy throughout the episode, mainly because of how gullible the students at South Park Elementary are.
