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Recap / South Park S17 E1 "Let Go, Let Gov"

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Original air date: 9/25/2013

Cartman gets a job with the NSA to blow the whistle on the American government spying on people's emails and social media accounts. Meanwhile, Butters treats the U.S. government as a religious figure and begins spreading the word by using the DMV as a house of worship.


This episode contains examples of:

  • All Hail the Great God Mickey!: Cartman tells Butters that the government is watching everything they do, and Butters misinterprets that as the government is a literal benevolent God. He creates a new religion to American government with a handful of converts, firstly the two old female Asian Jehovah's Witnesses missionaries, Craig, and later hundreds of followers like Farmer Carl Denkins and Officer Barbrady. They all start confessing their sins at the Department of Motor Vehicles as if it were a church. Cartman is eventually converted into Butter's religion after his NSA spying exposure plan backfires.
  • Bystander Syndrome: Even after Cartman tells the world that the NSA has Santa Claus hooked up to a computer, no one cares or does anything to stop it.
  • Fingore: In the Shitter commercial, we are treated to a brief but bloody scene of Alec Baldwin cutting off his own thumbs, blaming them for his racist and homophobic rants on Twitter.
  • The Ghost: We never see Lawrence and Toby, the two kids Cartman obnoxiously converses with on his phone.
  • Gilligan Cut: Alec Baldwin claims in the Shitter commercial that his thumbs were the cause of his problematic rants on social media, and that they need to be gotten rid of. The commercial then suddenly cuts to Baldwin in a kitchen, brutally hacking off both his thumbs with a butcher's knife.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Cartman complaining about the NSA spying on people through their Twitter accounts, all while posting all his information on Shitter.
  • It's All About Me: Cartman infiltrates the NSA under the assumption that they are spying on him 24/7 and see him as a person of interest. When he finds out that they had dismissed him as "fat and unimportant", he tries convincing the NSA that he is worth spying on.
  • Karma Houdini: The NSA gets away with hooking Santa to a machine and spying on everyone.
  • Literal-Minded/Visual Pun: Cartman blows on a whistle he brought with him to announce he's leaking the NSA's secrets to the public.
  • Moral Myopia: Whenever Kyle shouts at Cartman to stop talking out-loud on speak-phone, Cartman accuses him of spying on his conversations.
  • Never My Fault: Alec Baldwin claims that he doesn't have racist and homophobic thoughts but it’s his thumbs that do. Sure enough, Alec keeps broadcasting racist and homophobic thoughts on Shitter.
    Alec Baldwin: I don't think that way, I just type that way.
  • Pedophile Priest: Parodied. When the DMV guys finally start to embrace the church-like qualities of the DMV, the place gets shut down because they had sex with underage boys. The post office becomes the "church", but then they get shut down for sex with boys. Then TV news stations become the "church", until they get shut down for the same thing.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The NSA spies on everyone by hooking Santa Claus up to a computer.
  • Running Gag:
    • Alec Baldwin's racist and raunchy thoughts being broadcasted on Shitter.
    • Cartman accusing Kyle of eavesdropping on his private conversations when all Kyle is doing is telling Cartman to stop talking so loudly and/or take his phone off its speaker setting.
  • Shout-Out: Officer Barbrady confesses to having masturbated to Game of Thrones.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Cartman is devastated to find out the NSA doesn't pay any real attention to him.
  • "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Invoked; the DMV is depicted as being run by these guys.
  • Take That!:
    • To people who talk on speaker-phone. The fact that it's Cartman who does it the entire day doesn't help.
    • To people who fire their thoughts onto social-media full-blast without thinking it through.
    • To Alec Baldwin for his racist and homophobic posts on Twitter.
    • The episode ends with a jab directed at churches for the rampant sexual abuse of young boys.
  • Unwanted False Faith: Only one employee from South Park's DMV is getting pissed about Butters' religious followers being happy.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: We never find out what happens to Cartman's two unseen friends that he loudly conversed with after this episode.

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