Original air date: 3/6/2002
Subway spokesman Jared Fogle comes to South Park where the boys learn his trick to losing weight is with aides (as in "assistants"), and inspired by Jared, they decide to try to do the same thing. Meanwhile, Jared comes clean about his trick to losing weight loss, but a miscommunication costs him his girlfriend, sponsorship, and popularity.
This episode includes examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Butters' parents beat him in the end of the episode.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Once Kyle clears up the aides/AIDS misunderstanding between Jared and the townsfolk, both parties find the whole situation hilarious.
- Brick Joke: While forcing Butters to eat to get fatter, Cartman threatens to kick him until he's "deader than Kenny", which prompts a "too soon" reaction from Stan and Kyle, who claim that it takes 22.3 years for something tragic to become funny. Later in the episode, after the aides/AIDS confusion is finally cleared up, everybody finds themselves laughing about it, and Randy exclaims, "It's been 22.3 years, so AIDS is finally funny!"
- Characterization Marches On: In this episode, Butters' parents have no problem beating him because Cartman insulted them. In later episodes, while still quite abusive, they would never resort to physical harm towards Butters again.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Cartman when acting as Butters' personal trainer.
- Fun with Homophones: The AIDS/aides joke is a rather dark and tragic example, as it leads to a misunderstanding that ends with everyone in town wanting Jared dead.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Butters states he refuses to get married to any of the Boys, and then immediately asks "What's wrong with me?" when Kyle agrees he doesn't want to marry Butters.
- Jerkass:
- Stan and Kyle, rather than force Cartman to lose weight for their scheme, instead force Butters to get incredibly fat, then perform amateur liposuction on him when he understandably can't lose the weight on time. This results in him falling unconscious due to blood loss, getting grounded by his parents (while they flee), and forcing Butters to perform the photo shoot, allowing Cartman to set him up for further trouble. This Cartman-esque Lack of Empathy would be recurrent for the two in the remaining episodes where Butters served as Kenny's replacement.
- Cartman sets Butters up to get in even more trouble with his parents and watches in satisfaction as Butters' parents beat him.
- Butters' parents too. They had a right to be mad at Butters but it did not justify beating him.
- Lampshade Hanging: Jared literally beats a dead horse for no other reason than that the creators are acknowledging that the AIDS/aides jokes has gone on way too long.Jared: (while beating the horse) I tell my girlfriend I have aides and she leaves! I tell the world to get aides and they think I'm crazy! I offered to give aides to kids and everyone wants me dead!! WHAT'S WRONG WITH AIDES!?! WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE WANT ME TO GIVE THEM AIDES!?!
Mr. Garrison: (arrives with a mob) There he is, beatin' that dead horse! - Misplaced Retribution: Butters' parents beat him for insulting them despite Cartman being the one doing so.
- Nightmare Fetishist: While Cartman watches Butters getting beaten by his parents, he states that "if [he] was older [he'd] start jacking off right now."
- Noodle Incident: For some reason Butters' parents have had to tell him not to have liposuction in their living room 4 times.
- Pass the Popcorn: The end of the episode has Cartman sit in a lounge chair out front of Butters' house, with popcorn and soda in hand... all as Mr. and Mrs. Stotch physically abuse Butters.
- Poor Communication Kills: Thanks to poorly wording his speeches, Jared convinces everyone his trick to weight loss was a sexually-transmitted disease as opposed to hired help.
- Rule of Three: "He's still lookin' good..."
- Running Gag: Song parodies of Subway's Clay Henry commercial.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Stan, Kyle, and Cartman abandon Butters mid-liposuction when his parents show up at the house.
- Shout-Out: When Cartman waits for Butters's parents to get home, he hums the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson theme.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The boys only get $15 out of their plan to make people think City Wok helps people lose weight the same way Jared Fogle did to Subway because City Wok is limited to one restaurant in South Park as opposed to Subway, an international multimillion dollar company.
- Visual Pun: At one point, Jared is beating a dead horse with a baseball bat. "Beating a dead horse" is a pretty apt metaphor for how many times the misunderstanding of AIDS/aides occurs during the episode.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Quite literally in that the scene changes as Butters starts to eat his own vomit.
