Recap / South Park S 11 E 2 Cartman Sucks

Original air date: 3/14/2007

Cartman takes a photo with Butters' penis in his mouth to prove Butters is gay. He later finds out what the picture really means and freaks out when the photo disappears. Meanwhile, Butters has to go to a special camp to calm his urges.

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"Cartman Sucks" contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Butters' parents don't seem to grasp that Butters has no idea what's going on, or make any attempt to explain anything in any way. Butters doesn't even know what bi-curious means. They send him away to that horrible camp without a second thought.
• All for Nothing: Cartman goes through this twice. First was when he molested Butters and got him sent to Conversion Camp, only to learn that Kyle was fucking with him through a simple internet search. The second and much more devastating one comes toward the end; thinking Kyle had the picture of him sucking off Butters and was planning to show it to the class for show and tell, Cartman attempts to beat him to the punch and show another copy of the picture himself so that he could at least do it on his terms...only to learn too late that the original copy was under his desk.
• Analogy Backfire: The camp leader says that the boys have to be made straight "like a paperclip", apparently not realising that a straightened paperclip is totally useless. Plus, it's impossible to perfectly straighten a paper clip as the bends still remain, you're just changing the direction it bends.
• As the Good Book Says...: Played for a mix of drama and horror — Bradley quietly mutters Bible verses every now and then.
• Black Comedy Rape: The plot kicks off by Cartman inviting Butters over for a sleepover, just so he can take pictures of Butters with his dick in Cartman's mouth while Butters is asleep. Then, Kyle jokingly tells Cartman the only way he can avoid looking gay is for Cartman to get his penis in Butters' mouth, saying it will "Reverse the gay polarity." Cartman then tries to trick Butters into doing just that. Cartman molests Butters in his sleep and Kyle (unknowingly) convinces him to do it again with the positions reversed.
• Bland-Name Product: In the scene where Cartman threatens to Photoshop Kyle's face into the photo of Cartman simulating sucking Butters off if the other boys tell anyone about it, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny are seen playing a game called Living. The name and the setup of the board are clear references to The Game of Life, although Living appears to involve more dice-rolling and card-swapping than Life.
• Blatant Lies: Pastor Phillips claiming he's been "cured" of his gayness while acting extremely flamboyant.
• Boisterous Weakling: Much like in "Christmas in Canada" Cartman acts tough and threatens violence against Kyle, after the compromising picture of him with Butters disappeared and he believes Kyle stole it, even rolling up his sleeves until Kyle punches his arm, with Cartman covering it as if he had a big injury, and running away while crying in pain after.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Cartman's slideshow at class begins with a few artistic but otherwise innocent photographs. The final slide being the obscene photo of him and Butters.
• By-the-Book Cop: As crazy as it sounds, Sergeant Yates actually followed a reasonable protocol for once. He tells Cartman that arresting Kyle for stealing a photo is petty because he can just print another one, and when Cartman insists he does he explains he would need a search warrant approved by a jury. When Cartman says that will take too long, Sergeant Yates explains there's nothing else he can do.
• Camp Gay: Pastor Phillips makes claims that his conversion therapy has been completely successful, but his extremely effeminate mannerisms go to show that just because you're not having sex with men doesn't make you less gay.
• Cassandra Truth: Kyle really did not steal the picture and Cartman discovers this too late.
• Continuity Nod: After Butters admits that he is still "confused," Stephen admits that he is as well, referencing "Butters' Very Own Episode," where he was revealed to engage in a lot of homosexual activity behind his wife's back.
• Cure Your Gays: Deconstructed. Much like real life conversion therapy, the treatment the boys get not only fails to work, it also leads to a number of suicides.
• Depth of Field: Cartman makes a slideshow comprising a pic of him and Butters in a compromising position. He gets onto detailing all the filters and Camera Tricks he applied to it, with one of them being low depth of field so the background remains fuzzy. This reveals how much of a shutterbug he is.
  Cartman: Yes. This is shot at a 5.6 aperture using a low-light filter. You can see the grain from the high-speed film and the low depth of field keeps the background soft.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Cartman believes that photographing himself putting Butters' penis in his mouth would make Butters look gay. Kyle, Stan and Kenny inform him that actually makes Cartman look gay because he's the one that put a penis in his mouth, not Butters.
  • Kyle jokes that Cartman should "reverse the gay polarity" by putting his dick in Butters' mouth, failing to realize Cartman would take this to heart and actually would go through with it.
    Kyle: (flatly, as Cartman runs off to do so) Idiot.
• Double-Meaning Title: Cartman does suck Butters' dick, but he also does in essence, suck, for what he did to Butters.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: The bulk of the episode stems from Cartman having molested Butters in his sleep and taking a photo of it, with it never being explicitly pointed out by anyone why this is wrong other than it makes Cartman look gay and not Butters.
• Driven to Suicide: Several boys are shown to have committed suicide during their stay at the camp and given the counselors' reactions, this is common. This is just barely an exaggeration of real-life conversion therapy.
  Camp Director: We've got another one. Room 22.
  Camp Staffer: Ah, darnit!
• Everyone Has Standards: It is safe to say that Cartman has thoroughly crossed the line when Mrs. Garrison of all people vocally questions his compromising photo.
  Mrs. Garrison: Eric, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!
• Get Back in the Closet: An In-Universe example. A former camper at the conversion therapy claims to have been made straight by the camp, but it seemed it more or less performed this trope on him.
• Hidden Depths: It's quite nice to learn that Cartman is almost a genius when it comes to artistic photography, which lends depth to his usual character of being a Jerkass.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Cartman's prank on Butters combined with his antisemitism come back to bite him in the butt hard in the end.
• Hypocrite:
  • An Accountabili-buddy is... a boy with your own sexual issues, whom you are supposed to share a room with and stick beside and support constantly on your shared journey to the salvation of your soul. Really, it's just the counselors' way of foisting any responsibility for safety onto the boys.
    Director: Bradley is your Accountabilibuddy, Butters! That makes you Accountabilibuddyable!
  • Stephen Stotch is disgusted at the thought of having a bi-curious son, despite "Butters' Very Own Episode" revealing he's a Depraved Homosexual. He admits he's bi-curious at the end, but it's far more likely that he's either bi-sexual or homosexual. Butters does comment on this:
    Butters: Wait, now I am confused.
  • The camp has at least one gay counselor for whom Conversion Therapy has clearly failed; Pastor Phillips.
  • The counselors quickly claim credit (or credit by proxy) for Butters talking Bradley down.
• Idiot Ball: Cartman for not realizing his "prank" on Butters would make him look gay instead, and for automatically assuming Kyle stole the photo after he couldn't find it when it was under his the desk the whole time. This leads to Cartman thoroughly humiliating himself in a vain attempt to rob Kyle of the opportunity.
• Insane Troll Logic: Stephen inadvertently lampshades how little sense it makes to try to cure bi-curious boys by making them all live together in a secluded area cut off from the rest of society.
• Interrupted Suicide: Bradley attempts to jump off a bridge to his death, but after listening to Butters' empowering speech, he reconsiders.
  Bradley: I think I'd like to come down now.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Besides being accused of being closeted gays and clearly shirking their responsibilities to keep the boys in their custody safe, the counselors of Camp New Grace face no punishment for their inhumane treatment of the boys.
  • Kyle is basically the reason Butters ended up in that camp in the first place, because he convinced Cartman in order to not look gay he had to get Butters to put Cartman's dick in his mouth. For the sake of making Cartman look like an idiot, Kyle pretty much told Cartman he had to molest Butters. Granted, Kyle was just joking, but even he should've known at this point Cartman would do that.
  • Played with in Cartman's case. While he does end up humiliating himself in front of the entire class by showing the photo with Butters' dick in his mouth, at no point is it ever implied he'll be punished for sexually molesting an unconscious Butters nor does it ever dawn on anyone that this is exactly what Cartman did to Butters.
• Mistaken for Gay: Stephen belives Butters is bi-curious after walking in on him nearly sucking Cartman's penis, which was actually a prank by the latter.
• Never My Fault: The camp director blames Butters for enabling Bradley's suicide attempt, even though his crew had been psychologically tormenting the students (including Bradley) to force them into becoming straight. Butters calls him out on this.
  Director: (to Butters) You get back. You're only gonna make things worse.
• Noodle Incident: One of Cartman's pranks in the scrapbook is called Hot Fudge Mondae, but we never see what the prank entailed.
• Obliviously Evil: A subtle but extremely disturbing example — the counselors at Camp New Grace do show vague concern over the suicide epidemic in their camp, but they see no connection whatsoever between this and their conversion attempts, and don't seem to have any serious interest in protecting the boys who are in their custody. They just clean it up and move on. If anything, they seem to think that it's a good reason to reinforce said conversion attempts.
• Oh, Crap!: Cartman ends up with the expression of someone who knows they're screwed several times in this episode.
  • When he shows Stan, Kyle, and Kenny the picture of him fellating Butters, Kyle points out that contrary to what Cartman thinks, this doesn't make Butters look gay, it makes Cartman look gay. Cartman's triumphant look vanishes and he starts panicking over how to "reverse" what he's done.
  • When the photo goes missing and Kyle denies all responsibility, Cartman assumes he's going to make good on his threat to show everyone the picture, so he decides to beat him to it by including it in a slideshow of his photography during Show and Tell. The students are dumbfounded, and Mrs. Garrison demands an explanation. Cartman is about to offer one when Mr. Mackey shows up with a message from Liane saying Kyle didn't steal the photo after all; it was under Cartman's desk, meaning Cartman showed off the photo for nothing. Cartman spends nearly ten seconds in mortified silence before finally muttering, "Lame..."
• Parental Obliviousness: Even for someone who is a Pushover Parent, Liane is surprisingly unfazed by the fact Cartman had a picture of him sucking Butters' dick.
• Police Are Useless: Though Yates is right to dismiss Cartman's attempts to get Kyle indicted for theft, child pornography, even if it was produced by the children in question, and sexual abuse warrant a bit more urgency.
• Poor Man's Porn: Bradley is caught with a men's underwear catalog.
• Psychological Projection: Butters accuses the camp counselors of this; they constantly tell the campers how confused they are about their sexuality as a means of coping with their own confusion about it. And that by convincing the campers that they're confused means the counselors don't have to struggle to understand them.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Butters gives the counselors a well deserved one at the end.
• Scenery Censor: When Cartman is showing off the photo of him appearing to perform oral sex on Butters as part of a slideshow, his head covers the part of the picture depicting his mouth and Butters' genitals, reducing them to indistinct fuzz.
• Shout-Out: Bradley is clearly meant to emulate Billy Bibbit.
• Suicide as Comedy: Played with. Most of the suicides committed by the camp students are used for Black Comedy. Bradley's suicide attempt, however, is played completely seriously.
  Director: We've got another one: Room 22.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Butters doesn't realize his dad thinks that he is attracted to men because Cartman nearly tricked him into sucking his penis while blindfolded. And since Stephen never actually explains what he saw and only describes it in vague terms, Butters is genuinely confused by everything happening.
• Take That!: A very heavy handed one towards conversion therapy, portraying them as doing nothing more than making young boys who are at a very delicate stage in hormonal development feel like terrible people, and simply assuming that they are gay just because they're sent there. In Bradley's case they strive to force them into a lifestyle that doesn't suit them at all. In Butters' case, it might leave a confused child even more confused.
• Truth in Television: It just seems so ridiculous that you can rid a boy of sexual feelings for other boys by sending him to a camp full of boys with exactly the same issue, right? Well, pretty much all Real Life Conversion Therapy camps do exactly this. Or at least try to, since they are usually as effective as in this episode.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Kyle's suggestion for Cartman to "reverse the gay polarity" ends up landing Butters into a gay conversion therapy camp.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Cartman pulls one off to his mom so he can avoid getting embarrassed at school.