Original air date: 3/21/2007
An infestation of head lice plagues South Park Elementary, and Cartman finds a way to detect who has lice so they can make fun of the unfortunate kid.
Tropes:
- Accidental Hero: Clyde unknowingly saves Travis from getting killed by Vice President Greg by plucking the latter off of him.
- An Arm and a Leg: Travis ends up tearing off Kelly's arm when she's blown away by the hairdryer.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- During the lecture on lice, the camera starts zooming in where Kyle is, as if the episode will focus on him, but suddenly it pans towards Clyde and zooms into his hair instead.
- When Cartman exposes Kenny as the one who had lice, he has all the other kids gather with socks and bars of soap, and all signs indicate they're going to use them to beat him (likely to death). Then it turns out all they were going to do was "wash him with the soap and dry him off with the socks."
- At the end, Craig becomes increasingly guilt-ridden as Kenny suffers from the Sock Bath and is seemingly going to be the one to confess their lice problem, but it is actually Kyle who confesses instead, possibly a Bookend to the first bait and switch of the episode.
- Big Bad: The louse Vice President Greg.
- Black Comedy: It's a brief moment but as Kelly and Travis look down on the lice melting in the green goo, you can see a mother louse desperately holding up her baby as she melts to death in the acid.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Even though the louse Vice President has crippled Travis, he decides to just go on a Motive Rant rather than just finishing him off. Granted, he had no idea that Clyde would pluck him off of him.
- Brick Joke: Early in the episode, the doctor mentions to Clyde that people can get lice due to flies landing on their head, with lice clinging to the flies and landing on the humans they land on. Later in the episode, a fly lands on Clyde's head to save Travis and Hope.
- Cassandra Truth: Travis attempts to warn the other lice that the world they live on is alive and will try to kill them. Naturally, none of the lice believe them until most of them are killed.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Sock Bath the kids do on Kenny is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: they bathe Kenny with bars of soap and dry him off with socks. Despite being completely benign, everyone acts as though it is an act of torture.Kenny: No, no, not the socks!
- Day in the Limelight: For Clyde.
- Death of a Child: Aside from Travis' unhatched egg Hope, absolutely none of the lice children survive the shower.
- Disney Villain Death: Clyde kills Vice President Greg by plucking him off his head and tossing him onto the pavement to his death.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Travis Mayfield goes through absolute Hell throughout the episode’s entirety. His ideas are scoffed at, he loses his wife, and he’s nearly killed several times before finally reaching a perfectly safe lice colony in Angelina Jolie’s pubic hair with his unborn baby.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even Mrs. Garrison, who would not hesitate to declare a student a retard in class for simply getting a question wrong, follows the school's guide not to reveal who had lice so as not to embarrass them. The fact the kids immediately declare whoever had it would be bullied and shunned by the girls for life merely justifies why they shouldn't.
- Evil Old Folks: Vice President Greg is noticeably older than the other lice and is the main antagonist of the episode’s b-plot.
- Gaia's Vengeance: The plot from the lices' POV is definitely based around this idea. With Clyde as the "universe" wiping out the sentient beings living on it out of vengeance.Travis: (walks up to a hair and draws a human head on it) "Look, this is the world, right? But now, think of the world as... a living being. If it were somehow conscious, then it would ultimately become aware of our effect on it."
- Humans Are Cthulhu: Travis see's Clyde as a Genius Loci and believes his use of anti-lice shampoo was divine retribution for his people's abuse of natural resources. As the episode goes on he begins referring to him as God.
- Hypocrite: Everyone in the class (except for Clyde, to an extent) turns out to be one when they criminalize each other for having lice despite The Reveal that everyone was infected.
- When Kenny is about to be punished after being framed by Cartman, Kyle admits to having had lice and claims that he can't let someone else take the fall for him, only to participate in the "sock bath" against Kenny anyway after The Reveal.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: The Vice President Louse. After the disaster, he volunteers to go with Travis to the Forbidden Zone in order to make up for all the damage he indirectly caused. Only for him to use the opportunity to shoot Travis once they're far enough away from the others.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Even Mrs. Garrison follows the school's guidelines not to reveal who had lice for risk of being singled out without any hint of sarcasm or snark.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Considering the kids immediately declare they will essentially publicly shun whoever had lice, Mrs. Garrison is more justified than before to not disclose who.
- Kids Are Cruel: More so than in other episodes. After discovering Kenny lied about not having head lice, the entire class decides to gang up on him and brutally “sock bath” him; washing him with bars of soaps and drying him off with the socks. Kyle stops everything by revealing that he had lice, before Stan and then Cartman stating that they each had it as well. Then Mrs. Garrison shows up to reveal to everyone that they all had head lice. The kids then go back to sock bathe Kenny, even the ones who were reluctant to do it.
- Before this, the class demands that Mrs. Garrison reveals which kid had lice so that they can avoid/bully them.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: While trying to pin the blame on the other boys, Cartman calls out Kenny for standing there and saying nothing "like he usually does," lampshading his lack of prominence following his return.
- Lice Episode: One that parodies disaster movies.
- Mood Whiplash: Multiple times the lice plot, which features high tension action and drama of lice trying to survive a disaster, cuts to Clyde doing rather mundane things, like bathing and flicking a louse.
- Mundane Made Awesome: The lice go through an extinction-level event straight out of a cheesy Roland Emmerich Cliché Storm disaster movie, contrasted with Clyde calmly getting in the shower, applying louse shampoo, and blow-drying his hair.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: This exchange when Travis first comes across other louse survivors: ”Just the six of us... and the Vice President.”
- Only Sane Man:
- Or rather louse. Travis is the only member of the louse colony that actually knows that they’re living on a child’s head and the only one to consider a lice-wide evacuation.
- Clyde is the only one of the kids who doesn't want to go through with the "sock bath", and calls the teacher to put an end to the witch hunt.
- Strangely enough, Ms. Garrison actually gives the kids sound advice on how to deal with the lice infestation and stops "the sock bath" by telling them that everyone was infected.
- Not So Above It All: Kyle and Stan both deny having lice until the end, and participate in harassing Kenny when Cartman frames him.
- Rewatch Bonus: Due to the nature of the final twist, the kids' reactions make more sense when you rewatch the episode, notably how the kids are totally agreeing with Cartman's blood test, knowing that he wants to frame anybody (Kyle or Kenny) but them.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Kenny really did lie about not having lice but since he was the only one who still denies it when everyone else revealed that they have head lice in the end, the kids decide to still give him a sock bath since technically, he didn't tell the truth even if the initial reason became pointless.
- Serious Business: Having lice is treated as the worst disease to have. Clyde even lies about having AIDS when a girl asks why he's at the doctor.
- Shout-Out:
- The "sock bath" is taken from a scene in the first half of Full Metal Jacket where Marine recruits in boot camp actually use the socks and soap to beat "Pyle", the outcast recruit, since his mistakes during training mean more work for the rest of his platoon.
- The apocalyptic post-shampoo scene on Clyde's scalp in which a half-melted louse begs Travis for help is a parody of the toxic waste scene from RoboCop (1987).
- The blood test Cartman “devises” is from The Thing (1982). Kyle even calls him out for it. Adding to the reference, Cartman's also wearing MacReady's jacket.
