Original air date: 12/16/1998
The boys are forced to write a current events paper to save Mr. Garrison's job. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny are grouped together with Tweek, a jittery child, who suggests that the presentation be on the "Underpants Gnomes", tiny men who sneak into his house and steal his underwear. Meanwhile, a local cafe, run by Tweek's parents', is being threatened by Harbucks, a big-time corporate coffee shop, and Tweek's father uses the boys' current events assignment to rally people into shutting down Harbucks.
"Gnomes" contains examples of:
- Armor-Piercing Question: Mrs. Tweek asks the townspeople if they even bothered to try Harbucks coffee.
- Caffeine Failure: The boys are introduced to coffee by Tweek's father while working on a school presentation. Pretty soon they're bouncing off the walls; one Time Skip later, they've crashed completely and Cartman is throwing up coffee on the floor.
- Cassandra Truth: Tweek insists that the Gnomes exist, but nobody believes him and he's increasingly terrified that he's going crazy until the boys see them too.
- Groin Attack: Mr. Tweek has increasingly colorful comparisons for the relative positions of "they" (his corporate competition) and his balls.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Being a big corporation does not automatically make a company evil, and that being a small family-owned business does not automatically make it good. While the episode doesn't hesitate to portray the representative for the big corporation as being extremely obnoxious and the small coffee shop owner opposing them as being quite likable and persuasive, it's made clear at the end that big corporations tend to get big in the first place because they make superior products ("25 percent less raw sewage taste!"), while protectionist laws like the one the small coffee shop owner is lobbying South Park to pass are demonstrated to be a terrible idea and the coffee shop owner himself is revealed to be smarmy, manipulative, and self-serving.
- Hidden Depths: The Underpants Gnomes know heaps about big corporations and teach the boys why they're good in exchange for underpants.
- Jerkass:
- Mr. Garrison threatens the boys more than once throughout the episode.
- Mr. Tweek uses the boys for his own agenda without remorse.
- Jerkass Has a Point: The Harbucks representative might be a slimy and cutthroat businessman, but he's correct in that his company has just as much of a right to set up a coffeehouse in South Park as anyone. He also says that Tweek's coffee tastes like three-day-old diarrhea, which other resident's echo.
- Keet: The boys when they've been drinking coffee until they end up crashing around 3:30 in the morning.
- Manipulative Bastard: Mr. Tweek manipulates the boys and forces them into a political debate they have no real understanding or proper opinion of just to keep a business competitor from moving in.
- Missing Steps Plan: The Underpants Gnomes plan to steal underwear and then somehow profit from it. The "Step Two" is never discussed, with the Gnomes staying silent or drawing a blank before moving on, thus handwaving it. Also the former Trope Namer, and a
famous enough scene that "Step 3: Profit" and "Underpants Gnomes" are terms frequently used in real life to describe this trope. - No OSHA Compliance: The cave where the Underpants Gnomes work has shoddy railways that can easily allow a mine cart to fall off them. Kenny becomes crushed by one.
- Oh, Crap!: The Underpants Gnomes are horrified when Kenny is squished. The boys not so much.
- Parental Neglect: It's hinted that Tweek's parents feeding Tweek lots of coffee is why he's so jittery and they're oblivious to this and just keep feeding him coffee. South Park: The Stick of Truth implies he is actually addicted to the meth his parents put in the coffee since Tweek operates the brewing machinery.
- Predatory Business: Subverted. Most of the episode involves a small coffee shop owner, Mr. Tweek, trying to keep Harbucks from imposing on his business, including forcing the four main characters to rally the town around him. Then it turns out that Harbucks actually does make better coffee than Tweek's when the townspeople finally get around to tasting it, and Mr. Tweek is even offered a good job working there but he declines and then jokes about selling his son to slavery.
- Precision F-Strike: Kenny says “Fuck you” to Cartman when he tells Tweek that Kenny’s family are perfectly happy being poor, and on welfare.
- Properly Paranoid: A twitchy, easily-panicked child swears that gnomes are stealing his underwear... and he's absolutely correct.
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand: The Underwear Gnomes all think there's a step two to their plan and that one of them is keeping it secret, when it reality, none of them have a clue.
- Tastes Like Feet: The coffee at Tweek Bros. Coffeehouse is described as tasting like sewage, though that doesn't stop people from going back there for more.
- Take That!:
- Mrs. Tweek says that by trying to use the boys to push their agenda, they're no better than Rob Reiner.
- The whole Harbucks plot is also a Take That! at both sides of the "big corporation vs. small business" argument and shows just how bad both sides can be.
- Tweek's coffee habit is a possible jab at ADHD meds, which are indeed stimulants for those who don't have ADHD (and are often abused for that very reason). This is even lampshaded, as Tweek's mom insists that his twitching has nothing to do with all the coffee he drinks; rather, he allegedly has ADHD.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Kenny is crushed by a mine cart after it goes off the rails. Stan and Kyle breeze through their usual response so they can learn about business from the Underpants Gnomes.
- Token Good Teammate: Kyle is the only person to show any concern for Tweek's well-being throughout the whole episode calling out both his parents and the gnomes for what they're doing to his mental health.
- Would Hurt a Child: "If I do get fired, Mr. Hat is gonna smack you bitches up."
