Recap / South Park S 8 E 10 Pre School

Even as four-year-old preschoolers, the boys were anything but innocent and childlike.

Original air date: 11/10/2004

A bully who was sent to juvenile hall due to a misunderstanding is released and comes looking for revenge.

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This episode provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Stephen and Linda not only force Butters to head outside despite his anguish over Trent's return, but they outright ignore his pleas to be let back inside when he's about to be beat up by Trent himself.
  Linda: I just can't stand to hear him scream like that. I'm gonna go upstairs.
• Accomplice by Inaction: Butters is on Trent's revenge list for refusing to speak up on his behalf despite having witnessed that Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny were the ones responsible for setting Miss Claridge on fire.
• Adults Are Useless: Even by the usual standards of South Park's adults, this episode sees a steady parade of uselessness.
  • True to form, Stephen and Linda Stotch are completely indifferent to Butters pounding on the door and screaming to be let back in as Trent shows up to give him five years' worth of payback. Linda even says she can't stand to hear him screaming and... goes upstairs so she can't hear him.
  • When Trent shows up on the Broflovski doorstep with a switchblade knife and asks Sheila if Kyle can come out to play, Sheila simply says Kyle isn't home, and thinks nothing of the implied threat against her son.
  • The adults who approach Miss Claridge after her wheelchair's battery runs out of juice assume that she's lost her will to live and that her lack of responses to their questions is simply a case of her being standoffish, and they grumble and leave her where she is.
  • Overlapping with Police Are Useless, the police simply take the boys at their word when they blame Trent for Miss Claridge's misfortune twice — once after Miss Claridge is set on fire, and once when Cartman's careless taser use causes her wheelchair to go out of control.
• Affably Evil: Evil might be a strong word, but Trent is remarkably polite for someone so pissed off and seeking vengeance.
• All-Natural Fire Extinguisher: Invoked. In a Flashback we learn that the boys got Trent Boyett sent to juvenile hall because he started a fire at their request. They asked him to start a fire so they could pee it out. It didn't work, and the fire got out of control.
• And I Must Scream: Due to her horrifically burnt state, poor Miss Claridge has no way of communication other than saying yes or no using light and accompanying tone on her wheelchair (once for "yes", twice for "no"). Plus, the fact that her wheelchair is battery-operated, and at one point gets stranded in the middle of the street because she literally had no way to get help.
• Anti-Villain: Trent is after the boys, but only because he spent five years in juvie after they framed him.
• Apathetic Citizens: Everyone starts ignoring Miss Claridge when the latter's mobility chair battery wears out, incorrectly assuming she just stopped giving a shit.
• Ass Shove: While Trent's attack on the lead sixth grader is not shown, the doctor explains that it involved a telephone, Tabasco sauce, and the lead sixth grader's anus.
• Asshole Victim: Though Trent is framed for a crime he didn't commit, his history as a bully and a troublemaker made it very easy for the boys to blame him. When they approach Trent as pre-schoolers, he's busy smashing another kid's hand with a hammer to get him to say "uncle."
• Ax-Crazy: Trent is quite unhinged, as he puts multiple people in the hospital for the sake of revenge.
• Bait-and-Switch: As Butters is screaming at the door, Linda sounds concerned for his well-being enough to let him in, but is actually going upstairs to ignore his screams.
• Big "WHAT?!": Kenny's reaction to Stan telling him and Kyle that Trent's being released from juvenile hall.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Cartman tries to spoon-feed Stan how to protest, "But mom..." when they try to get a picture of Sharon topless to give to the sixth graders.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When Trent Boyett is first released from juvie, the warden gives him a Crayola 8-pack with a crayon sharpener, a pair of scissors, a blue marble, and a switch-blade knife.
• Brick Joke: The nipples painted on Cartman's buttocks to make them resemble breasts.
• Bully Brutality: According to the doctor, Trent inflicted a bunch of torture methods on Butters and the sixth graders that left them hospitalized.
  Doctor: (about Butters) He received a massive snuggie, his underwear pulled up so high it nearly killed him. He also received two Indian sunburns on his forearms, a charlie horse on the thigh, and a second-degree titty twister. And from the damage to his head area, it appears he was also given a swirly, a colossal one. It also looks like he received a noogie, and a Polish bike ride.
• Callousness Towards Emergency: Butters' parents refuse to let him back inside when he's about to be beat up by Trent.
• Censored for Comedy: According to Trey Parker, Trent Boyett doesn't actually swear in the flashback, rather they had the young actor playing him say something less offensive like "dummies" and then bleeped it to make it sound as though he said something more offensive. Parker even had to reassure his mother that they weren't making children swear.
• Comically Missing the Point: The police officer misinterprets Miss Claridge's two beeps (which means "no") as "yes, yes".
• Continuity Cavalcade: When Trent confronts the boys in the episode's climax, he references their adventures from several past episodes, including "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo", "Mecha-Streisand", and "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants".
• Create Your Own Villain: The Boys did this with Trent. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny asked him to create a fire so that they can be the heroic firemen to put it out with urine. To be fair, Trent was already pretty mean to begin with, but it was the boys' half-truth regarding Trent starting the fire that went out of control and Butters (who witnessed the exchange) deciding not to defend Trent out of fear of being grounded by his parents that lead Trent to vow revenge against all five of them.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Trent easily beats up the Sixth Graders off-screen.
• Delayed Reaction: It takes a few seconds for Cartman to process the news that Trent Boyett's been released from juvenile hall, but he understands exactly what it means.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • The boys encourage Trent to start a real fire so they could put it out. It goes out of control and leaves Miss Claridge permanently crippled.
  • The boys also didn't think of what Trent would do in five years after they threw him under the bus. They do this again at the end of the episode.
• Dirty Coward:
  • The boys, big time. After allowing Trent Boyett to go to juvenile hall as an indirect result of their actions as toddlers, they first recruit a dozen sixth graders, and then Stan's sister, to fight him rather than face him themselves. When Trent does catch up to the boys, Cartman pulls a taser on him as a last resort. Finally, given one more opportunity to own up to their actions, they again allow Trent to be sent back to juvie.
  • Butters, to a lesser extent. He refused to tell anyone the truth of what happened in pre-school, allowing Trent to face the full consequences by himself rather than rock the boat and upset his friends.
• The Dreaded: Upon hearing that Trent has been released from juvenile hall, the boys' reactions are ones of jaw-dropping panic, knowing that their bully has had five long years to plot his long-overdue revenge. Butters runs screaming from the school and attempts to hide in his bedroom, for all the good it does him. The sixth graders, notably, do not share in their instinctive fear of Trent and wind up hospitalized.
  Cartman: He's gonna come for us, you guys. We are dead men.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Trent is horrified by Cartman accidentally crashing Miss Claridge into a gas store and causing an explosion.
• Fate Worse than Death: Miss Claridge was burnt so badly that she can only move around in a motorized wheelchair rigged to beep once for "yes" and twice for "no", her only form of communication.
• Flashback: In the first act of the episode, we see how Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny, and Butters ended up on Trent Boyett's hit list. Five years earlier, the main quartet, then in preschool, persuaded him to set a fire which they tried and failed to put out by urinating on it, and when their teacher, Miss Claridge, tried to put out the fire, she was engulfed by the flames. When Trent was blamed for the fire, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny denied all responsibility, while Butters, who also knew the truth, said he didn't want to get involved, leaving Trent to serve a five-year sentence in juvenile hall.
• Green-Eyed Monster: A secondary motivation for Trent's attacks is that he envied the life the boys had. To Trent, they cheated him of those adventures and took away the life he was supposed to have.
• Here We Go Again!: The Boys get Trent arrested again and celebrate another period free from his wrath which again is only for 5 years.
• Homage: The episode's plot is similar to that of Cape Fear; both feature a paroled convict seeking revenge against the people responsible for getting him put away years earlier.
• Horrifying the Horror:
  • The prospect of Trent getting out of juvenile hall scares Cartman, the kid who chopped up Scott Tenorman's parents and fed them to him in a bowl of chili.
  • Cartman's mishandling of the taser causes Miss Claridge's electric wheelchair to overcharge and crash into various hazards and storefronts. Trent is visibly mortified by this, even flinching and screaming as things escalate.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Shelly only promises to help Stan because she wants to be the only one to bully him.
  Shelly: No juvenile hall turd is gonna kill my brother. That's my job.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Miss Claridge tries to put out the fire with a blanket instead of using a fire extinguisher or calling the fire department. When she catches on fire, she doesn't drop to the floor and roll around quickly, but runs around waving her arms. Given that Colorado public schools mandate fire drills, how does Miss Claridge, a teacher in South Park, Colorado, not know the proper fire procedure?
  • Even after Trent sent multiple people to the hospital in his quest for revenge, the boys decide to throw him under the bus again and do not worry about him returning in another five years.
• Ignored Epiphany: The boys try to make amends to Miss Claridge and confess to what they did in preschool (though mostly because Shelly offered them protection if they did), but when Trent shows up and Miss Claridge gets injured again, they go back to shifting the blame to Trent.
• Informed Attractiveness: The sixth graders want Stan to give them a picture of his mother's breasts, although she is depicted with a normal figure (although in "Lil' Crime Stoppers", Butters did visualize them to help him get a semen sample).
• Insane Troll Logic: Having been locked up in jail for 5 years, Trent thinks that the boys getting sent to Afghanistan, going on Christmas adventures with a talking piece of Christmas poo, and having to fight a giant mechanical Barbra Streisand constituted stealing the "fun" life he deserved. Granted, it proves how much the show is set in a Crapsack World, but it's also considered to be much better than rotting in jail for 5 years over false implications.
• Jerkass Ball: Stan, Kyle and Kenny are at their worst in this episode, blaming Trent for a crime they were guilty for so they could avoid getting punished. By the end of the episode, they haven't learned their lesson either, as they pin another crime on Trent and have him taken away to juvenile hall again.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Despite their overall awful treatment of him, Stephen and Linda make a good point that Butters cooping himself in his room for days on end is unhealthy for a boy his age.
  • Shelly tells the boys that they can't run from their past and must make amends with their teacher.
  • When Cartman threatens him with a taser, a frustrated Trent breaks from his Unstoppable Rage briefly to make the point the boys would be better taking their punishment and getting it over with, rather than spending their whole lives ineffectually trying to hide or fight him off.
• Karma Houdini: The boys get away from being arrested twice, with Trent getting arrested instead (Justified the second time in that the police misheard Miss Claridge saying no as "Yes yes").
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Cartman does get some form of punishment where the sixth graders assume his butt cheeks with the drawn on nipples are boobs and they carry him away to behind the bushes so they can masturbate to him.
• Kick the Dog: When Butters begs to be let inside due to Trent's return, Linda decides to go upstairs and ignore him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Trent Boyett gets arrested twice throughout the episode.
• Misplaced Retribution: Zigzagged when Trent beats up Butters. While Butters had nothing to do with the incident that got him in trouble, he still refused to come to his defense. Unlike the boys, though, he actually had a good reason out of fear of getting grounded for it by his Abusive Parents.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Linda, at least, realizes that they shouldn't have ignored Butters's pleas while he's bedridden.
• Never My Fault: The boys keep blaming Trent and get him sent to jail for something that was their idea.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Trent gives one to Butters and the sixth graders that landed them all in the hospital.
• Noodle Implements: While beating the crap out of the sixth graders, Trent gave one of them a "Texas Chili Bowl", which involves Tabasco sauce, a telephone and the anus.
• Once for Yes, Twice for No: Miss Claridge's wheelchair allows her to blink a light in this fashion. When the policeman asked her if Trent was to blame for the second accident, he interprets her bleeps as "yes, yes!"
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Cartman is informed Trent is getting released, he is terrified.
• Police Are Useless: To a beneficial extent — at least as far as the boys are concerned — because they just take Cartman's word for it that Trent should be held responsible ("Trent Boyett is a liar, sir!"). Additionally, when a policeman asks Miss Claridge if Trent is the cause of the accident, he interprets her beeps as "yes, yes."
• Shout-Out:
  • Miss Claridge's mode of transportation is a reference to Christopher Pike's wheelchair in the two-part Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Menagerie".
  • The shop Miss Claridge crashes into has the tagline "Propane and Propane Accessories," a reference to King of the Hill.
  • The prison guard giving Trent back his possessions is likely modeled after a similar scene from The Blues Brothers.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Miss Claridge decided to use a blanket to put out the fire Trent and the boys started instead of using a fire extinguisher, setting herself on fire. For bonus points, she just flails around than doing the tuck-and-roll cover. Though she wasn't killed, she was left permanently crippled and confined to a mobility chair.
  • The boys not worrying about Trent five years prior might be understandable, but throwing him under the bus again even after he proved what he was capable of just reaches new heights of stupidity.
• The Worf Effect: The sixth graders were easily defeated by Trent all by himself.

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