Original air date: 3/9/2005
Mr. Garrison gets an operation and becomes a woman; Kyle gets surgery to become tall and black so he can play basketball; Gerald decides he wants to be a dolphin.
"Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" contains the following tropes:
- An Aesop: Cosmetic surgery can change how you look to match how you feel, but it can't change what you are. Your best bet is probably to come to terms with your body the way it is.
- Artistic License – Medicine: There's a lot with regards to vaginoplasty and transgender surgeries.
- First, a person would have to be living as their gender for multiple years and would need two mental health letters from two different clinicians in order to be cleared for surgery.
- Second, vaginoplasty is never done while the patient is awake.
- Third, it takes weeks to recover from a vaginoplasty, Garrison would have been unable to return to work for at least two months.
- Art Shift: Clips of an actual sex-change operation are intercut with the animated Mr. Garrison undergoing the operation.
- Black Is Bigger in Bed: One of the enhancements Dr. Biber mentions while explaining how "negroplasty" works involves enlarging Kyle's penis.
- Body Horror:
- Played straight with both Kyle and Gerald's transracial and trans-species appearances, with clear stitches and bruises showing on both of them.
- Subverted with Mrs. Garrison's appearance after her surgery, with no physical deformities as such.
- Comically Small Demand: The cops will shoot any trespassers into the basketball game who don't pay the $2 entry fee.
- Dead Baby Comedy: Mrs. Garrison's extremely pro-abortion antics at Planned Parenthood. Not pro-choice but pro-abortion: she doesn't do any of the usual "I abhor abortion, but..." verbal gymnastics. She's genuinely enthusiastic about finally getting her chance to get knocked up so she can shred and queef out the unborn baby just like a woman.
- Didn't Think This Through: Mrs. Garrison should have realized that since Mr. Slave is gay, he probably wouldn't be attracted to Garrison after her identity change. As for Kyle's "negroplasty", he should have realized that that the surgery was cosmetic only, something that Dr. Biber states word for word at the end of the episode, and that the changes to his body wouldn't actually let him be better at playing basketball but would actually cause him to hurt himself while doing so.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The stadium guards shoot live ammunition at Mrs. Garrison and company for not paying the two dollar entry fee.
- Dream-Crushing Handicap: Kyle is dismayed to learn that he is far too short and nonathletic to be a star basketball player until he gets plastic surgery to make him into somebody who can.
- Easy Sex Change: While the time between Mrs. Garrison's surgery and showing off her new configuration isn't specified, it can't have been very long, considering Mr. Slave's surprise and dismay that night when she gets home.
- Height Angst: Kyle gets cut from the basketball team from being too short, and thus, he asks Dr. Biber to give him surgery to make him taller.
- I Can Live With That: Pretty much Mrs. Garrison's conclusion at the end.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: As mentioned, the stadium guards' aim sucks. (No, they weren't deliberately pointing their guns away from any of their targets.)
- Incompatible Orientation: Mrs. Garrison and Mr. Slave, since Mr. Slave doesn't like vaginas.
- Jerkass Has a Point:
- While stated in a thoroughly needlessly offensive way, the basketball coach is right to point out that Kyle is not physically built for basketball compared to the other players, since it was shown that Kyle clearly wasn't up to par with them.
- Gerald is openly transphobic and hypocritical throughout the episode, but he was right that Kyle's belief he's transracial is ridiculous.
- Let Me Get This Straight...: The officer taking the boys' statement at the end. To put it mildly, just about everything in their statement only Makes Sense In Context.Officer: So let me get this straight. That woman over there was trying to get to her balls, which were in the knees of a black child, whose father is a dolphin.
Stan: Yeah, that's basically it.
Officer: Sounds like an open and shut case. All right, let's head 'em out! - Magic Plastic Surgery: Like Garrison's sex change, though the times aren't specified, it doesn't seem to have taken very long for Kyle or his father to recover enough from their surgeries to start showing off their new configurations. Also, come the next episode, they don't even have any scars from Dr. Biber's evidently making good on his promise to reverse their surgeries at the end of this episode.
- Medium Blending: Garrison's sex change operation uses footage of a real, live-action sex change surgery.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Certainly Cartman's opinion when his taunting fails to stir up any disagreement from Kyle, given the fact that the basketball coach said the same thing earlier, and he actually had a good point.
- N-Word Privileges: Garrison uses the word "fag" three times in this episode (none of them in a Having a Gay Old Time way), which she can get away with doing because she's a homosexual himself... at least from a certain perspective.
- Portmanteau: The "Jewphin" and "Lawphin" lines.
- Racial Face Blindness: Gerald and Garrison were unable to determine which of the black basketball players was Kyle, despite the obvious clue of him wearing his green hat.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Dr. Biber never exactly volunteers any information that might dissuade his customers, but he's quite possibly the world's least aggressive salesman ever. He certainly doesn't have to twist anyone's arm to sell his services in this episode.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Gerald is right that Garrison is a terrible teacher, and taking Kyle out of the school would be a rational decision... if it weren't for the fact that he's only saying this for transphobic reasons.
- Status Quo Is God: For almost everyone; subverted by Mr. Garrison, however.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Mrs. Garrison had been very vocal about her identity as a woman since getting the sex change. And apparently the main reason she wanted the change was the excuse to have an abortion. It doesn’t occur to her until after she goes to said abortion clinic and the doctor bluntly tells her that since the surgery didn't actually give her any of the female reproductive system that it clicks for her that the sex change was actually cosmetic.
- Trans Equals Gay: Mrs. Garrison's opinion, which doesn't really stand up to scrutiny very well, in view of Mr. Slave's reaction.
- Trans Nature: Black basketball player for Kyle, and dolphin for his father Gerald.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Apparently, no one thinks it odd that every single one of the top basketball players from all the elementary schools in Colorado (except for Kyle) is a tall black kid. Only Kyle gets a second glance from the coach for being short and Jewish. Not only that, the police officer who takes the boys' statement sees everything in that statement as an "Open-and-Shut Case", and doesn't see anything strange out of context.
- Victory Is Boring: Having a Jew agree with his anti-Semitic claim that Jews can't play basketball really leaves Cartman at a loss for anything more to say.
- Wham Episode: Garrison gets a sex change and is now a woman. Unlike the other characters who got plastic surgery, she remains that way by the end of the episode. This lasts for 2 more seasons until Season 12's "Eek, a Penis!"
