TV Review: South Park 13.09 – “Butters’ Bottom Bitch” and 13.10 – “W.T.F.”
Butters receives his first kiss on the school playground.
Episode: South Park 13.09 – “Butters’ Bottom Bitch” and 13.10 – “W.T.F.”
Original Air Dates: October 14, 2009 and October 21, 2009
Season thirteen of South Park shifted focus briefly two weeks ago with episode 13.09, “Butters’ Bottom Bitch,” an episode about Butters in which he inadvertently starts South Park’s most successful prostitution ring.
It all begins when Cartman and some of the other 4th graders from South Park Elementary discover that Butters has never kissed a girl, and after hanging their classmate from a tetherball pole and beating on him for a while, they seek help from a girl who sells kisses on the school playground during afternoon recess. After he “becomes a man” by kissing a girl, Butters realizes that he’s going to have to start paying bills and have adult responsibilities — meaning that he needs to find a way to make some money.
In one of his more brilliant moments, Butters decides to go into business with the little girl from the playground and start a “kissing company.” Long story short, the underlying theme of “Butters’ Bottom Bitch” deals with the idea of taking things too far: Butters’s “kissing company” turns into a highly profitable prostitution ring involving some of the city’s bigwigs, the officer who goes undercover for the South Park Police Department’s investigation into the prostitution ring turns into a full-blown cross-dressing whore, and Butters turns into a hardcore pimp — without knowing it, of course. “Butters’ Bottom Bitch” has some serious laughs and is runner-up to my favorite Butters-focused South Park episode, 12.14 – “The Ungroundable.” Viewers who are uncomfortable with poorly constructed depictions of human bodily fluids beware, because there are several “gross-out” moments in this episode.
Butters attends a Pimping convention to learn some tricks of the trade.
In true Butters fashion, the episode ends with Butters having a moral revelation and giving up his life of pimping bitches. While the story is cute, the highlight of the episode is the last collar that the undercover officer from SPPD makes… over a year later. Now that’s some dedication.
“Butters’ Bottom Bitch” was followed by last week’s episode of South Park, episode 13.10 – “W.T.F.” Everything is back to normal with Butters (do you know what I am saying?), and the episode opens with the boys at a WWE match in Denver, Colorado. It’s not clear how Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Butters, Token, and Jimmy ended up at the match, but it is clear that the boys haven’t spent much time watching “professional wrestling” before, because they are so blown away by John Cena and the other wrestlers that they take it upon themselves to sign up for the school’s wrestling club so they can be just like their new heroes.
Cartman as "Bad Irene," an 8-year-old girl addicted to abortions.
When the boys discover that “real” wrestling involves wearing skin-tight wrestling suits and rolling around on the floor with other boys, they decide to make their own wrestling league, the Wrestling Takedown Federation, or W.T.F., and start entertaining the local townspeople. Rather than focusing on the violent side of wrestling, like we might expect, the boys are more interested in creating the most convoluted, shocking storylines that they possibly can. While these stories are somewhat entertaining and, as always, highly irreverent, it seems like Trey Parker and Matt Stone missed a great opportunity for some 4th-grader-on-4th-grader violence. It would’ve been hilarious if someone like Jimmy kicked Cartman’s ass (like Wendy did in episode 12.09 – “Breast Cancer Show Ever”) or if something horrific happened to Butters (similar to the season 8 premiere, 8.01 – “Good Times with Weapons”). Instead, we have Cartman dressing up as “Bad Irene” and “Rad Russian,” Butters playing “Triceratops,” and Stan as “Stan the Man” while the elementary school wrestling coach has a nervous breakdown because South Park citizens prefer WWE wrestling to what he calls “real wrassling.”
Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Stan, Token, and Jimmy dressed for W.T.F.
Although I wasn’t disappointed by the last two episodes of South Park, “Butters’ Bottom Bitch” and “W.T.F.” were neither particularly good nor particularly terrible.
For more information on South Park, be sure to visit SouthParkStudios.com, the show’s official Web site, and see the next new episode of South Park on Comedy Central this Wednesday, Oct. 28th at 10/9c.
Rating: 3 / 5 Stars (Each)
