Pinewood Derby (South Park)

Plot

Randy Marsh, determined to make sure his son Stan win the annual statewide pinewood derby, slips an object into the back of the car to give it an advantage. Stan learns from a news report that the object is a superconducting magnet, stolen from the Large Hadron Collider by Randy disguised as Princess Leia. During the finals, Randy coaxes Stan to lie to the judges and say he used only the parts in the approved pinewood derby kit. Stan wins first place when his car reaches warp speed, shooting off the track and into space, where it is later found by an alien species. Soon after, a spaceship lands in South Park, but its pilot is a bank robber named "Baby-Fark McGee-zax" who demands that Stan and Randy build him a new warp drive while holding the entire planet at gunpoint. Everyone believes Stan and his father can create the drive using only the approved pinewood derby kit.

Stan tries to persuade Randy to tell the truth about the stolen magnet, but Randy refuses in order to avoid embarrassment. As the pair works on the warp drive, an Intergalactic Police ship approaches Earth; McGee-zax cloaks his ship and drags Stan out of sight as a hostage, leaving the townspeople to divert the officers' questions. The officers say that McGee-zax stole a large sum of space cash, but no one admits to seeing him, and the officers leave. Randy then provides a diversion for McGee-zax while Stan, at Randy's insistence, stabs him to death with a shank. McGee-zax's ship is found to contain the stolen space cash, but instead of returning it, Randy persuades everyone to divide it among themselves. Randy, in contact with all world leaders, buys other countries' silence by giving them a share. Four days later, the officers return to South Park. They now know that McGee-zax landed here and Randy tells them of his death, but everyone denies finding any space cash.

Randy tries to keep other countries from spending the space cash since that might alert the Intergalactic Police; however, this fails when Mexico spends its money on 32 hospitals and 7 water parks, and China spends it on 48 soccer stadiums. Learning that Finland is about to divulge to the cops, Randy persuades the rest of the world to wipe Finland out in a nuclear missile attack. The Intergalactic Police pay a third visit to ask about the strike, but the South Park residents fake disbelief. By this time, Stan has had enough of the deception, so he tells the truth about cheating in the pinewood derby and returns his trophy; however, no one else on the planet comes clean about the space cash. McGee-zax emerges from the officers' ship, having only faked his death. He reveals that he is really Kevern Zaksor, ambassador to new world testing, and that the entire chain of events was a test to see if Earth was worthy of joining the intergalactic community but humans proven to be too selfish, greedy, chaotic and deceitful. As punishment for failing, the Earth and the Moon are isolated from the rest of the Universe (although it appears to have disappeared later on). The episode ends with Randy saying, "Well that sucks."

Production

"Pinewood Derby" was written and directed by series co-creator Trey Parker. The episode first aired on April 15, 2009, in the United States, and was rated TV-MA L in the United States. The theme of the episode was a warning about the dangers of greed, lying, and cheating.

Reception

In its original American broadcast, "Pinewood Derby" was watched by 2.78 million overall households, according to the Nielsen ratings, making it the second most-watched Comedy Central production of the week, behind the Ron White stand-up special "Behavioral Problems", which was seen by 3.36 million households.

The episode received mixed reviews. Josh Modell of The A.V. Club said the episode was "boring" and "unfunny", and was particularly disappointing following the episode "Fishsticks" the previous week. Modell said, "South Park episodes don't get much lazier or uninspired than this one. It was like half an idea stretched out forever and ever, and with very little payoff." Carlos Delgado of If Magazine said the episode plot was too silly and lacked laughs: "All in all, I was left feeling a little cheated. "Pinewood Derby" wasn’t funny, it was just weird." Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly said the episode was told with "the warp-speed storytelling style that is making this season one of South Park's best". Travis Fickett of IGN said he was happy to see an episode centered on Randy Marsh, who he said is an excellent character; Fickett said of "Pinewood Derby", "This isn't a great episode but its fast-paced lunacy in the South Park tradition and most of the genre tropes it riffs on are dead on."

Mexican flag controversy

"Pinewood Derby" drew considerable media attention in Mexico when it originally aired due to its depiction of Mexican president Felipe Calderón. The episode was scheduled to air in Spanish on MTV Latin America on February 8, 2010, and was advertised extensively for one week prior to the broadcast date. However, a few hours before the scheduled time, the network decided not to air the episode and replaced it with the episode "The Ring", allegedly due to its depiction of Calderón irritating the international community and frivolously spending the space cash on water parks. This depiction was said to differ from the image Mexico's Ministry of the Interior sought to present of Calderón, whom they dubbed the "Employment president". MTV said the South Park creators did not get a special permit needed to broadcast an image of Mexico's flag, and MTV executives said they did not want to risk angering fans by altering the image. The explanation was met with skepticism by Mexican South Park fans, some of whom accused MTV of unfair censorship. MTV later announced it would broadcast the episode on April 4 after the network was granted permission from the Minister of the Interior to air it. When asked to comment on the episode getting pulled, Stone said, "That's so far away from us. We read that on the news, too, along with everyone else."

Home release

"Pinewood Derby", along with the thirteen other episodes from South Park's thirteenth season, were released on a three-disc DVD set and two-disc Blu-ray set in the United States on March 16, 2010. The sets included brief audio commentaries by Parker and Stone for each episode, a collection of deleted scenes, and a special mini-feature Inside Xbox: A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of South Park Studios, which discussed the process behind animating the show with Inside Xbox host Major Nelson.