Trapper Keeper (South Park)

Plot

Kyle comes to school with a Dawson's Creek Trapper Keeper. He is joined by Cartman who reveals he has a special, advanced Dawson's Creek Trapper Keeper Ultra Keeper Futura S 2000, which has incredibly advanced computerized features including a television, a music player with voice recognition, OnStar and the ability to automatically hybrid itself to any electronic peripheral device. He purchased it to make Kyle envious; around the same time, a mysterious white man going by the pseudonym Bill Cosby appears and begins to ask about Cartman's Trapper Keeper, which the man then attempts to steal. He succeeds by buying Cartman's trust, despite Cartman saying "I'm not supposed to have male friends over 30; I kinda got screwed over on that once." When "Bill Cosby" is caught by Officer Barbrady and Cartman, he explains his actions: the Trapper Keeper binder is destined to gain sentience and hybrid into a supercomputer to conquer the world in the future and wipe out all traces of humanity. Cosby himself is a cyborg from the future named BSM-471, sent back in time to destroy the binder before it could rise to power; Cosby manages to destroy it, but Cartman buys another one and refuses to allow it to be destroyed.

Meanwhile, Mr. Garrison has been demoted to a kindergarten teacher, and his class holds an election for class president. Kyle's brother Ike, who has been admitted to kindergarten two years early because of his supposed intelligence (despite not being able to speak right), runs against a boy named Filmore, the result being a tie that would be broken by the vote of a little girl named Flora, who at first couldn't decide whom to pick out of shyness. After she picks Ike, Filmore's side demand recounts and then involve Rosie O'Donnell, who comes to protest that Filmore (her nephew) has not won. While this is going on, Stan, Kyle and Kenny have gone with their robotic companion to Cartman's house to convince his mother to help them, but she goes off with Bill Cosby to have sex; Cartman's Trapper Keeper, meanwhile, integrates itself into Cartman's computer and most of his belongings, and then absorbs Cartman himself, transforming into a giant, cybernetic blobby monster that retains most of Carman's features. It kills Kenny and destroys the house, and sets off to Cheyenne Mountain to absorb the secret military base's computer, and if so, it will become unstoppable.

Kyle sneaks into the huge Cartman-Trapper Keeper hybrid through a ventilation pipe, but before he can disable it the Trapper Keeper incapacitates him. Rosie O'Donnell appears in front of the Trapper Keeper and yells at it for blocking the road. The Trapper Keeper then absorbs her, but infusing with her ultimately makes the behemoth sick. Kyle is freed and disconnects the Trapper Keeper's CPU, and the beast returns to its powerless state. The Trapper Keeper's destruction causes Bill Cosby to disappear and Stan tells Cartman to thank Kyle, who just saved his life. Cartman starts to thank Kyle just as the episode ends, but the credits roll before he can finish and cuts him off at "Kyle..." As for the kindergarteners, after countless lawyers come in and legal forms and endless meetings, Filmore concedes because "this game is stupid." With Ike as president, the kids decide to go fingerpaint, much to Mr. Garrison's delight.

Background

The episode is a parody of the controversy surrounding the 2000 United States presidential election on November 7, 2000. State results tallied on election night gave 246 electoral votes to Republican candidate George W. Bush and 255 to Democratic nominee Al Gore, with New Mexico (5), Oregon (7), and Florida (25) too close to call that evening. Mathematically, Florida's 25 electoral votes became the key to an election win, despite the fact that both New Mexico and Oregon were declared in favor of Gore over the next few days. After an intense recount process, Bush officially won Florida's electoral votes and as a result, the entire presidential election. There was a disagreement over who won Florida's 25 electoral votes, the recount that happened there, and the uncommon event that the winner got fewer popular votes than the loser.

Production

"Trapper Keeper" was written by South Park co-creator Trey Parker when he, Matt Stone, and a group of friends visited Lake Powell. It is one of the many South Park episodes that parodies a current event. The main plot of the episode involving the Trapper Keeper was written before the election, but the subplot is a parody of the controversy surrounding the election's outcome. "Trapper Keeper" did not originally feature the election storyline, only a subplot about Ike attending his first day of kindergarten.

Parker and Stone said the presidential election controversy was "kids' stuff", and that is what they were trying to show with the episode. Stone commented that "it makes perfect sense because everything is just so childish anyway, the way people are acting about the election and the way candidates are. Usually you try to satirize something by taking it to the extreme. But it was actually kind of hard to satirize because it's just so stupid you can't even take it to an extreme." Anne Garefino, executive producer of South Park, said that when they applied the presidential election process to kindergarten, it "finally [made] sense." Stone added that the story-line "kind of wrote itself. When you put this same situation in with kindergartners, everyone's actions kind of make a lot more sense."

The voices of the kindergarteners were provided by actual children, including the son of one of the producers on the show. Parker and Stone said they had fun recording the kindergarten scenes, because "instead of adults doing the voices of the kids, it was so funny to hear a little kid actually doing it." The episode was completed at approximately nine in the morning on the day it aired, November 15, 2000, only days after the election was over. Parker and Stone worked with a team of 70 animators and computer engineers to get the episode finished in time.

Reception

Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz of The Star-Ledger thought it was "terrific, especially the vote for kindergarten class president, and the recount-recount-recount bit." Sepinwall added that he was "pretty amazed myself that the South Park guys were able to put together such a sharp election satire so quickly. I called up Comedy Central and found out that they do all the animation in-house on computers that allow them to work much faster than shows like The Simpsons, which contract out all the animation to firms in Korea that take months to complete an episode." Bill Gibron of DVD Verdict described "Trapper Keeper" as "a clever attack on the entire Florida voting debacle in the 2000 election—the show's take on the entire childish nature of the fighting is fantastic. As a Terminator knock-off 'Trapper Keeper' is a lot of fun. But adding in the political element really increases the deliciously derogatory tone."

DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson characterized "Trapper Keeper" as "a clever riff" on Terminator and the controversy of the 2000 election. He thought both plots "work really well, as the show tosses in lots of cool little moments. [...] It's funny and smart, and a good [episode]." IGN's David Galindo called the episode "great", and Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Lisa Davis named Mr. Garrison line "You're all acting like a bunch of kids!" the "best line of the week".

"Trapper Keeper" originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on November 15, 2000. Though a rerun of the episode aired in the middle of the night on WPIX because of offensive content, a The Star-Ledger critic did not think it was "that dirty to begin with." The episode was included in the UMD South Park: When Technology Attacks that was released on October 11, 2005 for the PlayStation Portable. Other episodes included in the collection were "Best Friends Forever", "Cancelled", "Simpsons Already Did It", and "Towelie".