South Park season finale has boys heading to Canada in Oz homage
TORONTO (CP) – The boys of South Park are blaming Canada again. And the new prime minister.
In the 1999 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, foul-mouthed Canadian cartoon characters were blamed for the moral corruption of America’s youth, which led to a third world war. The movie included a musical number, Blame Canada, that even jokingly slagged Anne Murray.
Now, the new prime minister is the target in South Park’s season finale, an episode called Christmastime in Canada, which airs Feb. 13 on The Comedy Network.
Word gets out that Canada has a new leader and he’s causing big problems with his laws and policies. Just as Christmas is approaching, he’s demanded that all adopted children be returned to their birth parents.
One of the South Park kids is shipped off to Canada. The South Park gang is determined to save Christmas and they head north to the rescue.
The episode is an homage to The Wizard of Oz, the idea being that Canada is a foreign, bizarre place, said Matt Stone, one of the co-creators of the show.
“We really love the idea of treating Canada like Oz. . .and just asserting that Canada is this totally strange fantasy land,” Stone said.
The kids travel down Canada’s “only road”, though Quebec and Newfoundland, before eventually finding Parliament Hill and the prime minister.
Along the way they learn that French Canadians hate the prime minister because a new law has banned drinking wine; budget cuts have replaced the Mounties’ horses with sheep, and a Newfoundlander named Steve (who, of course, has the stereotypical accent) is upset that the PM has “sure screwed up things for Newfoundland. It just hasn’t been the same since he made sodomy illegal.”
Stone said the show’s creators and writers (one of them, Kyle McCulloch, is Canadian) get most of their jokes and ideas from misinformation and misconceptions about Canada.
“It never comes from a place of having any agenda, it just comes from a place of having fun,” Stone said. “What we love about referencing Canada so much is that it does perplex people and they’re like, ‘But why Canada?’
“And we do it because it’s just funny. It’s the same way Monty Python was always ripping on the stinking Belgians. It didn’t make any sense, that’s what’s so funny about it.”
Paul Martin is never named in the episode but there is a surprise revelation when the prime minister’s identity is revealed.
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