Trapper Keeper (South Park episode)
Encyclopedia
"Trapper Keeper" is the twelfth episode of the fourth season
South Park (season 4)
Season four of South Park, an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, began airing on April 5, 2000. The fourth season concluded after 17 episodes on December 20, 2000.- Episodes :-External links:...

 of the animated television series South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...

, and the 60th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 on November 15, 2000. In the episode, a man from the future wants Cartman's
Eric Cartman
Eric Theodore Cartman is a fictional character in the American animated television series South Park. One of four main characters, along with Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick, he is generally referred to within the series by his last name...

 new Trapper Keeper
Trapper Keeper
Trapper Keeper is a brand of loose-leaf binder created by Mead. Popular with students in the United States and parts of Latin America from the 1970s to the 1990s, it featured sliding plastic rings , folders and pockets to keep schoolwork and papers, and a wraparound flap with a Velcro closure...

, while Mr. Garrison's kindergarten class holds an election for class president with confusing results. The subplot with the class president election is a parody of the 2000 United States presidential election
United States presidential election, 2000
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush , and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President....

 and the controversy surrounding its outcome. Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics.

Plot

Kyle
Kyle Broflovski
Kyle Broflovski is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by co-creator Matt Stone. Kyle is one of the show's four central characters, along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman...

 comes to school with a Dawson's Creek
Dawson's Creek
Dawson's Creek is an American teen drama television series which debuted on January 20, 1998, on The WB Television Network and was produced by Sony Pictures Television. The show is set in the fictional seaside town of Capeside, Massachusetts, and in Boston, Massachusetts, during the later seasons...

 Trapper Keeper
Trapper Keeper
Trapper Keeper is a brand of loose-leaf binder created by Mead. Popular with students in the United States and parts of Latin America from the 1970s to the 1990s, it featured sliding plastic rings , folders and pockets to keep schoolwork and papers, and a wraparound flap with a Velcro closure...

. He is joined by Cartman
Eric Cartman
Eric Theodore Cartman is a fictional character in the American animated television series South Park. One of four main characters, along with Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick, he is generally referred to within the series by his last name...

 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 and the ability to automatically hybrid itself to any electronic peripheral device. He purchased it to make Kyle jealous
JEALOUS
"Jealous" is the first single by Dir En Grey and was released on May 10, 1998. The music videos of the title track and the B-side "Unknown・・・Despair・・・a Lost" are featured on the VHS Mousou Toukakugeki. A piano-vocal duet version of "Jealous" was later included on the "[KR] Cube" single...

; around the same time, a mysterious white man going by the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...

 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.
Cartman Joins NAMBLA
"Cartman Joins NAMBLA" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the animated television series South Park, and the 53rd episode of the series overall...

" 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
Cyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...

 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
Herbert Garrison
Mr. Herbert Garrison is a recurring character in the American animated television series South Park. He is voiced by Trey Parker. For the first eight seasons of the series, the character was known as Mr. Garrison but underwent sex reassignment surgery in the season 9 episode "Mr. Garrison's Fancy...

 has been demoted to a kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

 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 intelligence, runs against a boy named Filmore, the result being a tie that would be broken by the vote of a little girl named Flora. Unfortunately, she cannot decide whom to pick. After she picks Ike, the children demand recounts and then involve Rosie O'Donnell
Rosie O'Donnell
Roseann "Rosie" O'Donnell is an American stand-up comedian, actress, author and television personality. She has also been a magazine editor and continues to be a celebrity blogger, LGBT rights activist, television producer and collaborative partner in the LGBT family vacation company R Family...

, who comes to protest that Filmore (her nephew) has not won. While this is going on, Stan
Stan Marsh
Stanley Randall "Stan" Marsh is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by and loosely based on series co-creator Trey Parker. Stan is one of the show's four central characters, along with his friends Kyle Broflovski, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman...

, Kyle and Kenny
Kenny McCormick
Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is one of the four central characters along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman. His oft-muffled and indiscernible speech—the result of his parka hood covering his...

 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, becoming a twisted bio-mechanical blob monster in a vaguely Cartman shape. It kills Kenny and destroys the house, and sets off to Cheyenne Mountain
Cheyenne Mountain
Cheyenne Mountain is a mountain located just outside the southwest side of Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S., and is home to the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station and its Cheyenne Mountain Directorate, formerly known as the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center .Throughout the Cold War and...

 to absorb a secret military base's computer that will make it unstoppable.

Kyle sneaks in to the gigantic Cartman-Trapper Keeper through a ventilation pipe, but before he can disable it the creature incapacitates him. Soon Rosie O'Donnell appears and yells at the Trapper Keeper for blocking the road. The creature then absorbs her, but it appears infusing with her made Trapper Keeper sick. Kyle is freed and disconnects Trapper Keeper's CPU, and the beast returns to its powerless state. The creature'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 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
Fingerpaint
Fingerpaint is a kind of paint intended to be applied with the fingers; it typically comes in pots and is used by small children, though it has occasionally been used by adults either to teach art to children, or for their own use....

, 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
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 candidate George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 and 255 to Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 nominee Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

, with New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

 (5), Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

 (7), and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 (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
Trey Parker
Trey Parker is an American animator, screenwriter, director, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of the television series South Park along with his creative partner and best friend Matt Stone.Parker started his film career in 1992, making a holiday short...

 when he, Matt Stone
Matt Stone
Matthew Richard "Matt" Stone is an American screenwriter, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with creative partner and best friend, Trey Parker....

, and a group of friends visited Lake Powell
Lake Powell
Lake Powell is a huge reservoir on the Colorado River, straddling the border between Utah and Arizona . It is the second largest man-made reservoir in the United States behind Lake Mead, storing of water when full...

. 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.

Cultural references

The main plot of "Trapper Keeper" is a parody of the Terminator films
Terminator (franchise)
The Terminator series is a science fiction franchise encompassing a series of films and other media concerning battles between Skynet's artificially intelligent machine network, and John Connor's Resistance forces and the rest of the human race....

. The episode also features references to 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...

 and Akira
Akira (film)
is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk science fiction film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, and starring the voices of Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama and Taro Ishida. The screenplay is based on Otomo's manga Akira....

.

The New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

s Andrea Peyser
Andrea Peyser
Andrea Peyser is a columnist for the New York Post, well-recognized for her coverage of many "scandals" involving public figures.-Career:...

 analyzed the episode's references to the 2000 United States presidential election. She commented that in "Trapper Keeper", the election of class president ends in a deadlock, while in Florida, the election for president was "hopelessly deadlocked." She went on to say that in South Park, the school "rousts a sick kid from his hospital bed" to vote by absentee ballot
Absentee ballot
An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station. Numerous methods have been devised to facilitate this...

, and in Florida, "officials roust people from the cemetery to vote by absentee ballot." Peyser added that Rosie O'Donnell appears in "Trapper Keeper" and gathers lawyers, media and her friends to "help settle the race the way she sees fit," while in Florida, O'Donnell, Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein, CBE is an American film producer and movie studio chairman. He is best known as co-founder of Miramax Films. He and his brother Bob have been co-chairmen of The Weinstein Company, their film production company, since 2005...

, Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...

, Bianca Jagger
Bianca Jagger
Bianca Jagger is a Nicaraguan-born social and human rights advocate and a former actress and model...

 "and all the usual members of the Hollywood nitwit brain trust have signed a petition demanding a revote in Palm Beach County, ensuring the race would go to Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

." One of the kindergarteners is named Flora, referencing the state Florida that was undecided in the election.

Reception

Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz of The Star-Ledger
The Star-Ledger
The Star-Ledger is the largest circulated newspaper in the U.S. state of New Jersey and is based in Newark. It is a sister paper to The Jersey Journal of Jersey City, The Times of Trenton and the Staten Island Advance, all of which are owned by Advance Publications.The Newark Star-Ledgers daily...

 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
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

, 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
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...

's David Galindo called the episode "great", and Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is a major U.S. daily newspaper serving Fort Worth and the western half of the North Texas area known as the Metroplex. Its area of domination is checked by its main rival, The Dallas Morning News, which is published from the eastern half of the Metroplex. It is owned...

'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
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....

 in the United States on November 15, 2000. Though a rerun of the episode aired in the middle of the night on WPIX
WPIX
WPIX, channel 11, is a television station in New York City built, signed on, and owned by the Tribune Company. WPIX also serves as the flagship station of The CW Television Network...

 because of offensive content
TV Parental Guidelines
The TV Parental Guidelines system was first proposed on December 19, 1996 by the United States Congress, the television industry and the Federal Communications Commission , and went into effect by January 1, 1997 on most major U.S...

, a The Star-Ledger critic did not think it was "that dirty to begin with." The episode was included in the UMD
Universal Media Disc
The Universal Media Disc is an optical disc medium developed by Sony for use on their PlayStation Portable handheld gaming and multimedia platform...

 South Park: When Technology Attacks that was released on October 11, 2005 for the PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...

. Other episodes included in the collection were "Best Friends Forever
Best Friends Forever
"Best Friends Forever" is the fourth episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series series South Park. It was written and directed by co-creator Trey Parker and first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on March 30, 2005....

", "Cancelled
Cancelled (South Park)
"Cancelled" is the season 7 premiere episode and the overall 97th episode, although intended to be the 100th, of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on March 19, 2003.- Plot :...

", "Simpsons Already Did It
Simpsons Already Did It
"Simpsons Already Did It" is the seventh episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series South Park, and the 86th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on June 26, 2002...

", and "Towelie".

External links

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