Simpsons Already Did It

"Simpsons Already Did It"

"Simpsons Already Did It" is the 86th episode of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired on June 26, 2002.

Plot

Cartman shows Kyle, Stan, and Tweek an advertisement he found for "Sea People" (a parody of Sea-Monkeys). Cartman imagines them to be a race similar to mermaids who will "take me away from this crappy goddamn planet full of hippies." He convinces everyone to chip in so they can buy them.

Meanwhile, Butters, in his evil alter-ego persona Professor Chaos, is trying to figure out a way to bring disarray to the town. When he plots to block out the sun, his assistant, Dougie/General Disarray, informs him that it mirrors a plot of Mr. Burns' from The Simpsons and Butters abandons the idea.

Cartman soon begins to prepare for the Sea People, even making a sign to welcome them, but after placing them in the water, Stan reveals that they are simply brine shrimp. Cartman, in a fit of rage, begins to berate his friends, but stops after the group decides to place the shrimp in Ms. Choksondik's coffee. The scene then cuts to Ms. Choksondik's house, where an ambulance is taking away her corpse.

Butters decides to cut the head off of the town's central statue — which mirrors Bart Simpson's decapitation of Springfield's Jebediah Springfield statue. On the news report, the newscaster interprets Butters' vandalism as an homage to The Simpsons; the police are not investigating the crime because they want the statue to remain headless as a tribute.

Upon hearing that semen was discovered in the teacher's stomach, the boys conclude that they killed Ms. Choksondik with their "sea men". They go to the morgue to steal the evidence, fearful that they will "find the women too!" Butters devises increasingly outlandish schemes, but Dougie keeps pointing out that they have already been done on The Simpsons.

Eventually, Chef explains that there is a difference between "sea men/semen" and "Sea People", and that the brine shrimp did not kill their teacher. Cartman then discovers that when the semen they recovered has been added to the Sea People aquarium, it combines with the Brine Shrimp to create an intelligent race of actual sea people.

Butters imagines Cartman, Kyle, and Stan as Simpsons characters.

Trying to come up with an original plot, Butters watches every episode of The Simpsons before introducing his newest plan: build a machine that replaces the cherry centers of chocolate covered cherries with rancid mayonnaise (a plot that Dougie/General Disarray dismisses as being too unoriginal to appear on The Simpsons). As Butters is about to use his device a Simpsons commercial announces that Bart will do exactly the same thing in that night's episode. Butters has a nervous breakdown and begins picturing the town in the animation style of The Simpsons.

At the Cartman household, the boys have bought more Sea People, a larger aquarium, and several gallons of semen. Their Sea-Ciety evolves into an Ancient Greek-esque civilization, and they begin worshipping Cartman.

Stan and Kyle invite Butters and others to see the aquarium. Butters realizes that the Sea-Ciety plot is similar to that of the "Treehouse of Horror VII" short "The Genesis Tub". The boys agree with him, but note that The Simpsons has done everything, so worrying about that is pointless. Chef points out that they in turn borrowed their ideas from a classic Twilight Zone episode, "The Little People". Butters understands and everyone returns to their normal appearance. Butters leaves, getting ready to wreak havoc once again. The Sea People on the other side of the aquarium begin worshipping Tweek, leading to a holy war. Seconds later they develop nuclear weapons and destroy themselves. While Kyle concludes war is inevitable, Cartman wonders, "Why can't societies live in peace?"

Reception

The episode received generally positive reviews. Travis Pickett of IGN gave it a 8.5 rating, especially praising Parker and Stone for managing to contrast the episode with the actual Simpsons (with themes like Cartman performing fellatio on "some guy in an alley"), while respectfully paying their dues. Daniel Vancini of Amazon.com liked the homage to The Simpsons longevity, while pointing out that the writing for season six has not taken a downfall, quality wise.

The episode "calls out" the obvious observation that the Simpsons have realized a vast amount of ideas throughout their long lived run. Some have taken this statement even further, finding instances of repetitiveness in the show itself while quoting South Park. However, although the leitmotif throughout the episode is "Simpsons did it first", South Park creators released their feature film based on the series in 1999, eight years prior to The Simpsons Movie.

Matt Groening has a friendly relationship with Parker and Stone, which he demonstrated several times, going as far as openly supporting their case against censorship in the episodes 200 and 201 through that week's chalkboard gag. Groening issued a poster congratulating South Park with releasing 200 episodes, stating that "[they] already did it[...t]wice". South Park was parodied in a 2003 Simpsons episode, "The Bart of War", with Marge disapproving of Bart and Milhouse's apparent enjoyment of "cartoon violence", and the latter two contemplating about adults voicing children's characters.