Red-Hot South Park Takes on Hybrid Cars

South Park episodes that take on subjects of current concern are more thought provoking than almost any other television series.

Tonight's new episode of Comedy Central's South Park takes on hybrid cars, and by the time it's over, environmentalists may be as pissed off as Scientologists by the content of the show.

Certainly, the title of the episode, Smug Alert, suggests a good long skewering of the hybrid vehicle phenomenon (hybrid cars run on their own self-generated electric power, fueled by much less gasoline and producing much less exhaust than ordinary vehicles). The story finds do-gooder Stan convincing residents of the title town to buy hybrid cars and help the earth. But, according to the network, as the townspeople begin to take pride in doing something they have been told is productive, "scientists discover a stormy dark mass accumulating over the town," which brings the threat of "a disaster of epic proportions." With concerns about global warming very much on the minds of people all over the world (as detailed in this week's issue of Time magazine), this episode is bound not simply to push but to smash a few buttons.

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The episode itself was not available for preview. Nothing new there: Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone work so close to airtime -- often finishing episodes within the very same weeks that they make their premieres -- that completed episodes are rarely made available to the press in advance. (South Park is telecast at 10 p.m. ET Wednesdays, with repeats throughout the week.)

There will probably be more interest in this episode than usual, if only because it is the first to debut after last week's 10th season premiere, which attracted more viewers in the 18-49 demographic than any South Park season premiere since 2002. It was also the highest rated episode of the show in that demo since April 2004, the highest rated in households since December 2004 and the highest rated program on Comedy Central so far this year in households and among adults 18-49.

In other words, this show is once again red hot.

Of course, last week's episode was more of an envelope- than a button-pusher, vibrantly addressing the controversial recent departure of cast member Isaac Hayes, the actor, blues legend and Scientologist who has given voice to the character of Chef since South Park began in 1997. As the episode began, Chef was returning to South Park after a prolonged absence during which he had joined a group known as the Super Adventure Club. Using creatively edited dialogue spoken by Hayes in the role of Chef over the last nine seasons Parker and Stone transformed him from an insatiable womanizer to a gleeful pedophile who wanted to have sex with the children of South Park.

Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny helped Chef overcome the sinister influence of the Super Adventure Club, whose founder made it his mission to be the first to have sex with children in territories around the world that had already been discovered by other explorers. But members of the Club tranquilized Chef and took him back to their headquarters. The kids tried their best to rescue him, but the influence of the Club was too powerful. Chef seemed to meet a brutal demise: He caught fire, fell from a cliff into a rocky ravine, was impaled on a tree branch and was shot several times before wild animals tore the flesh from his face and destroyed two of his limbs.

Kyle spat his disdain for Chef's influencers, boldly standing up to them and condescendingly dismissing their organization as "a fruity little club." (Club members later retrieved the presumed dead Chef, who was still breathing, and preserved him in life-sustaining Darth Vader-like gear, making possible his return at a future time without need to once again re-edit old dialogue by Hayes.)

Clearly Parker and Stone were taking aim more at Scientology than at Hayes. "We shouldn't be mad at Chef for leaving us," Kyle said at Chef's funeral. "We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains."

Hayes reportedly left the series in protest over the treatment of Scientology in an especially scathing episode last November, citing its lack of respect for religion. Critics and others -- including Parker and Stone -- pounced on his departure, noting that South Park has a rich tradition of satirically dismantling religion (and everything else under the sun).

Since last week's episode premiered, it has been reported that Hayes may not have actually quit South Park nor expressed dismay over its treatment of religious beliefs. Those reports maintain that Hayes suffered a stroke and is recuperating, and that opportunistic Scientologists issued the original press release announcing Hayes' resignation.

This didn't appear to be the case in interviews Parker and Trey did two weeks ago in advance of the tenth season premiere, in which they quite plainly declared that Hayes left the show in response to last November's Scientology episode. In fact, they told David Letterman that they thought Hayes might quit over it even before the episode premiered.

Eventually the truth will come out, if it hasn't already. If Hayes has indeed suffered a stroke or is having health problems of any kind, we wish him a speedy recovery, after which we would like to see him do an interview or issue a statement and give his side of this story.

Through it all, one thing is clear: South Park episodes that take on subjects of current concern -- Tom Cruise and his devotion to Scientology, Paris Hilton and her influence on young girls, Mel Gibson and the response to his movie The Passion of the Christ, 9/11 and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the growth of Wal-Mart and its impact on smaller businesses, the increasingly crude content of television programming and its impact on viewers, the death of Terri Schiavo and the issues raised by her family's ordeal -- are more thought-provoking than almost any other television series. That will certainly also be true of tonight's tale about hybrid cars and the environment.