A few nights ago, I settled down to watch an episode of South Park. This installment on the DVR was called "Butters' Very Own Episode."

It begins with Butters at home with his mother and father, and they're making family plans for the parents' upcoming wedding anniversary. Mom already has her husband's gift, and Dad takes his leave to shop for her present. At Mom's request, "Inspector Butters" follows to see what he buys so that she can know how her present for him competes.

Butters follows his dad, not to the mall or Walmart, but to the gay porn theater called "The Studcat" where Fisting Firemen 9 is playing and then to "the gym," to the White Swallow Bath House, where, according to Butters in his innocent report to his mom, Dad "wrestled with all kinds o' guys. He wasn't too good, though. This one black guy had him pinned down for fifteen minutes straight." Butters doesn't know what all this means: "The only thing I can't figure out is why dad told you he was goin' shoppin' for your present when he was goin' out to see the movies and wrestlin'."

His mom faints. In her next appearance, her hair and face are a mess and she's obsessively painting the house. And when Dad says he still hasn't found an anniversary present and must go out shopping again, Mom says to Butters, "I don't think Daddy's shopping. I think Daddy's going out wrestling again."

Butters follows once more, on his own this time, to tell his dad that a great anniversary present for Mom might be a new paint brush. He goes in the White Swallow Bath House this time and finds his dad masturbating (inspired by something not shown) in a private room.

Caught, Dad later explains to Mom, "It just . . . it started as some curiosity on the Internet. I would chat with some other married guys in the chat rooms and . . . Well the things they would talk about, Linda, I, I don't know why I found it exciting. I just did, and it, and it grew from there and it spun out of control, and--eh, ugh, DAMN YOU, INTERNET!"

The show is about white lies (big ones) and deception and the catastrophic events that can follow their discovery.

This gives me pause . . . to say the least.

Butters Episode

Script