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So, given recent events, I decided to look way into "Scott Tenorman Must Die" and write my thoughts on it. I put it underneath a "read more" because this is a long one.

CW: Due to the events in the episode, there will be talk of murder, gore, cannibalism, etc., so please keep that in mind when reading this!

"Scott Tenorman Must Die" is one of the most popular South Park episodes and with good reason! Not only is it funny with a great ending, but there are so many layers to the episode that aren’t able to be seen upon the first watch. There are people that argue that the episode is only good the first time and it’s a bit boring rewatching when knowing the ending, but I wholeheartedly disagree. There’s so much to look into this episode with characters, plots, and so on that’s only exposed upon rewatch. It’s fantastic.

Not only did it change the tone of Eric Cartman, but it changed the tone of South Park as a whole. There are “eras” of South Park you can visibly see throughout the seasons and I believe this episode, season 5 episode 4, you could see the most change. You add a layer to one of the most prevalent characters in the series and you’ll begin to see the series develop.

I’m going to talk about the episode chronologically, as it’s the easiest way to organize things. At the very beginning of the episode, we see Eric riding a trike and singing. This is a very different tone than the ending, so it’s interesting and funny to look at just how much things could change in one episode. He’s rather childish at this point, more bratty than evil, bragging about how Scott Tenorman sold him his pubes - which is a silly act in itself. The audience is meant to laugh at Eric and how stupid he was to do that. Given this, the tone the episode gives off in the beginning is silly, just regular South Park hijinks. There’s music that plays in the background, very specific music, that emits a dark and dangerous mood. The first time it plays, after Eric was denied his money back for the first time, it does not emit this mood. It’s played off as irony, the music being dark mimicking the silly plot of the episode. However, on rewatch, the audience knows it’s not silly - they know the events to come later, so it adds a layer of knowledge to the audience (dramatic irony). Dramatic irony also presents itself in Scott. He was digging himself a deeper hole in taking the extra $6.12 from Eric. He had no idea what Eric was capable of, but in further deepening the wound on him, it wasn’t going to be so easy for him to leave Scott alone - sort of like poking a bear with a stick.

I’ll take a moment to pause and talk about the music again. There’s a bit of background music played throughout the episode, but there’s one repeated one in particular I had my eye on and I noticed a pattern. Every time it played, it represented Eric growing angrier with Scott. I’ll name the moments it played: leaving Scott’s house for the first time after he tried to get his money back merging into the second time when Scott took the extra $6.12, when Kyle says Scott is smarter than Eric, when the cinema wouldn’t accept pubes as payment (this likely made the statement more prevalent that Scott was smarter than him, especially being in the same scene - Scott was able to give the pubes to Eric but Eric wasn’t able to get rid of them), when Eric opened the box of pubes in Fort Collins, when Eric realized he was never getting his money back after Scott burned it, and finally, when Scott showed everyone the humiliating video of Eric dancing and singing. Each time the music played, it allowed an understanding of Eric’s feelings - likely humiliation and no doubt a hunger for revenge. In the final two instances I mentioned, the music was especially prominent, particularly in the last one. It serves nicely with the plot, sort of letting the audience know that it’s awoken something in Eric. Something else to take in mind with the music is what I mentioned previously - upon the first watch, it seemed silly at first. It’s just a kid who was dumb enough to buy someone’s pubes and they’re playing dark music - it seemed ironic. However, as the episode progressed, the audience learns just how serious he is to get his money back and later, revenge in itself. The music was fitting.

Back to the episode, though. When Eric returns from Fort Collins, it’s raining. In television and movies, rain is often not ‘just the weather’, but rather, meant to convey a certain mood (more often than not sadness). There’s plenty of different meanings for it and accompanied by other scenes, the audience is able to figure out what it means. However, it’s also notable to take into consideration the sounds of deep thunder - thunder is almost always used to express anger. So, in this scene, the rain (and added thunder) is a conveyance of Eric’s own feelings. Yes, I know this is obvious, but it’s worth mentioning because it comes into play later.

Eric tries multiple ways to get his money back. First, he demands, second, he dresses up and attempts to trick him, and I’ll pause this sentence to explain the next part. Scott tricked Eric into going to Fort Collins to sell the pubes - at this point, he still wanted just the money. To Eric, this was him ‘getting’ Scott (pulling one over on him) and as he figured out, Scott tricked him, leading him to his third attempt. He attempted to emotionally manipulate Scott. It’s interesting looking at the sequence of events of his schemes, as we’ve seen him use these same methods in other episodes. Each method he used, in order, was more and more malicious, and of course, leading up to his final method at the end of the episode (you know, that forced cannibalism thing). With the emotional manipulation, Scott pretended to fall for it at first in order to lead Eric to believe he was ‘winning’. That is, until he told him to beg. This is a very important part of the episode, as Eric despises being humiliated and put into a vulnerable situation where he is perceived as weaker. Scott didn’t just want him to say please, he made him get down on his knees in the pouring rain, lower his head, and repeat the phrase, “I beg you to give me back my money”. As if to rub salt in the wound, he made him sing a song referring to himself as a pig and dance alongside it. Once Scott starts laughing, Eric stops and demands he get the money back. He knows Scott only did that to humiliate him and he didn’t like it one bit. Eric is already annoyed at this point, still having hope in getting the money back, until Scott takes out the money. Eric smiles at this, but the smile soon disappears as Scott makes it clear he will not get the money back and burns it. What’s interesting is that rage didn’t immediately take over his features - rather, it was sadness. You could genuinely see him torn apart by it, the fear and realization in his face that he was never going to get that money back - once more, exposed vulnerability. He hates feeling vulnerable. The realization soon turns to anger, leading to his next plan.

This wasn’t about him getting his money back now, it was about getting that revenge on Scott after all he had done to Eric. Throughout the episode, he cares less and less about the money and rather, focuses on revenge. And it’s not about the fact that he burned the money - it was because he humiliated him. He put him in a vulnerable situation and made him feel weak and ‘lesser’. To Eric, that called for revenge.

I’m not going to go over every bit of the episode, as that would take an awful long time and this is already becoming an essay of a rambling, so I’ll skip forward to a part that was VERY important in the development of Eric Cartman. When Jimbo and Ned found Eric trying to train the pony, they gave him some valuable advice - advice that he could not yet understand but was now in his head. Jimbo told Eric to “think like a hunter” and “find and exploit that weakness”. Jimbo and Ned even go as far as to take Eric to the Tenorman household and spy on him in order to gain more information. When Jimbo is speaking, he doesn’t refer to Scott as a person, instead saying, “No, young hunter. What do you see? You must learn all you can about your kill”. He instills this idea in Eric’s mind that Scott is not human - he was simply an object to be hunted. Therefore, Eric didn’t need to treat him like a human. His first plan using Jimbo and Ned’s advice comes to play and ultimately fails, as Scott takes the opportunity to humiliate him, playing a video of Eric dancing and singing in the rain from earlier in the episode. THIS is the breaking point. THIS POINT is where something changes in Eric. Scott didn’t only humiliate him in private this time, but publicly where all his friends and some strangers could see (so much so that Kenny died from laughing). I mentioned earlier this was the final time the music played and with good reason. This really was his breaking point, the moment that made him snap. It only makes sense for it to be the last time the brooding music played and the most intense it had been all episode. He’s been pushed to his limit.

There’s a very powerful scene after this where it cuts to Eric’s house and there’s no rain, just very loud and very visible thunder. This is what I meant when I said the weather would come into play later. There’s a difference between this scene and the scene from earlier - that is, rain. Rain most often represents sadness and in the earlier scene, it was there alongside the thunder. Eric was a combination of sad and angry - that was visible. However, in this scene, there’s no rain. There’s only the booming sound of thunder and very large lightning bolts visible in the sky. It's an audial and visible representation of how he feels. There’s nothing else but pure, raw anger now - the desire for revenge.

This is where I want this to branch off into a different format because of just how much is in this portion: Eric’s final plan. He planned everything. He planned a fake plan, he planned a betrayal, he planned a backfiring, all leading up to that final scene where he reveals everything.

THE STEPS OF HIS FINAL PLAN:

☆ Eric tells Kyle and Stan about the plan. He purposely misleads them, knowing they would betray him and warn Scott. In addition to this, he uses his “pony biting off the wiener” plan as a front, acting just as silly and clueless as he was in the beginning. If you think about it, his plan depended on Kyle and Stan betraying him and Eric was able to predict them well enough that they would. And they did.

☆ Eric visits Scott and invites him to his Chili Con Carnival, giving him a ticket for a free pony ride. His tone is very fake, but what’s funny is that he’s faking the fake tone. He’s doing it on purpose to fool Scott into thinking this was his plan. In addition, he even mutters blatantly, “A little penis biting, perhaps?” and insists it’s nothing when Scott asks him. He’s… faking all of this and he’s acting underneath his acting - it just shows how far he went with this plan and how many steps ahead he was.

☆ Eric had even thought so far that Scott would put his pubes in the chili. It’s funny to think about because all those other times in the episodes, he was tricked - but this time, he thought ahead when it counted most. He has the ability to think and he’s very smart, as proven by this episode, yet this intelligence only seems to come out when angered (as of now).

☆ Now, this part of the plan could go off in two directions: Scott would try to do something to the pony himself OR he would send his parents. Eric had made plans for both possibilities, warning Mr. Denkins that violent, pony killers were in the area. He did add that most likely, Scott would send his parents, so there was a chance he would go himself. Either way, Scott or his parents would have been killed that night. And Eric was okay with that.

☆This was the more… satisfying outcome of his plan. This way, he personally was able to tell Scott everything and additionally, have Radiohead come and laugh at him in his weakest moment. Everything lined up perfectly and he thought so far ahead for everything - it shows just how smart Eric really is when he wants to be.

THE IMPACT OF THIS EPISODE?

Previous to this, Eric was simply a bratty child. He wasn’t outwardly malicious, but this point, this episode is what brought him to surface and really, where he became the Eric Cartman we know today. An interesting thought is rooting this back to Jimbo. Jimbo is the one who gave Eric the advice to treat his enemies as prey, as “his kill”. This is how Eric was able to conceive his plan, ending in the death of Scott’s parents. Ultimately, Jimbo’s advice led to the death of two people and forced cannibalism on the behalf of their son. If we go a step further, we can even pinpoint the cause of Eric being so evil to… that advice Jimbo gave him. I’d like to mention the act in itself and how extreme it is. Eric Cartman created a multi-step plan that relied on predicting others’ actions (and he did so accurately), got Scott’s parents killed, and didn’t stop there. He stole the bodies and used a hacksaw to cut the bodies. Hacksaws are rather small and are most commonly used to cut metal - definitely not meat and bone. They have very small and close-together teeth that would easily clog with meat and bone, so if someone were to use a hacksaw to cut up a human body, it would take a very long time. The thought is disturbing in itself, picturing Eric alone cutting up these human bodies with a blade not meant for meat and bone. We didn’t see the scene, but just… the whole premise is rather dark. He didn’t murder Mr. and Mrs. Tenorman, but he took the liberty of dismembering the bodies and cooking them into a bowl of chili. The bodies didn’t entirely go into the chili, so that must mean that he had to dispose of the remains of the dismembered bodies somewhere and that was never mentioned - it leaves the chilling mystery to the audience. That is… insane. Think about Eric previous to this episode and then the events of this episode. It’s an action that no one would have imagined him to do, but… he did. It really defined his character. There are two instances I have in mind where Eric did something evil somewhat on this level. Firstly, in “Tsst”, where Eric handcuffed Billy Turner’s ankle to a flagpole, gave him a hacksaw, and then told him he poisoned his lunch milk and the only way he could get to the antidote in time was to saw through his leg - all because he called him chubby. Take that example and compare it to Scott Tenorman. How long did it take for Eric to properly get revenge on Scott? It took a while and it wasn’t until Jimbo gave him that advice and Scott humiliated him in showing the video that he was able to come up with that plan. Throughout the seasons, you could see his patience thinning and thinning - smaller things were making him do things of this level. The other example I had was in “TMI” when the therapist calls Eric fat multiple times in different ways. Eric’s face is completely stoic and he’s on his phone, seemingly unphased by the words. However, after Eric puts his phone away, the therapist receives a call from his wife accusing him of chatting with a 14-year-old girl. The audience is confused until the therapist asks his wife, “Who is Mitch Connor?” (who is obviously an alter ego of Eric’s from a previous episode). Everything clicks to the audience at this line - they realize what Eric was doing on his phone was contacting the wife and creating these lies, which ultimately led to the wife killing herself. After the phone call is over, the therapist turns and looks at Eric, who calmly says, “I’m not fat, I’m big-boned.” We could even look at the scene with Jimbo's advice - Eric did find a weakness and exploit that weakness. He treated the therapist as "his kill". It’s a scene that bears resemblance to the plan reveal scene in Scott Tenorman Must Die, both in tone and events. However, all this therapist did was call him fat. He didn’t steal money, he didn’t make him dance or sing, or didn’t publicly humiliate him in front of friends and strangers… All he did was call him fat. So, really, Scott Tenorman Must Die developed a new side of Eric that is definitely prevalent in later episodes.

It changed the audience’s perception of him, it changed Eric himself. The episode is incredibly impactful to character development and furthermore, plot development. It’s for good reason the episode has such high standing. I would even argue it’s among the best of episodes in the 24 seasons South Park has aired. It definitely deserves the praise it gets.

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