In South Park, like the rest of the country, the hottest place in town is currently a COVID-19 vaccination site. On Wednesday’s “South ParQ The Vaccination Special,” Cartman and the gang struggled to protect their “broship” despite pandemic-induced isolation—while the rest of the town is caught in a Hunger Games-ian scramble to get their hands on that sweet, sweet Pfizer. (Or Moderna! or Johnson & Johnson! At this point, who’s picky?)
But just like in real life, there is one group of people in South Park, Colorado, who seem wary of the vaccine: QAnon supporters.
We last visited South Park before last November’s presidential election—so this week was our first episode to re-introduce Mr. Garrison, back in town from his “sabbatical.” He can’t figure out why the town hates him so much—or why the “White” family is accosting him in the grocery store to tell him they belong to QAnon and begging him to tell them how to stop the vaccinations.
“I just want you to know I was always on your side,” Mr. White tells Garrison. “In fact, all of us whites were really on your side.” Garrison’s response? “Blow shit out your dickhole.”
The rest of the town, meanwhile, is locked in a battle to get their hands on the coveted vaccine. Should teachers go first in line, or should those with underlying health conditions? In a quintessentially “South Park” touch, one man in line at Walgreen’s shouts out his case for a jab—“I’m a chainsmoker and my wife is 39 pounds overweight!”—moments before an old woman exits the facility, shouting, “79, bitches!” to the jealous, heckling crowd.
The kids, meanwhile, are back in school after months of remote learning. Kenny has missed his friend circle, and Cartman is determined to keep the group from breaking up. His plan? Pranking their teacher, Mrs. Nelson, by covering her seat in ketchup to make it look like she’s had her period. She quits in a rage, furious that she’s risking her life to teach a bunch of brats.
Kyle and Stan are furious with their friends—terrified that if no one replaces Mrs. Nelson, they’ll be stuck in quarantine again. Eventually, the group’s mission becomes clear: Steal enough COVID-19 vaccines to get all of South Park Elementary’s teachers back behind their desks safely.
But another group has a different take on the situation: Mr. White, convinced Garrison’s outburst is yet another code to decipher, makes the case to South Park’s Q community that clearly Garrison has sent them a message to become tutors to replace all the quitting teachers. And thus, Tutornon—“straight from the internet to your child!” is born.
Confronted with a nearly empty classroom, Garrison loses it in front of his two remaining students, demanding to know, “Why is everyone against me?!” He confronts Mr. White about the rising number of tutors stealing his students, and soon enough finds himself indoctrinated by his own cabal of “supporters”—convinced that a secret group of child-blood-guzzling Hollywood elite control the world.
It also doesn’t take long before the Tutornon kids—who call themselves “QTies” and, of course, have brought child of conservatives Butters into their ranks—to start raising hell, too. A newscast finds Cartman and company fighting the indoctrinated kids off as they try to deliver the vaccines to their school.
But in a final twist, it turns out that South Park’s Q supporters might not be as crazy as they seemed. It’s Garrison who ultimately saves his Colorado town from lockdown by striking a deal with those secret elites—who moments earlier had turned Mr. White into a giant penis. Thanks to Garrison, the nebulous world leaders, and a delivery from Air Israel, the town of South Park finally receives enough doses to vaccinate everyone.
“I think I owe you all a big apology,” Garrison says. “I came in here expecting everything to just go back to normal, but we’ve all been through the proverbial butthole of hardships lately... Mr. White here has taught me a very important lesson: Make sure you’re on the side of the people with the most power.”
Unfortunately, the savior comes too late for Mrs. Nelson, who contracted COVID just days before the kids arrived at school with syringes. Garrison, reunited with his puppet Mr. Hat, takes his seat behind his desk at South Park Elementary once more—and takes a moment to thank the people who got him there: “Nice doing business with you, you little child-murdering pedophiles.”
