This article is about the South Park episode. For the song, see Chocolate Salty Balls.

"Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls" is the 22nd episode of Comedy Central's animated series South Park. It originally aired August 19, 1998.

Plot synopsis

Park City, Utah is in the midst of the Sundance Film Festival. Sundance's founder, Robert Redford, has decided that Park City has become too run down by the annual migration of the Hollywood jet-set and commercialism, so he decides to move the festival next year to another small mountain town: South Park, Colorado.

The Sundance Festival relocates to South Park, which is immediately deluged by Hollywood tourists. In school, Mr. Garrison gives the students an assignment to see one independent film during the festival and write a report on it.

Chef sets up a sales stand at the festival for his fudge cookie recipes, and finally settles on selling his Chocolate Salty Balls, which do brisk business.

That night, Kyle is using the toilet, when he thinks he hears Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo calling to him from the toilet. He becomes convinced that Mr. Hankey needs his help. Kyle persuades Stan, Cartman, and Kenny to help him find Mr. Hankey, and they enter the sewer system looking for him. They first find Mr. Garrison snorkeling amongst the sewage with Mr. Twig. They then find Hankey, who tells Kyle that he lives in the sewer during the year, but the influx of all the Hollywood tourists, with their health-food diets (Robert Redford and his wife are seen asking Chef for various yuppie foods earlier in the episode, such as couscous, steamed celery and tofu), have disrupted the "delicate ecosystem" of the sewer, which has made him deathly ill.

Kyle and the others appear before a film's showing, and Kyle pleads with the Hollywood visitors that their presence is causing the death of his good friend Mr. Hankey, but they all think Kyle is trying to pitch a script, and they offer movie deals and script changes. One agent approaches Cartman and attempts to convince him to sell the rights to Kyle's story, and of course Cartman readily agrees (despite deriding independent films as being about "gay cowboys eating pudding" (which some South Park fans have called a prescient allusion to Brokeback Mountain).

The South Park locals are beginning to tire of the festival, seeing that it's causing the town to become overrun with commercialism and Hollywood kitsch. Even Chef realizes the large sales of his Chocolate Salty Balls is undercut by the fact that South Park is getting run down. Robert Redford's assistant points out that South Park is being slowly corrupted just as Park City was. Robert Redford reveals that this was his intent: to make all the small towns overrun with Hollywood culture, since he can't escape it, so he wants to inflict it on everyone else.

A new film appears overnight, based on Cartman's "treatment" of Kyle's story, starring Tom Hanks as Kyle and a monkey as Mr. Hankey. Cartman starts selling "Mr. Hankey" movie T-shirts for quick cash. After the film is shown, the emerging crowd tramples Kenny to death. But instead of the usual "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" "You Bastards!" catchphrase, a man says, "Oh my God, I found a penny!" followed by another man saying, "You bastard!"

Kyle tries to show Mr. Hankey to the moviegoers, but Mr. Hankey is pale and near death. Kyle and Chef stand vigil over the dying Mr. Hankey, but Chef feeds Hankey one of his Chocolate Salty Balls, causing Mr. Hankey to return to life.

The kids, Chef and Mr. Hankey approach Robert Redford as he is on a podium to announce the return of the film festival the next year. After he callously ignores their pleas to relocate the festival, Mr. Hankey rises above the crowd, donning a magician's hat. Mr. Hankey causes the sewers to erupt over South Park, causing Robert Redford and his wife's car to fill up with feces, killing them, and all the tourists to flee the town.

The South Park townspeople are relieved to see them all leave, and are grateful to have South Park "back to the way it was" - albeit now completely covered in raw sewage. This is followed by the mayor saying, "Except now our town is completely covered in shit. This is much better!"

Footnotes

External links

• Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls at South Park Studios Episode Guide