There’s been a lot of talk this past week about the “pregnant man.” It reached its peak with his/her time/soul-sucking hour on Oprah, in which Oprah squirmed through awkward questions like, “Let’s talk about what’s going on with the genitalia.” Of course, “pregnant man” quickly loses its luster once you find out the “man” is actually a woman who had her breasts removed and was pumped with hormones. Alas, we will not be getting a sequel to Junior.

Leave it to “South Park” to jump all over the story. This week’s episode, titled “Eek! A Penis” employs a formula that Trey Parker is not a big fan of: Multiple, separate storylines. Lucky for us, they’re both strong, absurd, and hilarious.

Using the “pregnant man” as its jumping point, the episode begins with Mrs. Garrison freaking out in class, realizing his sex change was a mistake. Unfortunately, Garrison went all the way with his sex change, as graphically detailed in “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina.” He’s removed from class and replaced with a student for the day. Naturally, power-hungry Cartman does his best to get Principal Victoria’s attention and wins the job.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Garrison finds out the local laboratory is doing genetic testing on mice. They’ve already grown an ear on a mouse, so Garrison sees a window of opportunity. He heads to the lab and offers all the money he has for them to grow him a penis. Hm. Seems logical enough. At school, Cartman has turned the class around, helping them score the highest grades ever. The Denver County School Board enlists him to teach inner city kids, and you just know there’s a movie parody coming. Personally, I was hoping for Lean On Me but instead we got Stand and Deliver.

Cartman transforms himself into the Edward James Olmos character, shaving his head, creating a comb over, and insisting they call him Mr. Cartmenez. All the cliches of inner city school movies are held to the fire, from the pregnant, hopeless teen to the reluctant, defiant student. But with Cartmenez as the teacher, the roles are reversed. Cartmenez teaches the students all about the value of cheating, citing Bill Belicheck, a man who cheated in front of the world and wasn’t punished for it. He prove his point by cracking a student with a baton during a basketball game and convincing the pregnant teen to get an abortion because it’s the “ultimate form of cheating,” repeatedly pondering out loud, “How can I reeeeach theeese keeeeds?”

Five paragraphs in and I haven’t even mentioned the Penis Mouse. Forgive me! While Cartmenez is doing his thing, Garrison is busy checking up on his penis, which is growing on a mouse. Everything’s going well until when he opens the box to test out the little critter and it escapes from the lab. This sets off a wild penis chase with the mouse running all over town scaring all the women. Not only is the image of a tiny mouse with a floppy penis on its back a ridiculously great “What the f*ck!” moment, it gives Garrison a chance to toss out classic lines like, “Boys, have you seen my penis? If you see it, just try to catch it with some cheese.” I promise you’ll never see or hear those things anywhere other than “South Park.”

And just when you think you’ve seen it all, in the middle of the chase, the mouse and the penis have a Fievel-esque ballad under the moon. Why? Why not! The episode wraps up with the return of MR. Garrison, and Cartmenez receiving a plaque for teaching the inner city kids “The White People Method.” There’s some message about women being defined by whether they can have kids, but it’s not really important. And for this episode, that’s a good thing. It didn’t get bogged down in messages and didn’t force the issue like “Canada on Strike.” They just told two really funny stories, one of which had to do with a running joke about a running penis.

South Park Eek A Penis Review: 10 arbitrary penis-phobic women out of 12

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 1:00 am and is filed under South Park Reviews, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.