After hitting the heights of satirical brilliance last week, South Park returns to a surreal standalone, but continues the enormously entertaining tale of Heidi and Cartman.
The episode starts with a Jimmy and Timmy vs. Nathan and Mimsy plot, which is usually a joyous foray into tastelessness. The Special Ed Science Fair is upon them, and Timmy and Jimmy are experimenting with water bears, genuinely fascinating creatures that are practically indestructible. Jimmy is teaching them to dance to Taylor Swift, a feat far more impressive than Nathan’s generic baking soda volcano. Of course, Nathan plans to sabotage their project so he and Mimsy can win first prize, and attract the imagined Special Ed Science Fair groupies.
But this weird little misadventure kind of derails as the NFL randomly storm in and take over the plot. Usually, the antics of the disabled kids of South Park are almost entirely self-contained, but here, they’re not really the focus. The NFL isn’t really the focus either, as the water bears thing proves to be just an elaborate, yet random gag to poke fun at their plummeting ratings.
It’s left to Heidi and Cartman to form the real meat of this episode, and that’s fine, because they are always hilarious. Heidi’s decision to embrace Cartman’s poisonous lifestyle has led to a major change; she’s gained weight, acne, and a disagreeable disposition, to the point where she’s beginning to make Cartman look reasonable.
Heidi and her friends even have their own little group dynamic that perfectly mirrors the boys, further cementing her resemblance to Cartman. Amusingly, she actually gets annoyed when he joins them.
Heidi is no longer concerned with helping others, and is infuriated by the fact that she volunteered to judge the Science Fair a month ago. But she can’t back out now, and since she really wants to have the weekend free to pig out on the couch, she finds a very Cartman-esque solution, albeit a more intelligent one. As PC Principle says, “she’s kinda like Cartman, only with the ability to follow through.”
Heidi focuses her energy on condemning the Special Ed Science Fair as a waste of resources that bleeds time and money from hard-working, able-bodied people like herself. There’s a subtle dig at the more extreme fringes of the right here, but this episode smartly avoids the political subtext of Cartman and Heidi’s relationship to focus on the fact that Cartman has created a monster, one more powerful and poisonous than he intended.
Heidi successfully shuts down the program, but is physically halted by the NFL, who have too much stake in the water bears ... because they’re breeding new football fans, or something. Honestly, I didn’t have much patience for where that whole thing went.
But the point is that Heidi was willing and able to shut down an event that supported disabled children so she could spend more time sitting on the sofa, and even when a gun is pointed to her head, she doesn’t stop. Heidi steals the evolved water bears, and makes a break for it, until the NFL, Jimmy, Nathan, and even Cartman make an impassioned plea for her to just calm the hell down.
But in an amusing moment that shows just how far down the rabbit hole she has plummeted, Heidi drinks the entire jar of hyper-intelligent microorganisms, stunning the crowd into silence. Hell, even Cartman is shocked by her extreme dedication to selfishness.
Thus, the experiment is ruined, the NFL is crippled, and Heidi gets to spend her weekend forcibly snuggling on the sofa with Cartman, farting on him the entire time. In what seems to be a last-minute plot twist, the water bears inside her react to the music from the tv, causing her belly to jiggle.
I’m not sure if this is planting a seed for the plot of a future episode, something like the tapeworm episode of Futurama, or just a set-up to a fart joke. Either way, it’s clear that Cartman forcefully shaping Heidi in his own image is going to cause him nothing but grief.
‘Moss Piglets’ isn’t a particularly good, or bad episode. It was amusing, without being overly clever or satirical. But it did continue the ballad of Heidi and Cartman, and that tragic, toxic romance has fast become the shining highlight of the entire season.
