Worst Passover Story I've Seen

South Park, S016E04

Kyle was wise to Cartman being up to no good when he found him in house asking about Passover.  After Cartman goes through a lot of trouble making a video that proved the existence of a creature he made up (Jewpacabra) so that he could have the Easter egg hunt to himself, the "experts" found his evidence a little too convincing and made Cartman a believer of his own lie.  His deceit made him the sole sacrifice for the beast, but nothing ever came to get him.  In his deluded state, he imagined himself in ancient Egypt during the time of Passover, where he experienced an incredibly vengeful God.  Kyle took him home the following morning and later on in the day Cartman claimed that he has converted to Judaism.  Of all things that I would think that would happen at the end of this story (or any South Park story) that was way out left field for me.

I didn't like too much of anything in this story, but I did appreciate that Cartman's plan to ruin the Easter egg hunt for everyone else backfired on him, and he thought he was being attacked by something dangerous that he created from his mind.  I can't say that Cartman really learned his lesson (or maybe just not the lesson you'd expect him to).  Well, at least Kyle didn't have to fight him too much about the lies he was spreading.  He basically just had to let Cartman crash and burn on his own.  The battle between Cartman and Kyle has been a constant of this show, but it's nice to see that Kyle can once in a while turn a blind eye to Cartman's slander campaign and schemes and save himself the trouble.

When Cartman imagined himself as an Egyptian boy, I hoped we wouldn't have to see much more than dead frogs dropping from the sky.  It only got worse with lambs having their throats being cut and boys having their heads explode in the bloodiest way possible.  It was all disgusting and making their point about God's wrath a little excessive.  I won't dispute that religion in general has many gruesome tales, but was it really necessary to show all that??  It did do a superior job of freaking out Cartman (who at times isn't the easiest to convince, despite being an ignorant moron), so in another sense I suppose it was completely necessary.  I just didn't like seeing so much blood in a way that wasn't funny at all.

I wonder if Kyle thinks Cartman is full of shit or really does think he has converted.  Cartman's new faith seems on a fairly superficial level, so I wonder if it's going come up again in another episode or if this really was just a "passover special" like they claimed at the beginning.  I would guess that Cartman would be even more offensive as a Jew in the way he understands it to be than he would be in his usual anti-Semantic mind.  I shudder to see what kind of crap he'll pull.  But I suspect it would annoy Kyle in a humorous way.  Still, I'd much rather see the writers wipe the slate clean with this one and not refer to it in any later episodes.