Cartman's Incredible Gift

"Cartman's Incredible Gift" is episode 124 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It originally aired December 8, 2004. Though a minor part of the episode, it marks the last appearance of the seldom-seen South Park Elementary school bus driver Mrs. Veronica Crabtree. The episode also continues South Park's critical view of psychics, previously seen in the episode "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", while also acting as a parody of several films, including Red Dragon and The Dead Zone.

Plot

Cartman attempts to fly by jumping off of his roof with cardboard wings attached to his arms. His friends have doubts but Kyle enthusiastically encourages him (because he knows it won't work and what it will result in). Cartman hurts himself badly and the other boys all leave the scene discreetly. He emerges from a short coma in the hospital, where he shares a room with a victim of a serial killer who cuts off left hands. When Cartman manages to guess the hospital's dinner menu and a few other obvious routine things, gullible Sergeant Yates believes that the boy has gained psychic powers. Cartman plays along and is taken to the scene of one of the murders, where Yates asks him if he is "seeing anything". Cartman vocalizes his cravings for ice cream and "quadruple-stuffed" Oreo cookies, prompting Yates to arrest ice-cream store owner Tom Johannsen with extreme brutality. Cartman receives a cash reward.

Back at school, Kyle angrily tells Cartman to stop faking psychic abilities, prompting Cartman to threaten to blow up his head through telekinesis. When Cartman starts gesturing and imitating stereotypical sound-effects associated with such powers, the kids run away, except for Kyle, Stan, and Kenny. The left-hand murders resume, but instead of realizing his mistake, Yates rationalizes that these are copycat killings. At the next crime scene, the boys meet a very disturbed man named Michael Deets who is quite obviously the murderer, but Yates refuses to listen to Kyle's pleas, focusing instead on Cartman's fake visions.

Cartman's involvement in the case makes him famous, resulting in a visit from an angry group of "psychic detectives" who demand he join their group and pay a fee. Cartman laughs their pretensions off, resulting in a "psychic battle" in which the "detectives" indulge in the same histrionics as Cartman, terrifying his mother. The psychics stop the fight, believing Cartman to be evenly matched, and leave with a threat of class action. Cartman solves this problem by getting Sergeant Yates, who still has blind faith in him, to bust the group. One of the psychics tries to intimidate the police in the same ridiculous way and is shot dead.

Kyle meanwhile has followed Deets to his home and obtained fingerprint and blood samples, but he is completely ignored by the police. Deciding he has to do something to stop the killer, he imitates Cartman's attempted flight so that he passes into a coma, and when he wakes up claims to have psychic powers and gives the police his original findings. Yates is skeptical but goes to investigate the suspected murderer anyway. Deets, furious that Cartman has credited his work to others, has kidnapped him and is torturing him in his dungeon by subjecting him to a particularly dull slide-show of holiday snaps.

When Yates arrives, he prepares to arrest Deets upon finding many hands on the killer's wall, but stands down upon realizing that the hands on the wall appear to be right hands, not left hands, meaning he could not be the killer. He says that when looking at one's left hand (with the palm facing the viewer), the thumb points to the left. The hands on the wall are nailed with the palms facing the wall, making the thumbs point to the right. Because Cartman is gagged up in the basement, Yates cannot hear him and leaves the house unsatisfied, but he questions his own observation about the hands. He goes back to the station, and after a montage depicting running elaborate criminology tests, exercising, and even losing track of what he was doing, he figures out his mistake, and returns to Deets' house. He shoots Deets just as Deets is about to kill Cartman.

Back at the hospital, Mr. Johannsen and the psychics are released from prison, and Kyle is praised as a real psychic. Kyle then tells them that there are no psychics and says that there is a logical explanation for every psychic story ever heard. The other "psychics", however, decide to reignite their conflict with Cartman, and engage in a "final battle". Kyle starts getting annoyed and shouts at them to stop, at which point the light bulbs in the room explode and some electronic devices fall off their shelf, implying that Kyle might really be psychic. Everyone is surprised, but Kyle insists there is a logical explanation for what happened.

External links

• Cartman's Incredible Gift at the Internet Movie Database
• Cartman's Incredible Gift Full episode at South Park Studios
• Cartman's Incredible Gift Episode guide at South Park Studios