Entertainment
Eric Cartman's Most Evil Moment Isn't From The Episode You Think
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Any South Park fan will tell you that Season 5’s “Scott Tenorman Must Die” was the turning point for Eric Cartman. After Scott Tenorman stole $16.12 from Cartman, he had his parents murdered, ground them up into chili, and then fed them to him. It was the singular moment where everybody living in South Park, the parents, the teachers, and, most importantly, the boys, realized they should never mess with Cartman because they now knew what he was capable of when crossed.
Up until this point, Cartman’s behavior was problematic, but it never crossed the line in such a brutal way. Not only was he able to anticipate everybody’s moves and counter them with alarming precision, he was also able to feign ignorance and play along just enough to make everyone think he was falling into their trap. “Scott Tenorman Must Die” transformed Cartman into a Machiavellian genius, but what’s more alarming is his behavior in Season 15, specifically in “Bass to Mouth.”
Cartman is at his most evil and manipulative in “Bass to Mouth,” and it’s worse because everybody encourages it. By this point in the series, 10 years after “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” everybody in South Park knows that Cartman is a full-blown sociopath who feels no remorse and only cares about self-preservation when push comes to shove. When that behavior is enabled by authority figures and he’s given free rein to do whatever he wants, it becomes dangerous for everybody.
You Never Go Bass To Mouth
While I’d love to talk at length about Lemmiwinks’ return, his long-lost brother Wikileaks, the sage-like advice from the Catatafish and the Sparrow Prince, and what the rest of the boys are up to when their private information gets leaked through the Eavesdropper app, none of that really matters when it comes to Cartman’s behavior in “Bass to Mouth.” It’s important to frame the story, but Cartman is going to do what Cartman does whether there’s an Eavesdropper app or not, so let’s focus on what he actually does in this South Park episode.
In “Bass to Mouth,” the Eavesdropper app leaks information that Pete Melman went number two in his pants, and Cartman immediately starts fanning the flames. He’s called to the office, where Principal Victoria, Mr. Mackey, and Mr. Adler confront him. We learn that a year prior, a similar incident happened with a boy named Corey Duran, who was bullied so relentlessly by Cartman that he was driven to suicide. In a Hail Mary attempt to prevent another similar incident, the faculty allows Cartman to do whatever he thinks is necessary to make sure Pete Melman’s life isn’t ruined.
Cartman, in his infinite wisdom, decides the best course of action is to make another student crap their pants, shifting attention away from Pete’s embarrasing incident. He gives Jenny Simons cupcakes laced with laxatives, and she takes a trip to brown town in the middle of class. He then jumps on a desk to loudly broadcast what just happened. Jenny’s suicide attempt is a failed one, but she’s left with a shattered pelvis from the fall.
Knowing full well he won’t get in trouble, Cartman explains to the South Park Elementary faculty that every single student needs to suffer the same embarrasment. His logic is simple: if everybody craps their pants, then nobody can be made fun of.
The real smoking gun is the exchange between Principal Victoria and Cartman. Exasperated, she says, “That’s insane!” and without missing a beat, Cartman flatly responds, “Okay. Well, if you have a better idea, then why am I here?” He knows he has total control over the situation, and he knows he won’t face any consequences. In fact, he knows he’ll be rewarded, because the only thing anybody cares about is avoiding bad press. They’re all pawns in Cartman’s game, and Cartman knows it.
The Entire Season Is Like This
Mr. Mackey’s plan in “Bass to Mouth,” once every one of Cartman’s ideas backfires, is to throw him under the bus. Literally. Even then, after the Lemmiwinks and Wikileaks subplot hits its boiling point, Cartman still gets the last laugh by sabotaging Mackey using the same methods he was encouraged to use earlier. Laxatives and Arby’s Horsey Sauce go into cupcakes, Mackey eats them, and erupts like Vesuvius. It’s crystal clear what Cartman’s intentions with Mackey are here, considering that everybody this has happened to previously has tried to take their own life, or succeeded in doing so. Cartman is 10 years old in this episode.
The wild part about Season 15 is that this is par for the course for Cartman. By this point in South Park’s run, everybody should know better. Two episodes later, when he’s told by the rest of the boys that he needs to stop playing with his dolls and grow up, he orchestrates an elaborate scheme to eliminate them that ends with Token’s house being shot up. Earlier in the season, Cartman measures every boy’s wiener length and posts the results. He steals crack babies from the hospital and forces them to play basketball so he can make internet money. The season closes with him getting his well-intentioned but militantly agnostic foster parents arrested, effectively orphaning the children they were caring for.
Season 5 may be the moment where Cartman’s true evil first shows itself, but it doesn’t fully evolve into its darkest form until Season 15, when everybody knows exactly what he’s capable of and still chooses to enable him when it benefits them. Cartman isn’t at his worst when nobody understands him and he’s lashing out. He’s at his worst when everyone does and they let him get away with it.
South Park is streaming on Paramount+.
Entertainment
Star Trek Fans Vote Overwhelmingly To Batgirl Starfleet Academy
By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Paramount has announced that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will be cancelled after airing its second season sometime next year. That’s welcome news, but for most Trekkies, it doesn’t go far enough.
The problem with this announcement is that Paramount still plans to air the show’s second season. They completed filming it several months ago, and since they’ve already got the footage, you can see why they might think it makes sense to dump whatever they’ve got online, as long as they’ve got it.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. There is another path. Paramount could Batgirl Starfleet Academy.
Batgirling – The act of a studio permanently shelving a completed or near-completed film or series because it is deemed unreleasable, choosing instead to claim a financial loss through a tax write-off rather than risk public exposure or reputational damage.
The Batgirl Precedent
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery made an unusual decision: it canceled an upcoming Batgirl movie after filming had already wrapped and the film had entered post-production. The superhero outing, starring Leslie Grace and featuring Michael Keaton’s return as Batman, had a reported budget of around $90 million and was originally planned for release on HBO Max.
Instead of finishing and releasing the movie, the studio chose to shelve it and treat the production cost as a financial loss. This allowed Warner Bros. Discovery to reduce its taxable income through a write-down, a legal accounting strategy tied to its post-merger restructuring. Batgirl has never been released and never will be.
Why Batgirling Starfleet Academy Makes Sense
Starfleet Academy has the lowest viewer rating of almost anything on television. According to some reports, the show performed 20% worse than even Paramount’s most pessimistic projections predicted. It didn’t just fail; it tainted the brand in a way Star Trek may not recover from.
In that context, why would any for-profit company want to release more of it? There’s basically no value in releasing it, because no one will watch it. Meanwhile, there’s huge potential value in not releasing it, because doing so protects your brand from further reputational harm.
Most importantly, fans don’t want it. We asked Trekkies on X if they’d like to see Starfleet Academy’s second season released. Nearly 85% of respondents voted for Batgirling it.
There’s currently a petition running on Change.org asking Paramount to Batgirl Starfleet Academy season 2. If you’re part of that 85%, consider signing it to send Paramount a message. Maybe it’s time Star Trek fans were heard.
Entertainment
HBO's Harry Potter Series Will Definitely Fail For One Big Reason, And It's Not J.K. Rowling Or Snape
By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
Harry Potter is coming back. If it were in POG form, everyone might be more excited. Warner Bros. dropped the first trailer for the upcoming HBO Max series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which has touched off a fresh round of debates over whether or not the series should be boycotted due to J.K. Rowling’s beliefs and who even wanted this series in the first place.
Here’s the trailer…
No matter how you feel about the Boy Who Lived or the rich and famous author who created the most poorly designed sport in literature, it might be some solace to know Warner Bros. is going to fail spectacularly, and it has nothing to do with anyone’s opinions. It’s about money. A lot of money. So much in fact, that it’s impossible enough people will watch the new streaming series to break even, and don’t even think of turning a profit.
The Most Expensive Entertainment Project In History
The 2001 adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone made a billion dollars on a budget of $125 million. By way of comparison, the HBO Max series has an estimated budget of $100 million. Per episode.
That’s before the marketing blitz that you won’t be able to get away from, even if you close your eyes while sitting in your tiny room underneath the stairwell. To put this in perspective, Warner Bros. is spending more money on the upcoming streaming series than any studio has ever spent on a single piece of entertainment. Series, movie, The Eras Tour, Dinotopia, doesn’t matter, nothing will come close to the sheer amount of money Warner Bros is setting on fire.
If you watch the initial trailer, it feels like a version of the movie fell out of an alternate universe. Everything looks similar to the original film, but it’s slightly off.
The cast looks like their movie counterparts. The one very notable exception is Snape, who’s also the single worst character in the series to race swap if you worry about things such as why everyone’s suspicious of him for no real reason, or why James Potter bullies him. It’s a baffling choice in a trailer full of baffling choices.
Yer A Remake Harry!
To its credit, the trailer does attempt to answer the question as to why the series is being made. With a single season covering each of the books, finally, the little details that Potterheads have obsessed over for generations will get to leave the page. From the large changes, Headless Nick’s birthday party, to the smaller, calm changes of the later novels, a book-accurate adaptation could only be done as a series.
Though Warner Bros is making it the largest entertainment project since the Romans erected the Colosseum, the first trailer can’t quite shake the nagging feeling that it’s destined to fail. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is going to be seen by millions and millions of people around the world, but at a total price tag approaching $4 billion, it seems impossible for it to become a financial success, which, as we all know, is sadly the only type of success that matters to studios.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is coming to HBO Max around Christmas 2026.
Entertainment
The Last NCIS Has One Fatal Flaw
By Robert Scucci
| Published
NCIS is one of those ride-or-die franchises you’ll have a shaky relationship with for the rest of your life if you started watching at a certain age. I remember sitting with my parents watching the flagship series when it first came out, and over the years I’ve kept tabs on its many spinoffs. Now that NCIS: Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Hawai’i have run their course, and the one-off Tony & Ziva miniseries totally screwed the pooch, we’re back to just the flagship series and its prequel, NCIS: Origins.
Honestly, I’m okay with this. The original series still has its charm despite its many personnel changes, and NCIS: Origins allows for some great retconning and callbacks that are obvious enough for diehard fans, but not so granular that newcomers can’t jump in without doing homework. It’s a perfect show if you’re a fan of the franchise, and the best thing that’s been put out in years.
However, there’s one big problem that NCIS: Origins runs into, and it’s something unavoidable: there’s no suspense. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of thrills in the heat of the moment when the drama gets dialed up. There are also surprisingly strong action sequences for a series that belongs to a franchise that’s basically a procedural soap opera for boomers who just want to tune into their stories week after week.
One Specific Kind Of Suspense Is Missing
On an episode-to-episode basis, there are plenty of reasons to keep tuning into NCIS: Origins. We get to learn about the early days of Special Agent in Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and how he cut his teeth working for NIS before it became the agency and franchise we all know and love. We see how his 91 rules came to be. We get more backstory on Special Agent Mike Franks, the best character in the series (and it’s not even close), and Kyle Schmid is a dead ringer for the older, somehow more cynical Franks from the original series (Muse Watson).
Even better, comic relief comes in the form of Randy Randolf (Caleb Foote), who, if it weren’t for Franks, would be the standout character. We also get the best kind of wise-cracking forensic nerd banter from Woody (Bobby Moynihan) and Philip (Ely Henry). I could go on, but the point is, NCIS: Origins is a beyond solid series, sans one thing.
There’s no real suspense.
Yes, people get hurt, and dangerous leads get chased, but that’s not the kind of suspense I’m talking about.
The kind of suspense the show is missing, which is par for the course when it comes to prequels, is the kind it could never have in the first place. The show stars Austin Stowell as a young and hungry Gibbs, but it’s still narrated by Mark Harmon. More importantly, we know Gibbs rises through the ranks and then has a 20-year tenure on NCIS. In other words, any time Gibbs finds himself in danger in NCIS: Origins, we know without a sliver of doubt that he’s going to be just fine.
The same can be said for Franks, and the rest of the gang to a certain degree. While I’m speculating here, I think we can guess Lala’s (Mariel Molino) fate as well. She’s never mentioned in the flagship series, yet she’s a constant presence in NCIS: Origins, the series that tells Gibbs’ entire backstory leading up to NCIS. I could be grasping at straws, but I have reason to believe something terrible happens to her that’s too painful to bring up later. The series has done an excellent job retconning the original series, so it’s surprising that they’d come up with a character who could have easily been one of the dozens of agents mentioned in the main series but never actually seen on screen or seen in passing.
In other words, as much as I like her character, I’m not going to get too attached because she’ll probably meet a tragic end at some point.
Fortunately, We Don’t Need This Kind Of Suspense
Thankfully, NCIS: Origins is worth tuning into week after week, not for the suspense, which we’ve established doesn’t exist here for obvious reasons, but because it’s an excellent character study of one of cable’s most iconic, coffee-chugging curmudgeons. We’re currently watching Gibbs’ second marriage, which has yet to fall apart, and I can’t wait to see how that whole thing dissolves, along with his (checks notes) third and fourth marriages.
Lack of pure, adrenaline-pumping thrills aside, showrunners Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North know what they’re doing with the lore. NCIS: Origins remains a great watch for old-timers and newcomers alike. But if you’re like me and find yourself asking your wife, “Do you think he’s going to make it?” for the thousandth time in an attempt to be funny (she doesn’t find it funny), you’ll be pleased to know that Gibbs does, in fact, make it out alive, and then goes on to star in another 435 episodes.
NCIS: Origins is streaming on Paramount+
Star Trek Fans Vote Overwhelmingly To Batgirl Starfleet Academy
U.S. routed by Belgium in World Cup prep
