South Park Zone - Season 8 - Episode 809 - Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes
Some info and a short description of this South Park episode on South Park Zone:
South Park - Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes is episode 120 of Comedy Central's South Park. This episode originally aired on November 3, 2004.The inspiration for its title and theme were inspired by the 1983 Disney movie Something Wicked This Way Comes based on the 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury.
In this South Park episode, a Wall-Mart store comes to South Park, a fact that makes the townsfolk to be undecided between their love of the store's low prices, and their anti-corporate hatred of the retail giant which has transformed the center of South Park into an abandoned ghost town.
In order to save South Park, Stan and Kyle have to find a way to destroy the ever-expanding Wall-Mart superstore while keeping Cartman from stabbing them in the back.
South Park Spoiler Alert!
(The complete plot for this South Park Episode)
This South Park episode starts with Cartman having a stupid bet with Kyle. Kyle agrees and the bet is on even he thinks it is stupid. In the meantime, a Wall-Mart opens in South Park, where Starks Pond used to be, with much fanfare and everyone in town starts shopping there. Our boys are going too. There, Cartman is especially delighted that one can buy three copies of Timecop for $18 instead of just one for $9.98, though Kyle wonders why one would need three copies of the same movie. The popularity of Wall-Mart forces the local businesses to shut down. Local residents, including Stan's father Randy, soon start to work at Wall-Mart for minimum wage and an extra 10% employee discount on store purchases which according to Randy, evens out the wage.
Soon Wall-Mart takes over the town, South Park becoming a ghost town.
The townspeople decide they no longer want the Wall-Mart in South Park and agree to boycott. The townspeople approach the president of the store and ask him to shut the Wall-Mart down. He responds by writing signs saying its not safe to speak within the Wall-mart and meet him outside in 5 minutes.
As the people stop outside his office, the manager is thrown through the office window in an apparent suicide by hanging. Cartman gleefully tells Kyle he owes him $5 - "Ha! You owe me 5 bucks Kyle".
The townspeople then decide to burn it down, While singing Kum-Bai-Yah, only to see it rebuilt. A man rebuilding the Wall-Mart tells Kenny, Kyle and Stan that the rebuilding order came from Wall-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas (which is phonetically misspelled as Arkansaw). The three of them then travel to Bentonville to stop the Wall-Mart, but are joined by Cartman, whom the Wall-Mart "told" to stop them. Though none of the boys trust him (Kyle knows for a fact that Cartman is secretly against them), they are in a hurry to leave. They then reach Bentonville, despite Cartman's sabotage (slashing the tires of the bus they travel on), and talk to Harvey Brown, the current president of Wall-Mart, who is remorseful of all the damage it done, since he is one of the founders. The boys ask him how they can stop it, and he tells them they need to find and destroy its "heart". As the boys leave, Brown commits suicide by shooting himself in the head.
They make it back to South Park with Kyle, Stan, and Kenny dressed like the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys. The boys are about to enter it when Cartman confronts them with a knife in his hand, and says "Wall-Mart is a great store, I cannot let you fools ruin its terrific bargains. You see, I was working for Wall-Mart all along!" Kyle then tells him he knew that he was, and a "Yes I did" "No you didn't" argument ensues. Kenny is then assigned to hold Cartman off while Stan and Kyle enter the Wall-Mart. Once in the Wall-Mart, they find Stan's father, who tells them they need to go to the television department, and they will need his keys. Immediately, Randy succumbs to Wall-Mart's bargains. He finally caves in to a screwdriver set which is "only $9.98," telling him the bargain is too great. He gives the boys his keys, and the two head for the television department. Once they arrive, they are confronted by a man who says he is Wall-Mart. After a confusing dialogue, he finally tells the boys that the heart "lies beyond that plasma screen television". The boys walk over to find it is a mirror, to which the Wall-Mart responds, "yes, don't you see? That is the heart of Wall-Mart. You. The consumer. I take many forms, Wall-Mart, Kmart, Target, but I am one single entity: desire". The boys then smash the mirror to "destroy the heart."
The actual building of Wall-Mart then begins to fall apart, and the man who says he is Wall-Mart starts to laugh diabolically. Everyone evacuates the Wall-Mart as it implodes in a similar fashion (and possible reference) to the house from the movie Poltergeist.
Everyone cheers because Kyle tells everyone that all of these places have a self-destruct sequence if they break a mirror in the back. Chef tells a soldier to spread the word to all the towns on how to destroy these places, in reference to a scene from the film Independence Day. Randy then announces that the Wall-Mart's "heart" was their desires the whole time. Oblivious to the fact that the boys consider this obvious, Randy explains pedantically how the residents of South Park had allowed their consumerism to work against them and nearly destroy their cherished small-town charm. Realizing their mistake — albeit only on the surface — the townspeople loyally return to shopping at Jim's Drugs, which is shown to gradually grow larger until it reaches a Wall-Mart wholesale fashion and is later being burned down itself. Watching it burn, the townspeople vow not to shop there again, and they immediately head to the local True Value.