7x09 Christian Rock Hard

[9.5/10] A stone cold classic. I enjoy the B-story, a semi-dated but still fun riff on the then nascent trend of file sharing, for the silliness of it. The policeman giving them a Christmas Carol-esque tour of celebrity musicians only enjoying lives of “semi-luxury” in grave tones is a hoot. And the boys going on strike, deciding that they’re still in it for the music, only to discover that all the other musicians are in it for the money, is a nice satirical point to end on. Calls to mind Gillian Welch’s “Everything Is Free Now.”

But the A-story is the piece du resistance in this one. Cartman cynically forming a Christian rock band to sell records is a delightfully Machiavellian scheme. His admission that he only knows enough about Christianity to exploit it, and his eventual comeuppance from Token, Butters, and arguably the universe are all delightful. I get a continual kick out of his “love songs to Jesus” approach (particularly the eminently laugh-worthy and catchy “Body of Christ”), and it’s just a trademark bit of Cartman’s mercenary brilliance leading to him getting unwittingly hoisted by his own petard at the end of the day. That’s the paradigmatic Cartman story in my book, and this is the ur-example of it.

This is also a fantastic Butters episode. Him naively declaring that he’s just pretending to be religious to a passerby, his final little toot and middle finger to Cartman, and particularly his little scoot away when Cartman says that if he’s lying, God should strike him down, are all just perfect little comedy moments. It’s all a lot of fun.

Overall, this is one of South Park’s very best, in an episode that is a little topical, but mostly just loony enough to be endlessly amusing.