Episode 'South Park' Season 15, Episode 6: 'City Sushi' Recap

Boy, was I excited when I saw that this was going to be a Butters-centric episode. My happiness only increased when I learned that the City Wok guy was going to be the other star. Two of the best characters on the show, together for one full episode? Be still my heart!

But a half an hour later, I was singing a different tune.

Boy, was "City Sushi" a mess. It all starts with Butters being taken in to see a psychiatrist for his "multiple personalities." You see, Butters has a number of different personae, including Inspector Butters, Fireman Butters, Truck Driver Butters, and of course Professor Chaos, and the joke of the episode is, at first, that the adults don't understand that he's just playing pretend.

But things take a turn when we find out that Butters' psychiatrist has multiple personalities of his own. The rest of their time is spent with the doctor harassing Butters as different parts of his personality, only to pin it all on Butters. Not only is it repetitive, but Butters dealing with horrible problems with no help from adults is a tired story that we've seen before.

Meanwhile, the City Wok guy, Mr. Kim, has a beef (a City Beef?) with the Japanese guy who put up a sushi place, City Sushi, right next door. Mr. Kim's problem is that now everyone will think that Chinese and Japanese people are the same. Sure enough, South Park names the area "Little Tokyo." Mr. Kim spends the episode trying to humiliate the Japanese sushi chef, but sadly it never really ends up being all that funny...just racist. Sure, "South Park" has made racism funny before, but not today.

The culmination of the episode--and spoiler alert, by the way--is that Mr. Lee is actually just Butters' psychiatrist in another one of his multiple personalities. The episode ends with a "Psycho" reference to accompany the "Paranormal Activity" one that happened before (that, for some reason, the writers decided to slap us in the face with...yes, we know what you're referencing, you don't have to explain the joke).

Ultimately, there was little to love about this episode. The jokes never got off the ground, though there was some potential for them. Then again, with last week's "Crack Baby Athletic Association" being so damn good, anything this week would have seemed a little weak in comparison.

What they're trying to tell us: Chinese and Japanese people aren't the same, multiple personalities are annoying, and not every episode with Butters is funny.