'South Park' Season 16, Episode 9 Recap - 'Raising the Bar'

When you first heard about "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo," you might have thought to yourself, "Well, this is it. We've hit rock bottom as a society."

You're not alone.

"South Park" sees it the same way, but it's not Honey Boo Boo's family or even TLC that's the blame: it's us.

It all starts when the boys are shopping at Wal-Mart (excuse me, "Wall-Mart" for legal purposes), and they see all the fat people on their motorized scooters. When Cartman picks up a package of candy corn flavored Oreos (those are a real thing, folks), Kyle warns him that he'll be just like those obese people in their scooters within a year.

Cartman beats that. He swears that he's going to do something about being fat, and his decision is to get his own Rascal scooter. It's a horrible life for him: he motors around and jumps to the front of lines at Disneyland, and sues people when they don't have accessible bathrooms.

Kyle is so upset by it that he teams up with Token to create a documentary about Cartman in order to shed light on the obesity epidemic. Little does Kyle know that Token is actually planning to use the footage to create a reality show called "Here Comes Fatty Doo Doo." It is, of course, a huge hit when it screens for audiences.

Cartman is livid when he learns about it, but only until he finds out that the show was beaten in the ratings by "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo." That leads the only way it could, to a "sghetti wrestling" match between Cartman and Honey Boo Boo, as hosted by Michelle Obama. Yeah, that happened.

That really has Kyle wondering how the bar got so low, that this counts as entertainment. He blames us, saying that we somehow let things get to this point... does he mean us as in the human race, or is he talking about "South Park" itself?

Fortunately for us, the human race has a hero: James Cameron. He gets in his submarine and dives to the bottom of the ocean in order to find "the bar" and raise it. His crew is skeptical, but sure enough he finds it and raises it at least enough for everyone, even Mama June, to realize that "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" is just plain wrong.

Other notable moments:

- Honey Boo Boo's heart fails and she has to get a pig heart transplant.

- Kids start tipping Rascals, so $25 million is put into attaching a "tip assist" function so fat people don't have to right themselves.

- Randy Newman sings the theme song for "Fatty Doo Doo," which includes the line "I only know five chords."

- "James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because he is James Cameron."

What They're Trying to Tell Us: Exercise, people. And don't watch crappy reality shows.