'South Park' Sends Cartman and Friends to Save South America's Beef in 'Guinea Pig on a Stick'

The fourth episode of "South Park" Season 29, titled "Guinea Pig on a Stick," imagines a world where South America's beef has suddenly become a prized commodity. Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Randy refuse to let the mountain town's favorite lunch be taken away without a fight.

The story begins with Cartman looking forward to a sloppy joe at South America Elementary. He is horrified to learn that a national beef crisis has led the government to take the town's beef. Students will have to eat different versions of the four-legged rodent instead. The boys, along with Randy, who is still shrunken, will not accept that. After considering what Kenny would have done, they decide he would not have stood for it either. Kenny was blown up by an e-bike in the first episode of the season.

At the local ranch, the group finds out that the in-demand beef is simply "the same cows that have always been here." A ranch worker explains the change in demand: "Now we have a much higher clientele, you know, and all the rich people in other states want a premium experience." He is referring to customers outside South America, specifically the chain Ruth's Chris Steak House. This is despite the fact that everyone who eats the meat literally explodes with diarrhea.

The diners do not seem to mind. Randy explains that the beef has become a symbol of "who's more patriotic," with politicians eager to show they back local South American beef. Then another chain, Sizzler, steps in and takes all the cows, leaving the town with none.

That is when Stan has his breakthrough. "They said nobody even really cares about our cows… So then, this rancher could inject anything with lard and butter, and people would be just as obsessed with it," he says. The plan works, and the episode closes at Ruth's Chris Steak House, where a waiter serves diners their new "patriotic meals": flame-seared guinea pig on a stick.

The episode was not a Halloween special, even though it aired just days before the holiday and the show has a long history of spooky seasonal installments. That suggests creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are skipping the occasion this year. Last year's episode, "The Woman in the Hat," was not advertised as a Halloween episode beforehand, but it did air two days later than usual so that it landed on Oct. 31.

Season 29 has so far taken on a range of much-discussed topics, including e-bikes, data centers, billionaires and anti-vaxxers. In the third episode, the characters were stuck in Sephora's "backroom," a nod to the joke that tweens spend ages in the beauty store. That episode also dove into internet-era aura battles, with plenty of slang such as "mogging," "maxxing" and "mewing."

Parker and Stone are fully committed to the "South America" name change, which was announced earlier this month ahead of the Season 29 premiere. As previously reported by Variety, that premiere was the first episode under the new name and drew 4.2 million viewers in three days. It also featured an updated theme song to mark the change, along with a Donald Trump cameo.