HappyHolograms

Plot

Kyle Broflovski, worried that the rise of Let's Play videos was creating a national emergency, posted a call on Twitter for families to reconnect. Bill Cosby then approached Kyle and asked him to appear in a Christmas TV special. Kyle said yes, not realizing Cosby was actually a hologram. The special, called "The Washington Redskins Go Fuck Yourself Holiday Special," was cooked up by a former producer of Randy Marsh and Eric Cartman.

It was set to include famous people, holograms, running commentary from Cartman, and holiday music. The producer's crew had no idea he had let Cartman gain too much influence, and soon Cartman's commentary box was showing up everywhere. When Kyle saw an ad for the special, he got angry that his idea had turned into a social media stunt. Stan Marsh was also upset to learn his dad Randy was involved.

Randy and Sharon Marsh went to the police to report the hologram of Randy's secret identity, Lorde, but the officers didn't believe them. A cop spotted the rogue Mr. Jefferson hologram but couldn't arrest it physically. Randy and Mr. Jefferson found out about the special and decided to join forces. When the Tupac Shakur hologram, sent to catch Mr. Jefferson, showed up at the police station, Randy and Mr. Jefferson fled to the Marsh house.

There, Randy discovered that Stan and Kyle had been taken hostage by the producer, and Tupac confronted him. Kyle asked the producer why he made the special. The producer explained that when his grandson said his favorite celebrity was PewDiePie, he felt let down and wanted to absorb young people's culture into his own. Stan called the producer a total grandpa, which annoyed him.

When Cartman's window popped up in front of the producer, he tried to shut it down, but Cartman had already achieved "trend-scendence."

Production

The episode contains numerous references to earlier episodes, including Randy Marsh's double life as Lorde, the return of customer service employee "Steve" from "Grounded Vindaloop", the Washington Redskins logo from "Go Fund Yourself", and Cartman's desire for his own bathroom from "The Cissy". On the DVD audio commentary, Trey Parker and Matt Stone felt the story would have been better split into three episodes rather than two, as they had leftover content. The original plan was for a three-episode story, but they settled for two. The episode references the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, as well as the sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby.

Reception

The A.V. Club's Dan Caffrey gave the episode a B rating, stating it was rushed, messy, and perhaps too much story for South Park even as a two-parter. Max Nicholson of IGN rated it 6.8 out of 10, noting the climax did not tie everything together as it could have. Chris Longo from Den of Geek gave it 4 out of 5 stars, calling it incoherent, hilarious madness and its own artform. Longo also noted that the topic #IHateCartmanBrah became the top trending topic worldwide on Twitter in real life.