Tweek vs. Craig
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| "Tweek vs. Craig" |
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"Tweek vs. Craig" is the 35th episode of Comedy Central's animated series South Park. It originally aired on June 23, 1999 and was the last episode that aired before the release of the South Park movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut one week later on June 30.
Plot
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (June 2009) |
The episode starts with the boys in shop class, being told about the purpose of shop class by their teacher, Mr. Adler, who insists that the students not "screw around" (Mr. Adler is based on a teacher Matt Stone had in elementary school, whose name was bleeped multiple times on DVD commentary because the individual had not given permission to Parker and Stone to use his/her name). They are also asked who the biggest troublemaker in their class is. Stan and Kyle say that Tweek is, while Cartman says that Craig is.
Meanwhile, all the girls (and Kenny who is afraid of sharp objects in shop class which can kill him) are in Home Ec. When the teacher tells them that they will be making things that are 'lacy and pretty', Kenny cheers. However, it turns out that the sorting into the two classes was based on sexist stereotyping when Wendy reveals that she had selected shop class instead of Home Economics and is told by the teacher that Home Economics is for "the pretty girls who won't have to worry about careers and instead will marry a nice man." Kenny cheers even louder at this, eliciting strange looks from the girls around him.
In shop class, Stan, Kyle, and Cartman make a bet over who would win a fight between Tweek and Craig. Cartman confronts Craig saying that Tweek was making fun of him. Stan and Kyle do the same with Tweek. Soon enough, the two agree to fight each other. Mr. Adler takes a picture frame out of his drawer, and begins to daydream about the woman whose photo is in the frame (played in live action by the show assistant writer Pam Brady). It is shown that they were once in love.
The boys go outside to the playground, and are waiting for the fight, raising their bets to 10 dollars. Clyde then tells the three that both Tweek and Craig went home. Stan and Kyle, dismayed by the no-show, go to Tweek's house to see why he went home. Tweek says he realized that he and Craig have no reason to fight, but Stan claims that Craig turned up, and called him a wuss. Tweek agrees to actually fight Craig the next day. Cartman and Kenny go to Craig's house, and convince him to show up to the fight as well. He didn't show up because he was watching Red Racer.
Mr. Adler returns home from a date with the Home Ec teacher, Pearl. Despite her efforts to convince him to allow her in to have sex, he refuses and makes up lame excuses. He then goes in, picks up another picture of his dead fiancée, and starts to daydream some more. The next day, during class, Mr. Adler ends up dreaming about his fiancée again, and it is shown that she was a skywriter whose plane exploded in mid-air and crashed into the ocean, where she then drowned. Clyde breaks him out of his daydreaming by telling him that Tommy got his face stuck in the belt sander and now has no face. When he is sent to the nurse, Clyde asks him about the picture and if the woman pictured is dead. Mr. Adler explains a little, but then dismisses him. After school, the fight is about to take place, when it is revealed neither can fight; the bout is postponed once again until they learn how to fight. Craig flips off his teacher, and then learns sumo with Cartman who considers sumo as a future career, while Tweek is taught to box by Stan's uncle Jimbo. He fights Ned. At first Tweek loses, but then gets angry and repeatedly punches his opponent and kicks him while he is down. In Home Ec, Kenny is told to transfer to shop class by the teacher. Although terrified at the prospect of being around all the tools, Kenny has no choice (as Kenny has a vision of all the sharp tools that would be around him if he transferred to Shop Class, the music that plays is an excerpt from Baba Yaga, the ninth movement of Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" suite which has also been used in several other episodes).
Eventually, Tweek and Craig are ready to fight. Meanwhile, in the shop classroom, Mr. Adler writes a suicide note explaining he can't cope since he has run out of nicotine gum and that the kids all "screw around too much". He then gets on the moving table saw, sets it running, and waits for his death. Outside, the two boys are tired, but Kyle says that Craig just called Tweek a "boner". They continue to fight. Kenny goes to the shop classroom, since he is sent to start work on the jigsaw. Tweek and Craig then are propelled through the shop classroom window, still fighting. Mr. Adler starts up and demands to know what's going on. Tweek and Craig knock the stool out from underneath Kenny, and Kenny hangs on the saw machine. Tweek slams Craig into a second saw which knocks over the one Kenny is on. Kenny's jacket is caught by the blade, spun around and then flies into a box of old, rusty, sharp nails.
When Mr. Adler picks up Kenny's body, his fiancée talks to him through Kenny's hood, telling him to move on, and his uncle and grandma turn up too. He says he can move on now, and hugs Kenny. Stan says, "Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here." They then go to the hospital to visit Tweek and Craig to tell them about the bet. At that point, Craig severely flips them off, which they accept. They then tell Tweek and Craig that both families called each other wusses on the news, and whether or not this is true, it causes another fight between them.