By Robert Scucci
| Published
Sometimes the best kind of joke requires a years-long gestation period before it can finally find its legs and work its way into an overarching story. For South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, they were finally about to work out their infamous “sting operation” bit during a Season 13 episode called “Butters’ Bottom Bitch,” which saw Sergeant Harrison Yates committing to his job in unthinkable ways to take down a prostitution ring that has been plaguing his small mountain town long enough for him to finally get involved. Originally pitched as a throwaway joke while Parker and Stone were working on Orgazmo back in 1997, right when South Park first started making its rounds on Comedy Central, and long before Sergeant Yates was ever a fully fleshed out character, we wouldn’t see this bit become fully realized until 2009, when all the pieces finally fell into place.
Committing To The Bit On Every Level
The South Park DVDs all have short “mini-commentaries” featuring Trey Parker and Matt Stone talking briefly about the production and character arcs in each episode. They explain that how midway through their Season 13 run, they ran into a snag while writing “Butters’ Bottom Bitch,” when they realized that they still needed a suitable B plot to run in tandem with Butters’ descent into the criminal underworld with his “kissing company,” resulting in him embodying a moral code directly inspired by the HBO documentary Pimps Up, Ho’s Down.
While Butters’ mostly innocent but still technically criminal enterprise begins to blossom, Sergeant Harrison Yates, who only first became a prominent character in South Park lore during Season 8’s “The Jeffersons,” decides the best way to take down the operation is from the inside the only way he knows how: through an elaborate sting operation in which he dresses up like a sex worker and arrests anybody looking to throw down cash for a good time.
What makes the over decade-old joke so truly impactful, however, is how Yates doesn’t draw his badge and firearm when money changes hands, but rather upon completing whatever act his clients are paying for, to the shock and horror of his partners at the Park County Police Department.
Time To Pull The Trigger
Parker and Stone knew that early on in their careers that they’d never be able to get away with the joke they came up with while working on Orgazmo, which was a police officer starting his perilous odyssey with “Hey there you looking to party?,” which quickly escalates to “Give me that evidence bag!,” resulting in one of the most graphic breakaway gags that has been seen on South Park to this day. Caught in a jam, and realizing that by Season 13 they had a considerable amount of influence over how far they could push the envelope, they threw their hands up because they were severely burned out from working on their previous episode, “Dead Celebrities.”
It was during this moment of desperation that South Park creators decided to revive the throwaway joke and dress Sergeant Harrison Yates in his finest red vinyl miniskirt, appropriately adorned with a black whale tail, fishnets, and an unkempt blonde wig, and get him out on the streets. As the South Park episode progresses through its second and third acts, so does the level of Yates’ sense of depravity and commitment to the job that leaves his coworkers awestruck and dumbfounded by how far he’s willing to go to clean up the streets of South Park.
Better Late Than Never
Out of all 328 episodes of South Park, this Season 13 episode ranks among the best of the series, currently sitting in the number 31 spot on IMDb with 8.8 out of 10 stars. While we can always wonder why they didn’t lean into this entire legendary subplot sooner, it’s probably for the best because sometimes ideas need time to develop and find their rightful place in a larger overarching story. In the case of the Park County Police Department, we’re all glad that Parker and Stone waited until this long in the series’ run because there isn’t any other character who could be that convincingly devoted to his job other than Sergeant Harrison Yates.
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