Cult News

What a difference a week makes. Last week it seemed as if Scientology had beaten South Park when Viacom apparently pulled the plug on the repeat of “Trapped in the Closet,” the stinging satire about the controversial church and its two leading celebrity faithful Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

“So, Scientology, you may have won this battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will not stop us…You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid…will fail!” South Park announced last week.

That warning proved to be prophetic when South Park took its revenge this week.

Isaac Hayes’ character “chef” met with a violent end on South Park’s premiere 10th season episode titled “”Return of the Chef.” The Comedy Central show’s co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker decided to use Isaac Hayes’ voice again, but this time it was spliced together to create a very different dialog.

In the rich baritone that made Hayes famous Chef tells the children of South Park, “How about I meet you guys after work and we make love . . . come on children, you’re my sexual fantasy, let’s all make sweet love.” 

From the “Shaft” super-stud that sang “Chocolate Salty Balls” to pedophile? 

But Chef was “brainwashed” by a cult-like group called “Super Adventure Club,” “thought to be a veiled reference to Scientology” reports BBC News.  

The South Park kids call the group “that fruity little club for scrambling…brains.”

After a failed deprogramming attempt Chef falls off a bridge and then is burned, stabbed and mauled by a lion and a grizzly bear.

At his funeral one child offers a fitting eulogy as follows:

“A lot of us don’t agree with the choices the Chef has made in the last few days. Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can’t let the events of the past few weeks take away the memories of how Chef made us smile.”

Sounds more like a parting words to Isaac Hayes, who quit South Park protesting their Scientology show “Trapped in the Closet,” going so far as to accuse the co-creators of religious “intolerance” and “bigotry.”

It seemed as if Hayes had re-imagined South Park as some sort of warm, fuzzy, friendly, politically correct show instead of the stinging satire it has always been.

However, as CultNews has reported South Park is not 7th Heaven.

Payback can be hard and Stone and Parker got the last word. And Scientology and Hayes should have known that a weekly show like South Park always gets the last word.

Though according to Roger Friedman of Fox News there may be a sad twist. Isaac Hayes, who had a stroke, may not have actually acted on his own. Scientology may have staged the star’s resignation using him like a pawn to upstage the once planned rerun of “Trapped in the closet.”

However, in the end Scientology seems overmatched in this “slap down.” 

There is an old axiom: “Never mud-wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty, but the pig has fun.”

Matt Stone and Trey Parker may not be pigs, but they appear to have had quit a run with the press and a lot of fun wrestling with Scientology. And arguably at the controversial church’s expense, which seems to have walked away with mud on its face.

“Return of Chef” even exceeded the ratings triumph of “Trapped in the Closet” drawing the largest audience of any South Park show run in the past two years.

Adam Finley writing for TV Squad observed “Parker and Stone’s humor has always been drawn from anger…The guiding ethos of South Park has always been a deep-seeded anger towards people and institutions that take themselves too seriously.”

And Scientology seems to take itself very seriously.

Who really killed off Chef?

The most telling scene in “Return of Chef” is when Stan screams “You killed Chef!” shaking his fists at the cult-like “Super Adventure Club” and adds “You bastards!”