so let me set the scene for you here it's thursday we've we're one week away from our year from hell
and it being over we can't believe we've actually made it we actually made team america we actually
had made two seasons of south park all in one year and it was about to be over so now it's thursday
we all sit down in the writers room like okay guys one more show one more idea what should we do and
nothing just nothing all day thursday just hours and hours and hours and finally we're like it was
like 9 00 p.m and you're like you know what we got nothing let's go home we got to go home get some
sleep see if we can come up something tomorrow which already screws us super hard animation wise
because you know you're trying to do an animated show in six days now you suddenly take it to 5.
we show up friday and just nothing talking circles what about this what about that what about this
what are that nothing goes anywhere and i'm sitting there going we got to call comedy central
and tell them they're not gonna we're not gonna get an episode we can't there's nothing we can do
and then it was basically like come on are we really gonna have made it we're really
gonna have come this far and done all of this just on the last show not make it
and i remember all day friday just trying and trying and nothing and there was this little
shred of an idea which was you know john denver critter christmas but that's all we knew was just
like critter animals woodland critter christmas like but we couldn't figure out what's the idea
what is it and it was and then i kept saying i don't want to do a christmas show because
whatever this show is it's not going to be good because we don't have any time now to do it and
we don't even have an idea so i don't want to ruin the south park sort of track record for
christmas shows and like make it a christmas thing finally it's saturday morning we're sitting there
we've got no idea the show's not going anywhere everyone's pulling their hair out because the
animators are just sitting there with nothing to do now we've got four days to pull off an entire
episode and we're like screw it we're doing critter christmas somehow some way and i just
start writing pages for in the forest all these critters and we start talking about it more in
time and then i remember saturday afternoon it kind of broke it was like okay they need
stan's help no the thing that made us go that's it was blood orgy right they're satanic it was
blood orgy actually devil worship which was idea that came from that movie event horizon i think
with lawrence fishburne where they go out to this spaceship that they're not getting any signals
from and they're finding trying to figure out what happened to the crew and all the supernatural
stuff happens and then they finally find the tapes of what happened to the crew and it's
just this blood orgy where they're all eating each other and having sex and it's just awful it's like
a terrible movie and that's a sweet moment in it though then i remember we we had to stay up super
late saturday and like try to figure stuff out and then i went home and was still very unsettled
because i was exhausted and like all nervous because i was like how are we gonna make this
into a show it doesn't make any sense and then i remember sunday we had the idea of like what
if this is all just a story that cartman's telling and all of a sudden it all clicked into place and
i was able to go and write like a stan just stan getting fucked over basically by cartman's story
and it'll all rhyme and it'll be the same and it was just like that's it and and so we scrambled
sunday and i'll never forget the feeling but i was driving home in my car on sunday
and it dawned on me as we're driving home at like midnight it was like we're gonna pull this
off like the pages are in animations going pretty good we're going to get a show done it's going to
be funny this year we did it and i remember just roaring in my car i roared like a lion
and i didn't mean to it just came out of me and i was just sitting there behind the wheel going
i'm just going *roar* i was like wow that's pretty messed up but uh it was a pretty great feeling to
know we had pulled that year off and i swear i will never put myself in this position again but
it turns out this is one of my favorites i love this episode a lot of these voices were inspired
by that uh the henson thing yeah what does it look like with the watership down what is it it's like
it was like beavers on a waters otter christmas christmas or something which was
horrible yeah it was one of those things where i remember that as a kid that was so
great and we went and got the video we're watching going oh my god this is crap
most little kid christmas things and holiday things from all of our from our youth at least
you know you like them because of nostalgic feeling but they're not very good really
but this on the other hand is really good yeah this is this is really sweet
and that's about it so yeah in summation um overall seeing as though we made it and
finished and started a feature film in the midst of all this i think we did a pretty good job yeah
i give us a b-plus on this i'm gonna say b-plus plus well thanks we'll see you all at season nine
the mountain lion comes down and eats the virgin critter impregnated with the son of our lord oh
dear i'm so very afraid let's face it the mountain lion will never let our savior be born aww
hey we shouldn't be upset this christmas we've got stanny
of course stanny can do anything if he can build a manger he can stop that mean old mountain lion