The Return of Chef - Plot

Plot

The episode begins with a fictitious "Previously on South Park", which explains that Chef left South Park to join the "Super Adventure Club", hoping to add excitement and meaning to his life. For three months, he is gone. However, at the beginning of the episode he returns and the boys quickly notice that he is acting strangely as he expresses a desire to have sex with them (his words are spliced together from his spoken/sung lines in previous episodes). Wanting to find out what has caused all this, they go to the Super Adventure Club headquarters and discover that the group is made up of explorers who travel worldwide, molesting children. When the explorers' leader, William P. Connelly, unsuccessfully tries to hypnotize the boys, they realize that the club has brainwashed Chef.

They enlist the help of psychiatrist Dr. Neeland. He asks what was Chef's favorite pastime before having sex with children. Stan says "Having sex with women" and the psychiatrist recommends that they take Chef to a strip club, which is called the Peppermint Hippo (which was also used in the episode "Lil' Crime Stoppers"). After an initially cold reaction to the strippers, he is taken by a "feature dancer" at the club who happens to be a morbidly obese black woman. She shoves Chef's face into her breasts and buttocks and Chef snaps back to his old self again. However, the agents of the Super Adventure Club appear, tranquilize Chef, and kidnap him. Chef is then held in a containment center and read the rules of the Super Adventure Club. When the boys follow them back to their headquarters and demand Chef's release, Connelly explains the history of their organization with the caption "This is what Super Adventure Club actually believes." (a reference to "Trapped in the Closet"). He explains that "Children have particles called marlocks in their bodies, and when an adult has sex with the child, the marlocks implode, feeding the adult receptive cavity with energy that causes immortality, so sayeth the ruler of Bethos." The boys quickly state that it is the most retarded thing they ever heard; when Connelly indignantly asks if these beliefs are any more retarded than fundamental ones for Christianity and Buddhism, Stan angrily says "Yes. It's way, WAY more retarded."

The boys are told that they have to leave, but they refuse to do so without Chef. Connelly eventually calls security to escort them out, after threatening multiple times to do it. The boys escape from the guards and run off, and they find the containment room where Chef is lying on a table and a club member is attempting to brainwash him again. Kenny headbutts the club member in his groin, knocking him to the ground. The boys then escape with Chef, but Connelly reminds Chef why he joined the Super Adventure Club in the first place, telling him that his life will be grand and eternal if he stays with them rather than the boring one he left in South Park. Though the boys plead him not to, Chef walks back towards the club. However, the bridge that Chef is crossing collapses after being struck by lightning. He tries to climb back up onto the cliff, but is unable to hang onto the bridge as it is on fire. Chef falls and is impaled on a jagged tree stump. He is then attacked by a mountain lion. Connelly—desperate to keep Chef alive—instructs one of the members to shoot the mountain lion. He tries, but accidentally shoots Chef in the heart. He fires two more bullets, both of which hit Chef. A grizzly bear then appears and attacks Chef as well. The mountain lion tears the skin off Chef's face. It then bites off his right hand and the bear bites off Chef's right foot. Chef's legs and waist both tear apart and his insides fall out. Cartman initially offers hope Chef may still have survived, since "They say the last thing you do before you die is crap your--", but Chef's body voids its bowels at that instant. Cartman then says, "Oh, never mind." and the boys, dismayed by their friend's death, leave the scene.

A funeral for Chef is held, during which Kyle explains that although he did not agree with Chef's recent decision, he is not angry with Chef for leaving South Park, and that the "fruity little club" Chef joined is to blame for his recent behavior. The description of "fruity little club" is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Scientologists who, like Hayes, took offense to the satirical episode that drove Hayes from the cast. Kyle finishes by wishing the congregation to remember him as the singing, jolly man he once was. The scene then cuts to the SAC members resurrecting Chef as Darth Chef (parodying the ending of Revenge of the Sith), now fully embracing the club's ethics.