"Le Petit Tourette" (; meaning "The Little Tourette") is the eighth episode of the eleventh season of the animated television series South Park, and the 161st episode overall. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on October 3, 2007. This episode marked the beginning of the second half of the eleventh season. In the episode, Cartman pretends to have Tourette syndrome (TS) so that he can say whatever he wants without getting into trouble. It eventually leads to trouble and he ends up saying things that he would never say. The episode's title is a play on the title of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film Le Petit Soldat.
The episode was written by series co-creator Trey Parker and was rated TV-MA LV in the United States, due to language and violence. It was one of the first episodes of South Park to use any of the L, S, or V sub-ratings. Parker and Stone had many discussions with Comedy Central as how to portray the language used in the episode. Eventually, the network allowed them to use nearly all curse words except for "fuck", which remained bleeped (however recent reruns of the episode no longer bleep the word). Prior to its premiere, the episode attracted attention from the Tourette Syndrome Association (TSA, renamed in 2015 to the Tourette Association of America), who "fully expect[ed] it to be offensive and insensitive to people with TS".
The episode received mixed reviews from television critics, with some praising the episode's humor and others considering its structure disjointed. The TSA conceded that "the episode was surprisingly well-researched. The highly exaggerated emphasis on coprolalia notwithstanding, for the attentive viewer, there was a surprising amount of accurate information conveyed", adding that several elements of the episode "served as a clever device" for providing accurate facts to the public. "Le Petit Tourette" was released on DVD along with the rest of the eleventh season on August 12, 2008.
Plot
While shopping at a toy store, Cartman sees a boy named Thomas who continuously shouts obscenities, as his mother and other shoppers try to explain to Cartman that he has Tourette syndrome (TS). Cartman decides to pretend he has the disorder as well so he can get away with shouting obscenities himself, and successfully convinces his mother and a doctor, who diagnoses him with TS and notifies the school. Kyle quickly deduces that Cartman is faking; Cartman admits the truth to him but continues to enjoy the deception. When Kyle complains to Principal Victoria, a visiting representative from a TS foundation misinterprets his statement as an allegation that all people with TS are faking. Kyle is sent to a meeting of a local support group for children with the disorder, who explain that they truly cannot control their various tics and outbursts. Realizing that Cartman has manipulated everyone else around him into believing the scam, and seeing no way to disprove it, Kyle reluctantly apologizes to the group and to Cartman. However, Cartman takes advantage of the situation to shout vulgar anti-Semitic remarks at Kyle's parents. Thomas soon realizes that Cartman is faking the disorder when he says to Thomas, "Isn't having Tourette's awesome?".
Cartman decides to appear on Dateline NBC and be interviewed by Chris Hansen, with the intention of making an anti-Semitic hate speech while being commended for his bravery in living with TS. However, at a congratulatory dinner beforehand, he inadvertently blurts out embarrassing true details from his past. Realizing that he has lost the ability to censor himself after saying whatever comes to his mind for so long, he tries to cancel the Dateline interview for fear of humiliating himself, but Hansen intimidates him into going ahead with it by telling him about a pedophile who tried to back out of appearing on the series To Catch a Predator. He shot himself after the production crew tracked him down; Hansen insinuates that the man was actually murdered and that the same will happen to Cartman if he backs out. Realizing that he has no way to avoid going on Dateline, Cartman prays for a miracle while at the same time blaming God for his predicament.