"Bloody Mary" is the fourteenth episode in the ninth season of the American animated television series South Park. The 139th overall episode of the series, it originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on December 7, 2005. In the episode, Randy loses his driver's license for driving under the influence and is ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where he becomes convinced that alcoholism is a potentially fatal disease. Meanwhile, a statue of the Virgin Mary starts bleeding "out its ass" and Randy believes that he can be "cured" if it bleeds on him.
Plot
Stan, Cartman, Kyle and Ike attend karate class while Stan's dad Randy goes for a couple of drinks. In the class, the instructor admonishes Cartman for his lack of discipline ("You rack disiprin!"), and tells the class that true discipline comes from within.
After class, an inebriated Randy drives the boys home, but he is pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. Randy's license is revoked, and he is ordered to perform community service and to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, where he is introduced to the twelve-step program, which leads him to believe that he is powerless to control his drinking and that alcoholism is a disease. Randy, whom Stan describes as a "hypochondriac", then begins to drink more, since he has decided that he is in fact powerless to control it and cannot stop. Meanwhile, a statue of the Virgin Mary starts to bleed "out its ass" and people begin to flock around it to find a cure for their diseases. Randy believes it can cure his disease.
Randy has Stan drive him to the church where the statue is, and after cutting in line, arguing that his "disease" is worse than that of others, he is drenched in the holy blood. He jumps up and declares that he will not drink any more, and abstains from alcohol for five days.
Pope Benedict XVI comes to investigate, and discovers that the blood is not actually coming from the statue's anus, but from its vagina. Since "chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time", this is no miracle. Randy, disappointed, realizes that God did not "heal" him. At first he again declares himself powerless, and most of the other recovering alcoholics agree and rush to the bar. But Stan follows Randy and convinces him that if God did not help him, then he must have managed to stop by himself.
Randy declares that he will never drink again. Stan objects to this too, claiming that if Randy completely avoids drinking, then drinking is still controlling his life and he needs to figure out how to live in moderation. Randy puts Stan on his shoulders and walks off into the sunset while the two discuss how much drinking would be proper.
Production
Trey Parker and Matt Stone reveal on the DVD commentary for this episode that they had wanted to do an episode involving Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for "a long time", but could never get it right.
Parker and Stone joked that the bleeding statue idea came from Anne Garefino, a producer on the show who is Catholic, and was inspired by the real life phenomenon of "weeping statues", unusual occurrences where statues would unexplainably "bleed" some sort of liquid via supernatural means, usually from the eyes. The crew were discussing the idea of having this happen in an episode but felt it needed to be something more outlandish than the eyes. Parker and Stone also joked that Garefino then came up with the idea of having the statue "shit blood all over the pope's face"..
The scene in which Randy gets arrested for drunk driving is based on a near identical experience that Parker had with his father when he was nine years-old.
Controversy
The episode was aired on December 7, 2005, which is the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic observance related specifically to the Virgin Mary. "Bloody Mary" was considered a very controversial episode, even by South Park standards.