After this... comes this.

The episode in question is already available online, even for those without BitTorrent; I couldn't possibly condone illegal TV show downloading by telling you where, but suffice to say if you Google "south park", you don't have to go more than, ooh, a page or so before you'll find the site.

Anyway, its quite worth seeing. Not the funniest episode ever, but the way they've patched together Chef's speech from previous episodes - and made it quite deliberately sound like it's been badly patched together - is pretty darned good. Although the death scene is... really quite disturbingly visceral for a cartoon. Even South Park.

You've got to hand it to Parker and Stone, anyway. A week after the story blows up, and already, not only do they spin an episode out of the whole thing, they also guarantee that it'll have been one of the most-watched episodes of a show whose popularity, while still steadily in the "cult" bracket, certainly isn't what it used to be (although somewhat ironically, the show is far, far better nowadays than it was during the mega-popular first couple of series). The media attention will have done them far more good than harm, especially seeing as the general public at large tend to agree that Scientology is... well... a bit rubbish, really.

It must be strange to have everyone on their side, for once.