This Is the Classic TV Show That ‘South Park’ Parodied With Its Fat-Faced J.D. Vance
When mocking the President and Vice President in last night’s new episode of South Park, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone found inspiration in a classic exotic drama TV show called Fantasy Island, which isn’t to be confused with Donald “Saddam Hussein” Trump’s nickname for Little Saint James.
In the newest South Park episode “Got a Nut,” viewers got a taste of President Trump’s private slice of paradise when Mr. Mackey and Clyde Donovan each earned themselves a trip to Trump’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, where the seedy, sex-trafficking underbelly of the Trump administration truly lies. In what the Vice President insists is a complimentary portrayal, South Park turned JD Vance into an abused, diminutive, couch-humping sidekick with a fat face taken straight from the viral Vance memes and an accent that South Park fans under the age of 45 may find unplaceable.
With “Got a Nut,” South Park portrayed the President and Vice President as a couple of fascist, sex-trafficking parodies of the leads from the ABC series Fantasy Island, which ran from 1977 to 1984. Fantasy Island revolved around the mysterious owner of a private island who has the power to make his guest’s wildest fantasies a reality — for a price.
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That was probably about the same pitch Trump gave that donor who we saw get a “massage” from Dora the Explorer.
In Fantasy Island, Ricardo Montalbán and Hervé Villechaize played Mr. Roarke and Tattoo, the mysterious master-and-assistant duo who orchestrated elaborate scenarios for wealthy guests to live out their wildest fantasies. Each episode would feature a guest fulfilling their greatest dream, which could range from a simple reunion with a long-lost lover to a confrontation with a cold-blooded killer who murdered a family member.
In the original 1977 Fantasy Island made-for-TV movie, the cost to fly to Mr. Roarke’s island off the coast of South America and fulfill a fantasy was $50,000, or roughly a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money. But, as Skydance Media founder and new Paramount owner David Ellison knows, the price for a similar service from the President now costs about $16 million. Throughout Fantasy Island, Mr. Roarke drops hints that he may be an immortal being who has lived for many centuries, and the show’s canon heavily implies this to be true. Unfortunately for Trump, I don’t think immortal beings have to wear compression socks when they hit the links.
The most memorable performance in Fantasy Island was that of Villechaize, who also played a significantly less savory henchman named Nick Nack in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. Villechaize’s role as the spirited, affable Tattoo and his iconic catchphrase of, “De plane, De Plane!” each time a guest arrived on the island are perfectly honored in “Got a Nut,” which is more than we can say for the Vice President who replaced Villechaize in the role of the sidekick.
As far as we know, Fantasy Island never established that Tattoo’s deepest desire is to fuck every couch in the complex.
