You've never given up on anything in your life and you aren't going to start now!

October 25, 2007 1:31 PM

What movie or TV show were they parodying in one specific scene on South Park last night? (Spoilers within)

No, the answer is not Stargate. :-)

Please forgive my occasionally hazy recall about last night's episode ("Imaginationland Pt. II"), most of this will be largely paraphrased.

On last night's South Park, there's a sequence where Kyle temporarily "dies" after his encounter with Manbearpig. The doctors hit him with the defibrillator twice and then tell Cartman "he's gone".

Cartman freaks out and begins frantically giving Kyle chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth. He says things like "don't you die on me". Then he demands the doctors use the defibrillator again, then he goes back to the compressions and the mouth-to-mouth.

The scene culminates in Cartman hitting Kyle on the chest and saying something close to "you've never given up on anything in your life and you aren't going to start now". After one last CPR session, Kyle coughs up some water and comes back to life.

The whole sequence is maddeningly familiar and I know it is lifted shot-for-shot and line-for-line from a movie or a TV show. I'm almost positive it's something I have seen more than once.

The things that I remember definitely being from the original film/show are the 2 defibs, followed by the pronouncement of death from the doctor, then the freak out/CPR from a primary character, then the third defib, then more CPR, then the formerly lifeless person coughs up water and is revived.

I'm vaguely picturing an older person (maybe a father?) trying to bring back a younger person (maybe a daughter?), but that may not be right.

The South Park BBS and Wikipedia both say this is supposed to be a specific scene in the Abyss, but I'm kind of skeptical since I have never seen the Abyss, but I have definitely seen the scene that is the source of this parody.

Anyone with any ideas?

posted by Beautiful Downtown Burbank to media & arts (11 comments total)

The Abyss.
posted by crickets at 1:35 PM on October 25, 2007

Maybe the reason it seems so familiar is because it is. It's #1 on Screenwriterguy's top ten worst cliche lines of dialogue.
posted by iconomy at 1:36 PM on October 25, 2007

Virgil: Goddammit, you bitch! You never backed away from anything in your life! Now fight!
[slaps Lindsey]
Virgil: Fight!
[slaps Lindsey again]
Virgil: Fight! Right now! Do it! Fight goddammit! Fight! Fight! Fiiiiight!
posted by dreadpiratesully at 1:37 PM on October 25, 2007

THANK YOU. I was wondering this same thing.
posted by mrbill at 1:38 PM on October 25, 2007

The scene is somewhere in the middle, when Mary Stuart Mastrantonio has had to have been pulled, sans suit, through the water in hopes of resuscitating her.

Ed Harris, her ex-husband, is aggressively performing CPR. The scene goes on for quite some time, and it's clear to everyone except Ed that she's dead. Except, of course, she wasn't.
posted by crickets at 1:39 PM on October 25, 2007

Awesome. AskMe comes through.
posted by Big_B at 2:22 PM on October 25, 2007

Just a note, crickets, it is Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Not Mary Stuart.
posted by Justinian at 4:13 PM on October 25, 2007

I thought you were going to ask about the Strawberry Shortcake scene, which was from HOSTEL. And disgusting in both.
posted by GaelFC at 8:06 PM on October 25, 2007

The thing with the Abyss scene is, she might well have been alright without the need for the drawn out resuscitation scene if they hadn't waited for her to drown before dragging her to safety.
posted by biffa at 3:21 AM on October 26, 2007

This sort of scene is frequently parodied-see this MST3K bit, for example.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:33 AM on October 26, 2007

It's also in "Far and Away," when Tom Cruise is about to die at the end, and Nicole Kidman says something similar, if I recall correctly.
posted by cass at 1:22 PM on October 26, 2007