Le Petit Tourette

"Le Petit Tourette" (French pronunciation: [lə pə.ti tuʁɛt]; 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.^[1] In the episode, Eric 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".^[2]

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.^[3] "Le Petit Tourette" was released on DVD along with the rest of the eleventh season on August 12, 2008.