with once production was complete. Parker said, "We were pretty bummed out, and we kind of thought, well, we're going to have a bad episode go on the air, and hopefully it won't alienate too many people, and we'll try to get our viewers back for Thanksgiving. But we were totally wrong, people totally loved it." Stone said he felt the episode solidified major characteristics embodied by the Chef character, particularly the fact that he is one of the only adults in South Park who always understands the truth of any given situation and believes the children almost all of the time. Stone said, "It's like the parents are all nuts that live in the town. The boys are kind of the most sane and Chef is really the only one in town who believes the kids when they say (something) is happening, when the kids are actually right and it's the town that's crazy." "Pinkeye" was also the first episode in which Eric Cartman's mother Liane was portrayed as a promiscuous woman who previously engaged in drugs and prostitution, and is willing to engage in pornographic sex for money; during the episode, she is mentioned and featured on the cover of the fictional men's magazine Crack Whore, much to her son's disappointment. Release Before its premiere on Comedy Central, "Pinkeye" was shown at the first annual New York Comedy Film Festival at New York Film Academy on October 26, 1997. With about 50 films shown in the festival, "Pinkeye" was chosen as the final exhibition to close the festival. Parker and Stone appeared on The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn on October 27, to promote the episode and the first season in general. In its original American television broadcast, "Pinkeye" received a Nielsen Rating of 3.8, meaning the episode was seen by about 1.75 million households. Television journalists said the rating was unusually high for Comedy Central standards; the network averages a 0.6 rating (276,000 households) during prime time, and prior to South Park, the channel's highest rating was a 2.7 (1.24 million households) for the second season premiere of Absolutely Fabulous. In 2000, The Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills, California held a three-month horror festival called "Monster in the Box: Horror on Television", which included "Pinkeye" in its selection of classic or excellent horror-related television comedy episodes. It also included The Munsters episode "Munster Masquerade"