fire on Oprah, leading to the death of Gary. Distraught at his death, Minge blames Oprah for not spending time with them before turning the gun on himself and commits suicide. Oprah survives, but is still taken away to the hospital to be treated. Towelie is forgiven by everyone else and is hailed as a hero. Towelie apologizes for lying and learns that he should not get high to come up with ideas – he should come up with ideas first, and then get high as a reward. Production According to series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, this episode was originally this season's "bank episode", meaning that it is partially animated before the start of the actual production run, which allows the staff to have one or two days off during the run. It was intended to be a spoof of the television series Intervention, with the people of South Park trying to get Towelie into rehab. About halfway into production, they decided the state of the episode, which consisted of about ten minutes of actual episode, was not good enough and needed more work than they could achieve, so they started from scratch. The finished show was completed in far less time than usual, thanks mostly to them having already taken a two-day break. The intervention storyline was dropped and later used in the season fourteen episode, "Crippled Summer". The story involving Oprah had always been in the episode. Parker and Stone also discussed the "hat on top of a hat" scenario to describe the "weirdness" of the episode's two stories, saying that when one wears two hats, one on top of the other, they "just end up looking like an idiot" (weirdness on top of weirdness replacing the hats). In hindsight, Parker and Stone felt that the two storylines used in this episode should have been split up into two separate episodes. The title of the episode and some elements of the plot are both a reference to the James Frey book A Million Little Pieces. Reception In his review, Eric Goldman of IGN gave the episode a score of three out of 10, mostly criticizing the way the two stories worked together, saying they would have worked better in separate episodes. Parker and Stone consider the episode one of their worst, with Parker saying, "That did not turn out well. I had higher hopes for that.