Cartman Joins NAMBLA
5th episode of the fourth season of South Park

"Cartman Joins NAMBLA" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the animated television series South Park, and the 53rd episode of the series overall. It originally aired in the United States on June 21, 2000, on Comedy Central.
In the episode, Eric Cartman, in search of more mature friends, accidentally joins the "North American Man/Boy Love Association" (NAMBLA), and puts all the boys of South Park in jeopardy as a result. Meanwhile, Kenny tries to stop his mother and father from having another baby.
Plot
After deciding he is too mature to hang out with Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, Cartman looks for older male friends. Cartman joins an online chat room full of eager men who he believes want to be friends with him; they are actually Internet predators who prey on young boys. Cartman meets one predator at Mel's Buffet, who is quickly arrested by federal agents for soliciting sex from a minor. The next day, Cartman meets another predator who turns out to be Mr. Garrison, who is also arrested. Both men are held by the South Park police under the watch of Officer Barbrady.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cartman Joins NAMBLA” is 5th episode of the fourth season of South Park. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cartman, Joins and NAMBLA, not as a finished interpretation.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q858733. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cartman Joins NAMBLA” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.