The first half of Thursday’s two-round jerk extravaganza, the Elite Eight, featured two blowouts and two close matchups. Apparently, nothing is going to stop Shooter McGavin and Cartman. The no. 1 overall seed coming into this Jerk-Off, Shooter has earned that distinction with rout after rout. After cruising through Caillou, White Goodman, and Top Gun’s Iceman with an average of 79 percent of the vote, he kept it going with a 73 percent to 27 percent victory over Office Space’s Bill Lumbergh. The 10-seed Lumbergh had been on a hot streak, but Shooter left him wondering, “Whaaaaat’s haaaappening?”
Cartman, meanwhile, is the thorn in everyone’s side who just won’t go away. His ability to disrupt Ringer brackets is truly historic. After easy victories over Marnie Michaels, Derek Huff, and even Gob Bluth, the thinking was that Cartman would finally face his first real test on Thursday against the 3-seed Roman Roy. So much for that: Cartman thrashed Logan Roy’s youngest son 69-32. We’re now just two polls away from Cartman reigning supreme over the rest of the jerks.
There’s nothing quite like a character you love to hate. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Jerks Week at The Ringer. Vote for your favorite ones in the Best Pop Culture Jerks Bracket, and check back throughout the week for a selection of stories on one of the most underrated archetypes.
The other two matchups were intense, though. Two great blustering jerks, Biff Tannen and Kenny Powers, went to war: Biff narrowly edged out KP in our on-site poll, while Kenny—clearly down with the younger generations—took in 56 percent of the vote on X. It came down to Instagram, where Biff’s 55 percent was enough to keep the 1-seed alive.
And things were somehow even tighter over in Tom’s Restaurant. George Costanza versus Larry David was everything we dreamed it would be when we rigged the bracket to put them in the same region: The two were separated in the website poll by just 258 votes. Once again, it was the social polls that became the deciding factor: Larry David brought down 54 percent on Instagram and 55 percent on X. Ever since seeding has been set, we’ve been looking forward to a Larry David–George Costanza face-off—fortunately, it lived up to the hype.
So here we are, down to four: Shooter McGavin, Biff Tannen, Larry David, and Cartman. God help us all.
Voting on the Final Four is officially open. You can vote right here, on X, and on Instagram until 7 p.m. ET.
(1) Shooter McGavin, Happy Gilmore vs. (1) Biff Tannen, Back to the Future
Well, good for Happy G—oh my God, what a matchup. These are two jerks who not only perfected the form, but basically invented it. Under “jerk” in the dictionary, there is a photo of both of them being jerks to each other. With an underlying level of insecurity and powerlessness—a crucial element in each character’s humor—both Shooter and Biff swagger around, calling people Bigfoot and butthead until they fly too close to the sun and get dragged back to jerkdom, where they belong. For Shooter, that means getting his bones broken like a 9-iron by Happy Gilmore’s gigantic boss in a parking lot; for Biff, it means getting literally covered in shit.
Both these jerks are incredibly annoying, sometimes despicable humans. They’re also unbelievably entertaining, and without them their respective movies would be practically unrecognizable. Alas, only one of them is gonna be doing finger guns after today.
(2) Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm vs. (5) Cartman, South Park
Look, I don’t even know what else to say. If Larry David went through all the trouble of defeating his own creation George Costanza just to get embarrassed by Cartman, then you will have all proved your point and we will have to admit that Cartman really is a massive jerk.
