275. Fun With Veal
Season 6, Episode 4
If there is any legacy to this episode, it’s establishing Stan’s tendency to take on causes on pure emotional reaction, getting in over his head before getting his feet wet. He feels sad upon seeing the chained up baby cows and instantly breaks into the ranch, steals them, and holds them hostage in his room…which infuriatingly puts Cartman on the same side of hippies. There are some humorous moments, mostly from Cartman as he interrogates with the FBI and gets guns, an ICBM, and Michael Dorn in Worf make up to drive their getaway vehicle. Stan gets ‘vaginitis’, a condition where someone stops eating meat and vaginas grow all over their body. The boys do successfully get the name veal changed to ‘tortured baby cow’, effectively killing the veal trade. Which is good? I ask myself as I eat delicious veal parmigiana.
274. Chef Aid
Season 2, Episode 14
Originally I had Chef Aid a few from the bottom, but one thing forced me to push it up: The Chewbacca Defense. It’s a classic moment in South Park that deserves to be higher for it alone. If anything from the first two seasons stood the test of time, it’s this. The rest of the episode is just okay. Chef prostituting himself out to the women of South Park is good, especially after he leaves Sheila Broflovksi, Gerald comes in and asks “How was it?” and she says, “About what I expected”. The episode also sees the return of Mr. Hat who attempts murdering Mr. Twig. A good joke is Chef after Mr. Hat breaks him and Mr. Garrison out of jail: he sees Mr. Hat in the driver’s seat and says, “How the hell does he reach the gas pedals?” I like self-aware comedy.
273. Sons of Witches
Season 21, Episode 6
Evidently, this episode was all about toxic masculinity and stuff in the wake of Harvey Weinstein and it seems to be fairly well-reviewed by critics, but it’s the embodiment of a meh episode for me. The commentary didn’t really hit with me. I didn’t think the plot of Randy and his friends dressing up as witches and smoking crack was funny or interesting, neither was the actual witch side plot. I am, however, a major sucker Cartman and Heidi’s relationship. The portrayal of Heidi’s lack of time management is brilliantly relatable for most men. Cartman’s hatred driving him to get Heidi purposely captured by the witch after her tardiness caused him to miss his beloved pumpkin patch is such a Cartman thing to do. President Garrison using a laser on a satellite to incinerate the witch was a great way to use the character without politicizing Trump.
272. Quest For Ratings
Season 8, Episode 11
This is a strange episode to review because it doesn’t really have any laugh out loud moments, but plenty of chuckles. It’s focused entirely on the boys and their quest for ratings with Super School News with no B plots to distract from it. What I like about the episode is the meta commentary because this episode depicted the exasperated writer’s room struggling to conjure ideas while devoting creative time to Team America: World Police. The boys spend the entire runtime trying to come up with ideas to beat Craig’s ‘Animals Close Up With a Wide Angle Lens’ in the ratings (Craig is treated like a local celebrity despite amassing a whopping few dozen viewers). They trip out on cough medicine in a well-executed sequence. When they crack it and make an actual beneficial news report, they’re told to make dozens more show that are just as good. Back in the writer’s room, one kid asks, “Dude, bail?” and other kids respond, “Bail” and the episode ends.
As a writer, I relate to this…especially when vapid trash appealing to cough syrup abusers is so successful. It’s hard coming up with ideas for books and short stories. I can’t imagine hundreds of episodes. I respect Trey and Matt’s (and the other writers over the years) perseverance. My favourite line is Cartman telling Token that, “People love seeing black people on the news, not hearing them” and that prompts Token to do his next weather report in a hyperbolic non-regional dialect.
271. Wing
Season 9, Episode 3
Evidently, Wing is a real singer out of New Zealand. I had no idea until recently. Her songs on the show are Wing’s actual songs. That makes the episode funnier and pushed it up the list a few notches. She provides much of the humour, whether it’s her singing, her being yelled at by her husband Lu Kim (City Wok Guy), or taking a beating (while singing Dancing Queen) on the TV series The Contender after the boys failed to get her on American Idol. The boys realize talent agencies leech off talented people and immediately seize Token, then Wing, ending up in a turf war with Triads whom they believe to be a rival talent agency because of their bitchin’ fountain and interest in Wing, their slave. It’s an alright episode with some good laughs peppered throughout.
“We gotta make Token thinks he needs us, when he actually doesn’t need us at all.”
270. Toilet Paper
Season 7, Episode 3
I really like the concept of this episode. Toilet Paper sees the four kids toilet paper their art teacher’s house for forcing them to stay after class. The parts of the episode that delve into the criminal guilt of Kyle and how Cartman takes him out on Stark’s pond to kill him (hilariously with a foam baseball bat) so he doesn’t confess are really strong. Seeing a guilt-ridden Kyle allow Cartman to (very, very, verrrryy) slowly beat him to death with a waffle bat is a great image, as is the revelation Cartman requires dozens and dozens of toilet paper rolls after fajita night. Unfortunately, the Silence of the Lambs parody falls really flat for me and drags the better story down.
269. A Nightmare on Face Time
Season 16, Episode 12
There is plenty of potential here, but nothing really ultimately lands. For a Randy-centric episode, it’s pretty lacking in Randy hysteria…he’s had better ‘sunk cost fallacy’ stories. The jokes about streaming services putting Blockbuster out of business take up too much of the runtime without ever being that funny to begin with (the funniest being the murdering thieves who assumed Red Boxes would be full of money from spooky movie rentals on Halloween). There are some chuckles to be had as people treat the iPad displaying Stan as Captain America as if it were a person. Mostly, the episode floats up because of The Shining parody, but it too, ultimately, isn’t nearly as inventive or amusing as it could—should—be. If the entire episode were parodying The Shining, entirely inside Blockbuster, with just the Marsh Family, it could’ve worked for me.
268. Going Native
Season 16, Episode 11
Even the weakest Butter’s centric episode is a good time. There is some truly ripe parody of the natives of Hawaii as they bitch about tourists and bicker over which white person at their timeshare is most native to Hawaii. In typical South Park fashion, things get out of hand: Butter’s sinks a cruise ship with a golf ball, inciting a major incident with the Federal Government. But why was Butter’s so angry? Because he saw Argo and loved it yet loathed that Ben Affleck could be handsome, be a good director, and be married to Jennifer Lopez; learning Affleck is only married to Jennifer Garner makes Butter’s super relieved and he instantly raves about Argo. Also, I get a kick out of Kenny’s letters with old-timey accent in voiceover, only for the kids to read it and remark “ ‘on the morrow?’ What the fuck is wrong with Kenny?”
267. Cartman Gets an Anal Probe
Season 1, Episode 1
It was difficult to rank the pilot episode. It is responsible for the show existing, but it’s dated in so many ways. The characters aren’t distinct and the animation is beyond wretched. Overall it isn’t that funny, with most of the humour coming in the form of foul language. It has some classic bits though like ‘Kick the Baby’, introducing Stan/Wendy’s relationship, a satellite dish sticking out of Cartman’s ass, and Kyle’s unfettered, profanity-laden harangue on the aliens that is 93.7% censored (a good joke considering the language that preceded this…he says some bad shit). There’s also one of my favourite classic lines when Kyle tells Ike “Do your impersonation of David Caruso’s career!”
Thank God South Park grew beyond this.
266. Timmy 2000
Season 4, Episode 3
Introducing a fan favorite character like Timmy pushed this episode up the list. Also, Parker and Stone making fun of Phil Collins just because he won the Oscar for Best Original Song (which he holds the entire episode) over “Blame Canada” is the definition of comedic pettiness. They get in some good digs on MTV (which now seems to mostly exist to show reruns of King of Queens and Friends…good riddance!). Skylar from Cat Orgy returns to no fanfare and is used to mock Collins’ leaving Genesis. The funniest gags of the episode revolve around ADD, which Mr. Mackey suggests Timmy has because he can’t focus in class. To diagnose ADD, a doctor reads The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms in their entirety and then confirms ADD in his patients when they can’t recall what kinds of bottles someone talked about in chapter 12. Both storylines converge wonderfully when it’s determined the only reason the kids like Phil Collins is because they’re on Ritalin. I mean, you’d have to be, right?
265. A Very Crappy Christmas
Season 4, Episode 17
I started the first post with Mr. Hankey and I’m finishing the second one with him too. And he’ll barely feature into these comments except for saying I like his Circle of Poo song. The main reason to watch the episode is watching the boys struggle making their short ‘The Spirit of Christmas’, based on one of the two shorts Parker and Stone made in college that went the mid90s version of viral that put South Park on TV. They demonstrate how painstaking it was to make that first pilot episode out of actual construction paper. After successfully bringing back the spirit of Christmas with their cartoon, the boys get an offer from Mayor Daniels to make a hundred more cartoons, to which they reply, “I think we’d rather stab ourselves in the head”. The episode has the same message as their college short Jesus vs. Santa – the spirit of Christmas is commercialism. It certainly is, kids. It certainly is.
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