(S10E05) You can probably add Trey Parker and Matt Stone to
the list of people who will never be invited on Oprah.
One of my favorite side characters, Towelie, returned for this episode. Broke and in desperate need for money, he decides to write a memoir. Unfortunately, he has trouble selling it because most of the book is about Dorito Corn Chips, and also, he's a towel. Using his special "getting high" powers, he decides to disguise himself as a person in order to get people interested in his book. Oprah makes it a book club selection, but instantly turns on Towelie when she finds out he's been lying.
I knew a couple days beforehand that this episode was going to take aim at the recent debacle surrounding author James Frey and his book A Million Little Pieces, and I was interested to find out whether the show would be pro-Frey or anti-Frey. This being South Park, it managed to go places I never would have expected, one of them being Oprah's vagina. Apparently Matt and Trey weren't as concerned about the content of Frey's (Towlie's) book as they were that Oprah's "minge" wasn't getting the attention it needed, causing a kind of emotional imbalance wherein she's ecstatic one moment and ready to lynch a talking towel the next.
The scenes involving Oprah's vag and his close companion, her anus, were kind of hit and miss for me. The gag would be funny for awhile, but would then wear kind of thin. Perhaps in an earlier episode I would have enjoyed it more, but after ten years this feels like a gag that comes easily for Matt and Trey. On the other hand, I felt the last two episodes got a little too self-important at times, so it was nice to see the show kick off its shoes and be silly again. I also loved their effeminate take on Geraldo Rivera, who first exposes Towlie's shocking truth. Also, the episode ends with an important lesson for us all: you shouldn't get high to come up with ideas. You should come up with ideas and then get high to reward yourself. When I have kids, I'm going to tell them that every night when I tuck them in.















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-20-2006 @ 10:08AM
Elliott said...
I've never really liked the episodes that don't focus on Cartmann, Kyle, and Stan. The talking vagina was funny (especially the accent), but it holding a gun....?
I guess the other lesson to be learned by this episode is that South Park is funnier when you're high.
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4-20-2006 @ 10:58AM
Brent said...
The a--hole sounded like the guy from Monty Python.
I'm sorry, the death scene of the a--hole was too funny.
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4-20-2006 @ 11:52AM
Matt said...
Consider today is 4/20, and the guys can probably reward themselves for jump-starting their ratings massively this season..
And yes, a very python-esque episode, right down to the voices.
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4-20-2006 @ 12:20PM
Holly said...
a million little fibers was a good episode
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4-20-2006 @ 12:22PM
Happy said...
Weird how this episode didn't involve any of the regular characters or even took place in South Park. Ah well, like you said, it was definitely time to kick off the shoes a bit.
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4-20-2006 @ 3:33PM
Scott Thompson said...
It's sad to think she's become so big that her vagina and asshole are simply subsidiaries of a giant corporate self-monger.
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4-20-2006 @ 4:51PM
MarcMan said...
Worst episode of South Park ever. NONE of the regular characters were in this show. I normally love when the show satirizes current events (Muhammad, Scientology, Katrina), but this was too extreme. They sacrificed what makes the show great and popular (it's MAIN CHARACTERS) just for the sake of spoofing an event that they easily could have spoofed even better with the main characters involved. I admit that the bit with Oprah's "minge" and asshole were funny the first time, but that was the only time. That premise got old very, very fast and I was extremely dissapointed when those "characters" hijacked the rest of the episode. I'm glad that South Park loves to mock current events (it won the Peabody for doing so brilliantly), but more thought needed to be put into this episode. Watching it, I felt like Matt and Trey had been really, really high themselves for the past week, realized they needed to create an episode for that night, and threw this debacle together in a few hours. That being said, I'm still looking forward to next week when hopefully they redeem themselves.
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4-20-2006 @ 5:19PM
Ryan S. said...
I unfortunently have to agree with MarcMan, i think it was not a very good episode at all. The thing i thought is that Cartman is always getting all exciting about getting a million dollars, i could have seen him writting a big fake memoir, and having it all fall apart on him could have been great, and Oprah and all of that stuff just wasn't funny at all to me.
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4-20-2006 @ 5:24PM
Flexible Head said...
Don't you people get it? Matt and Trey basically told Comedy Central to Fv
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4-20-2006 @ 5:31PM
Flexible Head said...
Don't you people get it...Matt and Trey basically told Comedy Central to F^CK OFF after their disagreement over the censoring of the episodes over the last two weeks. I think Matt and Trey are saying "screw you"...if you censor us, will put out drivel like this episode without any SP characters and not taking place in SP with Tom's Rhinoplasty in the background.
As someone else mentioned...just about anything Matt and Trey put out will still be 100 times funnier than any of the CSI/JAG/SUV/MTV/Reality Show bullsh!t that exist only to be cancers to television.
While I found a few of the bits in this episode to be funny, it was extremely redundant...however, I hate Oprah Winfrey and Gerardo Riviera...so I don't mind seeing them get slammed...hopefully they respond like that wuss Cruize. Overall, I'm with Matt and Trey on this...I can handle a season full of crap episodes (from this point forward...I enjoyed this season up this recent episode) for them to prove a point with Comedy Central.
Moral of the story...don't F^CK with Matt and Trey...they will win.
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4-21-2006 @ 5:08AM
Paul B said...
This was British humor at its best. I'm not suprised most of you yanks don't get it! Matt and Trey needed to put the brakes on South Park and let things cool down a bit, and what better way than to step into the shoes of Python.
Who cares if America doesn't get it (as a nation you're not the sharpest tool in the box. South Park is huge all over the world and the millions of European fans certainly will praise this one.
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4-21-2006 @ 5:21AM
tom said...
This season I think Trey and Matt have made a decision to do whatever the f#ck they want and go with it all the way. After so many years of being responsible for (argueably) the funniest show on TV I don't think they owe anybody explanations. More than anything, it seems like they had a lot fun making this episode and I'm cool with that. Can't wait to see next week's episode.
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4-21-2006 @ 11:45AM
john bostock said...
On the literary side they were beat by this: A Million Little Pieces of Feces: The Fake Memoir That's So Much More Fun Than James Frey's by Python Bonkers
... this is hysterical
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4-21-2006 @ 12:12PM
a100indecisions said...
i have to agree with Flexible Head here. not only was it 4/20, but somebody pulled a ball from the manatee's tank and they're refusing to write. that had to be the WORST.EPISODE.EVER.... after a week's worth of national news coverage about how Comedy Central censored their Cartoon Wars episode....where the punchline was that the writers refuse to write if they're censored. Matt and Trey aren't stupid, but apparently the American public is.
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4-21-2006 @ 5:37PM
Brent said...
Although uneven, I thought it was pretty funny. And one of the few places that would dare criticize Queen Oprah.
The closing ass death scene I thought was lifted from Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino, but I can't be sure.
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4-22-2006 @ 12:43AM
Josh said...
Paul B,
Yes, it takes a nation of highly intelligent people to comprehend a joke involving a talking vagina and rectum.
@sshole
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4-22-2006 @ 6:49AM
Charles R said...
I gather that this episode had three purposes:
1. "Up yours Comedy Central, we are manatees, and if you continue to censor us you will not get what you are expecting".
2. "Geez, the heat generated over the whole Scientologist thing, and now the Mohammed issue is really getting us beat, let's just do a show that WE enjoy for a change, and not have someone breathing down our necks afterward."
3. "Geez, the heat generated over the last few shows is getting us beat - let's get high... ...in fact, dude, let's get high, and write the show, and make it about the dumb ideas you come up with when you are high, just like that Frey guy - then it doesn't matter if we have a few lame ideas for this show."
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4-24-2006 @ 12:37AM
bigmarcus said...
I have to agree that this IS british humor at it's best!!! I haven't laughed that hard in years.It seems so funny to me that people didn't "get" the humor.C'mon a talking minge and an ahole named gary,it's funny just saying it.Some people really graduate from sesame street before being allowed to watch south park.
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4-24-2006 @ 6:31AM
Paul B said...
Josh, Josh, Josh! If all you got out of that episode was a talking vagina and rectum then I guess you really didn't get it! And as a nation you guys really aren't the sharpest tool in the box, but then a majority of your country lives in abject poverty so you can't really expect the majority to be well educated. I wasn't saying that every American is thick, that would be generalising. I was going by your nations own published statistics on the education standards of the nation as a whole. There's no need to get scared and then personal when you find yourself unable to comprehend something fully.
Try engaging me in conversation instead of insults (you flag waving Nazi!).
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4-24-2006 @ 11:18AM
Erik said...
Guys this was a 420 episode.
No, You're a towel!
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