There was a lot of talk about the "Trapped in a Closet" episode of South Park, Tom Cruise's alleged involvement in trying to have it taken off the air, and how it spurred Isaac Hayes to leave the show (or spurred his pals in the Scientology community to convince him to leave, depending on what you read). The episode came back into the limelight when it was nominated for an Emmy, but alas, it didn't win. Instead, that honor went to The Simpsons, which won for the episode "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story." Producer Al Jean did reference the South Park episode in his acceptance speech, however, joking, "This is what happens when you don't mock Scientology." I'm happy to see The Simpsons win their ninth Emmy, but between their episode and South Park's, I have to say South Park's was much better.Simpsons win Emmy, South Park does not
There was a lot of talk about the "Trapped in a Closet" episode of South Park, Tom Cruise's alleged involvement in trying to have it taken off the air, and how it spurred Isaac Hayes to leave the show (or spurred his pals in the Scientology community to convince him to leave, depending on what you read). The episode came back into the limelight when it was nominated for an Emmy, but alas, it didn't win. Instead, that honor went to The Simpsons, which won for the episode "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story." Producer Al Jean did reference the South Park episode in his acceptance speech, however, joking, "This is what happens when you don't mock Scientology." I'm happy to see The Simpsons win their ninth Emmy, but between their episode and South Park's, I have to say South Park's was much better.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-20-2006 @ 3:32PM
Matthew said...
Yeah, that's kind of weird. I don't want to go into the whole "gosh the simpsons hasn't been good since the mid 90s" thing that people go on and on about, but even though I liked the recent season, I didn't see anything that made it better than other cartoons, South Park included.
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8-21-2006 @ 1:11AM
Jeff said...
I'm not surprised The Simpsons won at all. They had a great episode that broke the show's typical format. The South Park episode was actually one of their weaker ones from that season. Sure, it mocked Hollywood's favorite cult, triggered rumors of Tom Cruise trying to get it taken off, and caused an actor to resign, but when you ignore the hype, you have a pretty bad episode. It was basically the same three jokes done over and over and over again until the ending. The point of the episode could be grasped in 5 minutes, yet it lasted 30. Being controversial does replace a good story, something The Simpsons knew way back in 1990 when it was actually bold programming and hasn't lost sight of to this day.
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8-21-2006 @ 10:37AM
Douglin said...
While the structure of the Simpsons episode was interesting (even though similar things have been done before). The actual stories weren't particularly good, the whole stuck in a cave/hidden treasure thing...South park did it much better in the ManBearPig episode.
The South Park guys did say the only reason they nominated that episode was because at the time they thought the network would never air it again so they wanted at least a few more people to see it. Trey even admitted it wasn't their best episode that year.
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8-22-2006 @ 12:16PM
Chelsea said...
Gosh, what happened to King of the Hill? There's a winner
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