(S12E03) To begin, for those unaware, South Park Studios has started to offer full episodes of the show on their official site with limited commercial interruption. I originally reported this in November.I'll say this: when the South Park team put their minds to it, they can come up with some fantastic animation. When you watch the crudity of the animation in standard episodes, it's easy to forget that they're pretty damn talented at their craft.
This episode was all over the place. There were the references to the movie Heavy Metal, of course. There was the after-school special theme and the nod to The Diary of Anne Frank. And, of course, at the end was the reference to the Eliot Spitzer scandal. All bits were individually funny but they seemed haphazardly put together like pieces from different puzzles.
I really dug the music of the Heavy Metal animations. It made me want to watch the original movie again. They really captured the essence of the movie: an acid trip with bright colors, psychedelic imagery and lots of tits.
My favorite phrases were "the Breastiary in Nippopolis" and the "Itty Titty Fairies of Mammary Mountain".
Let's face it, the boobs were everywhere. On buildings, on people, on weapons, on vehicles. Hell, they were even on the women. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is the first time the series has shown a naked animated female ass (one that was well drawn to boot).
This episode was also the first time in a while that Kenny was the featured kid of the episode. It got to the point where I was wondering if he even existed anymore. I do find it kind of disturbing that the South Park kids are supposed to be about 10 years old and despite this Kenny is something of a pervert.
The paranoid, fear mongering nature of the Fox News broadcast captured the style of the network perfectly in my opinion. It is also very much like South Park to use something as harmless as cats as an analogy for addiction. I laughed when Gerald Broflovski brought out the cat in the cellophane bag.
The Holocaust analogy and irony of Cartman saving the cats was a theme that was somewhat hammered into the audience, particularly at the end. Naturally, the lesson was lost on him. But if he could learn and grow, he wouldn't be Cartman. It may just be that Cartman likes cats more than people.
For someone who hasn't snorted cat pee in ten years, Mr. Broflovski sure kept a lot of the equipment in his basement. I'm wondering how such an overbearing woman as his wife didn't notice it earlier. Perhaps she was just too absorbed in keeping the children safe.
I thought the show had a good premise but lacked in the execution. The season feels like the creators are losing their steam. Granted, it's tough to top Imaginationland. However, I find that even the mediocre episodes of South Park have more genuine laughs and more heart than the majority of the shows out there.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
3-27-2008 @ 12:03AM
Oreo said...
0-3 this season, very disappointed with this season. The message is there, but it's just not well done.
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3-27-2008 @ 12:20AM
Wii60 said...
Are you HIV-positive?
3-0, the show only gets better.
3-27-2008 @ 12:38AM
mayorjimmy said...
it hasn't been a slam dunk season, but this episode was awesome. i too am not just sure, i'm HIV-positive.
3-27-2008 @ 12:52AM
Mike said...
Well drawn? Isn't part of the idea of the parody that Heavy Metal looks like it was drawn by a bunch of high school kids who were really into boobs and Black Sabbath? Unless by "well drawn" you mean it very accurately recreates the horrible art of Heavy Metal, in which case it was excellent just like the rest of the episode. I loved the french music playing in all of Cartman's Anne Frank scenes.
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3-27-2008 @ 1:31AM
tjackson said...
I thought this episode was the first great one of the season. At first, you think it's just a silly one-off with a excuse to parody a 20+ year old movie. And then the Elliot Spitzer podium scene comes where he talks about no longer blaming cats (read: pussy) for the failings but the people who use cats. The other episodes have worn their points on their sleeves - this one it snuck up on you (much like the great Japanese cartoon parody episode - which was again about something else entirely when you got to the end.)
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3-27-2008 @ 1:51AM
Robobagins said...
I wholeheartedly agree! I love episodes like this.
3-27-2008 @ 2:46AM
Ian said...
Great episode, and I was in stitches with that last scene, as it was dead on to Spitzer.
"Don't touch me."
Ha!
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3-27-2008 @ 6:48AM
Mandy said...
I thought this was the best episode so far this season. I'm still laughing at how they can show as many breasts as they want on TV, as long as they aren't attached to a woman.
"I do find it kind of disturbing that the South Park kids are supposed to be about 10 years old and despite this Kenny is something of a pervert."
Really? I thought all young boys were obsessed with boobs.
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3-27-2008 @ 9:16AM
MosquitoControl72 said...
It was horribly drawn, but that was the point. It reused the same animations repeatedly.
A decent episode. Not great, but decent. Certainly better than the last two. I'd say 0-2-1, as this was a tie, not a loss.
The Spitzer reference was the low point, I thought. It felt obvious and underwhelming, as if they felt obligated to do it. I'm not a fan of such obvious references.
Wasn't exactly buying the whole Cartman-cat thing, either. Yeah, it works for the joke, but has Cartman ever shown this kind of sympathy for anything else? He only ever cares directly about himself, and they never tied him risking hiding cats to his own selfishness. That felt sloppy to me. The Simpsons started sucking when they started bending characters to make them fit plots, rather than the other way around. South Park has never done this - characters always acted as you'd expect. Suddenly changing that for a final punchline is, well, sloppy.
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3-27-2008 @ 9:38AM
Toymao said...
Actually, his cat is to only Cartman really cares about apart from himself. We could see numerous times how he was genuinely warm and caring with Mr. Kitty.
3-27-2008 @ 9:19AM
MosquitoControl72 said...
By the way, by "decent," I mean by SP standards. The show has been firing on all cylinders for a long time now. Three shaky episodes in a row is very, very rare. The show had some big laughs, but overall felt somewhat duct-taped together.
It's really making me think something is up. None of these episodes really felt like South Park episodes (although this was closest.) None had the same tone. And, while they might be better than most everything else on tv, they still felt like three episodes in the bottom half of the SP hierarchy.
Has SP ever had this kind of a cold streak? Maybe Season 2 when they were working on the movie?
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3-27-2008 @ 8:49PM
aaron said...
well actually you may have a point they're working on two
movies right now so maybe thats it,But I loved this episode the only problem I had was that I have not seen
heavy metal.
3-27-2008 @ 10:59AM
MosquitoControl72 said...
"We could see numerous times how he was genuinely warm and caring with Mr. Kitty."
Not really. When the good Cartman came from an alternate dimension, one of the ways they made it clear he was good was because he actually liked Mr. Kitty.
And, speaking of bending characters to make plots work, Mr. Kitty has always been female. Hell, in one episode Mr. Kitty was in heat and trying to find a male cat to mate with. The joke was always that Cartman named his female cat "Mister."
So much for that.
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3-27-2008 @ 8:54PM
aaron said...
What do you want cartman to do kill it and feed it to lianne,well if thats what you want they're aren't gonna do it trey loves cats. Besides that would be really low.
3-27-2008 @ 11:22AM
Brooks Williams said...
Tonsil Trouble for the loss
Brit's New Look was great
but Major Boobage takes the win.
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3-27-2008 @ 1:04PM
Dan said...
I thought this was the first good episode of the season. I loved it. It was hilarious, and it felt so much more like traditional South Park than the first two episodes. I loved how Gerald was an addict with a sophisticated cat spraying device complete with videos of angry cats. I loved the plastic bag, the boobs everywhere and how the halucination seemed to be universal. Not only that, but the Anne Frank part was fantastic. The one thing that was really funny was that my cat got all pissed when he heard all the angry cats on the show. He actually left the room...If the rest of the episodes are like this one, I will be happy.
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3-27-2008 @ 12:55PM
lp said...
odd, I thought this season has been awesome all along so far
But then again, I am a heavy metal fan who likes boobs, britney & any episode with AIDS jokes Cartman in
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3-27-2008 @ 12:56PM
LordPaul said...
dammit lack of HTML strikethrough making me look like (more of) an idiot!
3-27-2008 @ 2:37PM
Absolute Vengeance said...
here is the music from Major Boobage episode. I am the 1337 for getting this to you all.
Sammy Hagar - Heavy Metal
Don Felder - Heavy Metal (takin a ride)
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3-30-2008 @ 1:33PM
twostrokebluesmoke said...
you forgot radar rider by riggs.