(S12E05) It must be very tough for Trey Parker and Matt Stone to keep outdoing themselves. I don't know which image from tonight's episode was funnier: the mouse with the penis on its back running all over town (and, at one point, singing at the moon) or the photo of Mickey Mouse with a huge erection. It's a tough call.
More after the jump...
I liked tonight's episode. It was pretentious, but not as much as last week's. The episodes have felt lower in quality this season but they seem to be picking up.
"Mr. Cartmanez" wasn't quite Edward James Olmos, but half the episode was a parody of the movie Stand and Deliver. For those who didn't grasp the subtle humor, the high school in the episode was Jim Davis High School. The high school in the original movie was James A. Garfield High School. Jim Davis is the creator of the comic strip Garfield. Ha Ha.
Perhaps they've been doing it all along, but this season seems to be excessively using the writing crutch of continuously repeating the same line throughout the episode for comic effect. Last week was "I'm not your buddy, guy", etc. and this week was "How do I reach deese keeds?"
I know that the technology of growing body parts on mice has been around for years, but tell me you weren't laughing up a storm when the Penis Mouse (yes, that's what I'm going to call it) was running around South Park, waving it's back willy in the air and throwing every woman that sees it into a conniption. Among my favorite lines from the episode was Mrs./Mr. Garrison saying "My penis is on the loose. Just try to catch it with some cheese."
Maybe this is slightly sexist of me to ask, but why are all the women in the episode afraid of a penis (or, for that matter, a mouse)? If you're a woman and you saw the Penis Mouse, how would you react?
I noticed that the research institute in which the Penis Mouse was bred had an amusing sign that said "Yesterday's Future Is Today." All I can say to this sort of cartoon signage practice is: Simpsons did it!
Going back to the tendency of the show to parody movies, did anybody else place the parody song as "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail? It was definitely a South Park moment when the penis starting singing a duet with the mouse it was attached to.
Another moment was the Mickey Mouse erection photo. Mr. Garrison's reaction of "that's just silly" was almost as good. If Mr. Garrison is a man again, is he straight or gay? Will this be dealt with in a future episode?
Tonight's show felt like a very Republican episode. It seemed to promote the idea of every person for him/herself by promoting cheating as an answer to problems. It even went further to describe abortion as "cheating nature."
The question I have after watching tonight's episode is: Are Trey Parker and Matt Stone simply using satire or do they actually believe the philosophies the episode seemed to display? Or maybe I'm giving them too much credit and they're just trying to be unconventionally funny. For this episode, they certainly succeeded with the latter.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-10-2008 @ 12:42AM
GeoBQn said...
I'd just call Mr./Mrs. Garrison "pansexual."
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4-10-2008 @ 1:07AM
RJ Stuart said...
Are you serious with your last paragraph? Promoting cheating? The whole cheating part of the episode is to shame Bill Belichick and cheaters. Broncos fans (and AFC fans in general) hate the Patriots. Trey and Matt love mocking people and society, not glorifying their political viewpoints "In the last Super Bowl the Patriots finally decided not to cheat for Bill Belichick. You know what happened? The lost." -- simply amazing
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4-10-2008 @ 1:33AM
Zachary said...
Wasn't the problem with Garrison that he had no balls? The doctor who did his sex change put his testicles in Kyle's knees so he could play basketball and they were ruptured. That's why he stayed a woman. Were there testicles on the Penis Mouse and I just didn't notice?
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4-10-2008 @ 1:47AM
kyle said...
damn scene putting out a nuked cap.
from what i saw, this was the one of the top five episodes of all time. makes up for the rest of the season, IMO. butters dad complaining about women being afraid of penises was the best part for me.
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4-10-2008 @ 2:30AM
Wii60 said...
"Tonight's show felt like a very Republican episode. It seemed to promote the idea of every person for him/herself by promoting cheating as an answer to problems."
I've enjoyed your South Park reviews, but that was a bit much don't you think? In two sentences you just called any Republicans reading your post "cheaters".
Obviously, I'm a South Park fan as I read the review, so I'm used to someone making fun of my beliefs and laughing at it. I'm also used to listening to a well-reasoned argument from the other side. Yours was neither, it was just a backhanded comment.
What's worse, you completely missed the point of the episode. It was a jab at mostly the Patriots, but also injustice in general. It wasn't glorifying cheating at all, just pointing out that it often works.
Oh well, I'm looking forward to next week, please just try and avoid doing that again. I'd hate to have to continue to crusade the intertubes.
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4-10-2008 @ 2:33AM
Mike said...
I almost died when they showed the picture of Mickey Mouse with the huge boner. I had to turn off the TV because I couldn't stop laughing.
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4-10-2008 @ 2:34AM
Abby said...
Of course this episode was satirical! South Park is a satire and a mirror showing us the darker sides of ourselves (aka Eric Cartman). Anything Cartman does or says, I think we are supposed to believe the opposite. Anyway, this episode was FANTASTIC. Really fucking funny. I loved the whole Stand and Deliver/ Dangerous Minds/ Sister Act II/ Freedom Writers parody with Eric Cartmanez. That was my favorite part. His fake accent AND his comb-over.
Also, I don't think women are scared of penises, aren't we supposed to have penis envy (according to Freud)? I DO think the combination of a mouse (yuck) and a penis would have me jumping on a table.
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4-10-2008 @ 3:27AM
Jose said...
This was a great episode. As to the review, not sure why cheating is the exclusive province of Republicans, or why "being out for ones self" would be synonomous with cheating.
This episode pushed the envelope a couple times, when Cartman talks about abortion being the ultimate form of cheating, and Mr. Garrisons comment about the guy with the wife who had ovarian cancer needing to check himself for AIDS.
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4-10-2008 @ 7:11AM
mayorjimmy said...
I'd like to know just what NFL season Trey and Matt were watching. They make it sound like the Pats got away totally clean and that nobody mentioned it. Try the complete opposite. $500,000 fine, loss of 1st round draft pick, and we had to hear about "spygate" every 5 fraking minutes. If they wanted a better example of someone cheating and "getting away with it" they should've used Barry Bonds. Of course, he's black so then i guess that means he didn't cheat right?
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4-10-2008 @ 11:00AM
John Howard said...
Yeah, because we haven't heard nearly as much about Barry Bonds' cheating as we did about spygate.
4-10-2008 @ 12:07PM
Dan said...
Are you serious dude? New England probably won 2 of their Super Bowls because of the cheating, so that far outweighs one first round pick (which is actually a good thing to lose, based on the salary cap number of a late 1st rounder compared to the value of that player, and they have SFs pick and that's way earlier and will lead to them getting another star), $500,000 is NOTHING to NFL people, that's like 3000 people coming to one game and buying tickets/food/beer. Barry Bonds already had his time on South Park, "Up The Down Steroid" dealt with him and other Steroid users. The whole point of the episode was to show that cheating comes in many different forms and it has probably helped countless teams (Derek Fisher pulling Monta Ellis down in OT a couple weeks back) and politicians (Kennedy having Mafia help in getting elected), and countries (the US ignoring the Geneve Convention) achieve goals since the beginning of time.
This episode was AWESOME! I loved the thing making fun of Oprah (my girlfriend made me watch that, and I was like "that's not a man, it's just a woman who LOOKS like a man"...so seeing South Park lampoon this so quickly was awesome! Cartman as EJO from Stand and Deliver was hilarious too. I loved the basketball scene "Look at the scoreboard!" and the ending was great. All in all, this episode was about as good as South Park can be and it will be in my top-20 all-time SP episodes for sure. Repeat viewings will tell me if it's worth a top-10 spot.
4-10-2008 @ 7:41AM
Ambrose Chapel said...
It actually reminded me of the old Stella short - "Dickfish"
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4-10-2008 @ 7:51AM
Chris W said...
I don't know if I'd call their position "Republican." That's a very specific set of political ideals and labeling the show as such is a rather shallow way of dismissing some of Matt and Trey's ideas, particularly in this uber-polarized political climate. My take has always been that these guys are "radically moderate" and tend to show the fallacies on both sides (I'm thinking of Turd Sandwich vs. Giant Douche here). The satire is sharp and (usually) focused; and although these guys can be cynical, there's often this beam of optimism that suggests "everything's going to work out" (no matter what poor Butters goes through). I truly think this is one of the smartest shows on TV, as well as one of the most culturally important shows we have today.
And to add to what one of the commenters said, I don't think Cartman represents the opposite end of the moral spectrum, but in fact embodies that darker side of ourselves. I think Cartman represents what people are thinking, but nobody is saying... and also that Trey is a bit of a madman who needs that release. BTW, I am not condoning anti-semitism or prejudice or cheating to get ahead; just saying they're way more prevalent than we allow ourselves to think.
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4-10-2008 @ 8:14AM
heinlein said...
I have to say that I felt this episode was one of the weaker ones (as opposed to last weeks), especially the whole Mr/Ms/Mr G penis story. Both stories could have been very funny, but they were delivered kind of flat (or maybe I'm just in a bad mood). When Matt and Trey wants to make a point, like how internet hasn't really established a general way to get paid for content and that WGA making deals about it may impact how episodes are distributed, they tend to use Kyle or maybe Stan. As someone said above Cartman's views are not to take seriously, especially not as what Matt & Trey thinks.
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4-10-2008 @ 8:26AM
bruce said...
Republicans, or more specifically right-wing fundamental religious people, are most definitely cheaters. They will do whatever it takes, no matter how unethical, to get their will forced on everyone else. The end always justifies the means because they "Know" that they are doing God's will. Toss out other words with capital letters like "Truth" and "His" and "Christ" and they can justify anything, no matter how immoral.
On another note, since when does Eric Cartman's opinion dictate what Trey Parker and Matt Stone think? If they're using Cartman as a mouthpiece for an idea, they probably greatly disagree with that idea.
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4-10-2008 @ 9:09AM
Oreo said...
The Pats did get away perfectly clean. All the shit was pointless coverup, the Pats should have lost the game they cheated on, but then they couldn't get their perfect 16-0 record so the NFL looked the other way.
I agree with heinlein, the two stories combined didn't make a lot of sense. I did like the cheating part because I hate the Pats. However the penis parts of the episode felt like a middle schooler wrote them.
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4-10-2008 @ 11:44AM
rndmnme said...
Ah, gotta love how we have to get in to party debates on which party cheats the most.
For crying out loud, political cheatery knows no party bounds. Both sides cheat lie and steal. It's not because their Republican,s democrats, or independents, it's because they are POLITICIANS.
Christ, yellow dog party favoring is so dead. Can we please move on from pointing fingers to sides so we can actually fix something, instead of each election standing on sides of the Lincoln memorial going "No, it's YOUR fault!"
/rant.
Directed at more of the commentors than the author. The author was probably trying to crack a joke. Then we had to get all serious about it. Killjoys.
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4-10-2008 @ 11:59PM
kyle said...
The reason why the women are afraid of the penis mouse is to make fun of them being afraid of actual penises
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4-11-2008 @ 1:12AM
Chuggie Hudson said...
Maybe this is slightly sexist of me to ask, but why are all the women in the episode afraid of a penis (or, for that matter, a mouse)? If you're a woman and you saw the Penis Mouse, how would you react?
Seriously? This was a parody of the 1950s-60s TV shows/movies where women would hop up on a stool afraid of a mouse: "EEK! A mouse!" Sometimes things on this show are just a goof, not a 5-layer-deep comment on society.
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4-11-2008 @ 11:06PM
Anarch said...
Er... are you watching the Season 12? Because in Season 12 the first four episodes were awesome and the fifth was mediocre.
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