SHIT South Park episode 6/8/2011

[sadaist]

Okay. I watched the new South park episode tonight as I do every Wednesday night when the new ones are on. best show ever. Sure they have some duds, but still the best show ever. Anyways, I watched tonight and got a very bad feeling. Never got this way from an episode before. So I went straight to the Internet to see WTF was happening? Was it just me?

Anyways, these reviews sum it up better than I can. Wondering if anyone here felt the same. Sad indeed.


http://tvovermind.zap2it.com/cable/comedy-central/south-park-comedy-central/south-park/61294

Oh, no.

That was my immediate thought after watching Wednesday night's midseason finale of South Park, titled "You're Getting Old." Never before -- not even when Cartman fed Scott Tenorman's parents to him -- have I been so completely and utterly depressed by an episode of South Park. It felt like creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were speaking their emotions through the show, and what they had to say wasn't good.

Take, for instance, Stan's sudden affliction of cynicism. Suddenly, he realizes, the things he liked before seemed like "sh*t." In fact, everything does to him, from the sun in the sky to the movie trailer for Mr. Popper's Penguins -- even the Police's album Synchronicity (fun fact: my favorite album of all time) sounds like literal bowel movements. Stan's lost his innocence with his tenth birthday, and it's a sad event. His friends give up on him because he threatens (or just annoys) their rose-colored view of the world. In the end, Stan's left alone, lying in his bad, depressed. That's how the episode ends! It certainly doesn't seem like a good omen for the mindset of Parker and Stone in regard to the show. But that isn't the most disgruntling part.

Randy and Sharon, Stan's parents, decide that Randy's antics are too repetitive, and that Randy is trying too hard to recapture glory he may have never had. "It's like the same story keeps happening every week, only it keeps getting more and more ridiculous," she says. If that isn't an indicator that Parker and Stone are unhappy with doing South Park, I don't know what is.

"I've been unhappy for a while now," Randy replies.

It's time to call out the emergency horns, because it seems to me like Parker and Stone are abandoning ship. With this being only the midseason finale, the show seems to have two choices: it could follow this episode up with a counterpoint that illustrates why they still enjoy doing the show, and have the show continue on beyond season 15.

Or, there's the much more likely option that this is the sign of the beginning of the end. Parker and Stone's contract with Comedy Central reportedly runs out after seven more episodes of the show. Then there's the fact that they've achieved success outside of South Park, with their new hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.

Doesn't it seem more likely that this is their hint to viewers that we're reaching the final stretch of South Park? I'm sure they'll deliver us a rousing series finale if that's the case, but I just don't know if I'm willing to say goodbye to Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman. Or Butters -- least of all Butters.

[FORD]

Yeah, it was depressing as fuck,alright. And my interpretation was about the same. I think it's going to be the last year. Guess 15 seasons ain't a bad run for any TV show (even if they only do 14 episodes a year) But if they gotta go out, they can't end it like that. :(

[Anonymous]

I dunno... used to be a HUGE South Park fan & I still like it, but the novelty kinda wore off years ago. I got a bit tired of their formula & I'm actually surprised it lasted this long.

Don't get me wrong, I still watch a few episodes once in a while from the site, but...

Look, what I'm trying to say is this - I don't think I watched even half of the whole thing, but at a certain point I felt exactly like it's being described there.

I'm glad it lasted this long, though. And I hope it stays online for years & years to come. And that Parker & Stone continue to make a decent income off of their creation.

And since this post so far has been very respectful & not even remotely flame-worthy, let me go get a jerry can of high octane gasoline to pour on this match I'm about to light...

Face it, South Park is past it. Family Guy has been doin' it better for YEARS!

Cheers! :bottle:

[sadaist]

Face it, South Park is past it. Family Guy has been doin' it better for YEARS!

Cheers! :bottle:


That's kinda weird isn't it? How people either are South Park fans or Family Guy fans. There is a very small minority that loves & follows each show. The style of comedy is very different on each show. I am not a fan of Family Guy or the Cleveland Show, but for some odd reason I do like American Dad. But I fall squarely in the South Park corner.

As far as if they are going to end their run, the show last night was a great way to begin a final stretch of episodes. The problem for me was how it just slapped me in the face. I have heard zero about this might be their last season or they are wrapping it up. Then I watch last night & it hits me by surprise...hard. It's like your wife making your favorite dinner & then once you sit down she says she wants a divorce. Kinda a shitty way to let us know that it's the end...if indeed it is.

[FORD]

Love South Park. Love Family Guy (and the other Seth McFarlane shows). Still love the Simpsons, for that matter, and I hope the new Beavis & Butthead episodes are worthy of the name.

The one prime time cartoon I can't stand is "Bob's Burgers". Not even Sam Seder can make that show funny.

BTW, McFarland's next project is a new Flintstones series. Be interesting to see if his spin on that franchise will work, and if Dino will speak English in complete sentences like Brian Griffin.

[twonabomber]

don't like Family Guy. we'll have it on at work, and i'll laugh when they make an obscure reference, but they'll stretch the gag out too long. gotta make that hit, and get out.

[sadaist]

. gotta make that hit, and get out.


I wish you would have given the toast at my bachelor party.

[ODShowtime]

I appreciated it when South Park explained why family guy sucks. It was so hard to put into words better than "it's not funny and it's stupid and it sucks". The really old references that have nothing whatsoever to do with the story was the gist of it. Perfect insight from Trey and Matt as usual.

Scott Tederman, casa bonita, the time child chronicles, so many awesome episodes of southpark. Heck, even the one where they talked about how Simpsons have done everything already. I remember doing G-bubs every wed night in like 2001 and every episode was a classic. Like a whole season of classics. They had quite a run but it's pretty much over now. I can accept that as everything runs its course. Just please don't do another 10 seasons of crap like the Simpsons did. 10 seasons! Simpsons have been coasting for over 10 years. That's crazy.

[Anonymous]

From what I've heard, Parker & Stone get along just fine with McFarlane & despite my attempt at a joke earlier, it is not my intention to create a flame war.

I do have to say that it was just a bit hypocritical of Parker & Stone to accuse McFarlane on falling on the "easy joke", since they started mostly the same way, using profanity to get easy laffs & attention.

But both programmes are more than easy gags & there is something worth watching in them.

It's just that for me, personally, South Park started much better, but its formula got old & Family Guy started out crappily as a Simpsons wannabe, but it got better & better as it found its stride & now it's the Simpsons that are trying to copy Family Guy & failing spectacularly, due obviously to the fact that the current Simpsons writers can not relate to normal people.

It's like they never leave home & all their best attempts at wit & their observational comedy about day to day events come off as Seinfeld writing a very, VERY bad script.

Long, long gone are the days of Conan O' Brien writing pertinent & hilarious jokes for that show.

McFarlane & his team of Family Guy writers have, at least in my opinion, mastered shock value & never cease to amaze & surprise me & that is something all too rare & precious these days.

Can't say I care for The Cleveland Show & American Dad, though I have a friend who hates Family Guy & loves American Dad. Just goes to show...

As for Bob's Burgers, I'll watch it, but haven't seen anything that will launch it to the realm of janiousness yet. It's pretty mundane & at times, boring.

Cheers! :bottle:

[sadaist]

As for Bob's Burgers, I'll watch it, but haven't seen anything that will launch it to the realm of janiousness yet. It's pretty mundane & at times, boring.

Cheers! :bottle:



The only draw to Bob's Burgers for me is Jon Benjamin. He was the voice of Coach McGuirk in an animated show called Home Movies. Possible the greatest animated character ever created. I highly recommend that everyone try & watch if they ever get a chance.


http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9qfFZfzPAOg/0.jpg

[ODShowtime]

Home Movies is great. When Jason got all cracked out from sugar at that party god damn that was funny.

[Nickdfresh]

That episode is still vastly less depressing than the film Baseketball...

[Unchainme]

That episode is still vastly less depressing than the film Baseketball...

....I kinda liked Baseketball....

in fact probably more than any recent south park ep.

[sadaist]

....I kinda liked Baseketball....





Hello. My name is Sadaist.....and I liked Baseketball too. It's been 2 months since I last watched it.

:hee:


Shhh. Not something you really advertise. We could start a monthly support group with all 3 of us that liked that movie.

[sadaist]

The thing about bad South Park episodes is that they become better over time. I can't tell you how many I watched on premiere night thinking they were crap. But then after a few re-runs late night on Comedy Central I really enjoyed them and caught new minor details that I had missed before.

To be honest, this is a lot of how Megadeth albums worked for me. The more I listened to them, the more I liked them. But first listen through was always a bit rough.

[twonabomber]

Orgazmo was better.

"Oh, the Mormons? Well, you two boys can just fuck right off."

"You heard me. Take that book of Mormon and shove it so far up your righteous asses that you choke, you soul soliciting pigfuckers."

[Unchainme]

"Oh, the Mormons? Well, you two boys can just fuck right off."

"You heard me. Take that book of Mormon and shove it so far up your righteous asses that you choke, you soul soliciting pigfuckers."

After hearing Pete Rozelle's reaction to their faith, Steve Young and Gordon Hudson decided that the USFL was a better alternative for their pro careers.

[SunisinuS]

Simpsons are actually doing just fine....not Bulgarian fine...but just fine none the less.

[chefcraig]

Parker and Stone aren't doing so shabby either. Their Book Of Mormon Broadway play took in $1.1 billion this season.

'Mormon' expected to lead fine Tony field (http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/arts/stories/2011/06/12/mormon-expected-to-lead-fine-field.html?sid=101)

[sadaist]

Yeah, the broadway play is doing very well. I just don't want to let go of South Park. Selfish, greedy, whatever. Just not ready to say goodbye. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to King Of The Hill either....especially when it was taken to make room for another Seth McFarlane show. They're all the same to me and 1 1/2 hours of it is just way too many fart jokes.

[SunisinuS]

Parker and Stone aren't doing so shabby either. Their Book Of Mormon Broadway play took in $1.1 billion this season.

'Mormon' expected to lead fine Tony field (http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/arts/stories/2011/06/12/mormon-expected-to-lead-fine-field.html?sid=101)

WTF?


Grr I am in the wrong business ...building lego houses for people with legs. I should be writing broadway playS!

[Little Texan]

Good news for everyone that thought this season was going to be the last...

Click Here (http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/07/19/south-park-return-date-announced/)

[Hardrock69]

I literally have not seen an episode of SP for 5 years minimum.

I love the show.

Sounds stupid, eh?

Just have not had the motivation to watch it all the time. Someday I will buy the DVDs and laugh myself into hysterics. :biggrin:

[Nitro Express]

WTF?


Grr I am in the wrong business ...building lego houses for people with legs. I should be writing broadway playS!

All they did was show what a Mormon mission is really like. They didn't make anything up. It's more of a documentary than a play. :biggrin:

The Mormon church has wards instead of parishes. Each ward has a name. It's usually the street the church building is on or the part of town it's in. There was a Southpark ward in Idaho and they changed the name because South Park was making fun of the church.:biggrin:

[chefcraig]

Oh my gawd, he shot South Park!

By Rob Salem Toronto.com (http://www.toronto.com/article/700613--oh-my-gawd-he-shot-south-park)

They didn’t have to come back. Why would they? Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the enfant terrible co-creators of South Park, had established themselves as certified superstars in the rarefied world of the Broadway musical with their Tony Award-winning Book of Mormon.

Time to kick back, relax, count the cash, and let the accolades and offers accumulate.

But no. With the stage show up and on its feet, they immediately hightailed it back to the relentless, gruelling weekly pressure-cooker of producing their 14-year-old cartoon cult comedy.

The aptly named 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park takes us along with them on that unlikely journey home, an unprecedented and exclusive peek behind the cartoon curtain, revealing how the boys and their skeleton staff manage to crank out 22 weekly minutes of taboo-defying, marginally animated anarchy.

And, even more revealing, why.

The hour-long documentary by Arthur Bradford (How’s Your News?) airs Sunday night at 10 on Comedy Network, with an eye toward eventual expansion to full feature length. New episodes of South Park itself began this week, again on Comedy Network, Wednesday nights at 10.

But it begins back on Broadway, with the boys still basking in the glow of their opening-night rave reviews . . . and almost immediately heading back home to resume work on South Park.

“It’s funny,” says Bradford. “When we were planning to film at that particular time, we thought we were going to catch a potential train wreck, where they were just creatively tapped out because they had been working so hard on the musical. But actually it was relatively smooth for them. I mean, they still pulled all-nighters . . . what they would call easy, I think, for most people would be a painful ordeal.”

The documentary reveals Parker to be the driving force in the odd, longtime partnership.

“Trey does a lot of the heavy lifting creatively,” reveals Bradford, “but I’ve always found it interesting that Matt is so essential, in terms of his ability to make sure that Trey gets the space he needs.

“They compare themselves to a rock band, and what’s the point of Eddie Van Halen without David Lee Roth?”

Bradford has been pals with the pair since before South Park, which facilitated his unprecedented access to their creative sanctum.

“I’ve known both Matt and Trey for a while now — we actually met in 1996 — so a lot of it had to do with already having their friendship and their trust.

“There was a little bit of negotiation about getting into the writers’ room, which they feel is a very vulnerable place. We had to use small, unobtrusive cameras, because otherwise it would have been too distracting for them, even if it was just me standing there moving the camera back and forth between whoever was talking.”

As the hour unfolds, we see Parker et al (including sometime staff writer and SNL regular Bill Hader) first dreading, then dutifully hunkering down, then going all giddy and then, suddenly, spectacularly, sophomorically creative, and we begin to understand the tightrope appeal of the process.

When you come right down to it, it’s about making themselves laugh.

“That’s why they continue to do it,” confirms Bradford, “just that feeling of being in a room and trying to crack your friends up. That feeling is really the essence of South Park.”

[FORD]

All they did was show what a Mormon mission is really like. They didn't make anything up. It's more of a documentary than a play. :biggrin:

The Mormon church has wards instead of parishes. Each ward has a name. It's usually the street the church building is on or the part of town it's in. There was a Southpark ward in Idaho and they changed the name because South Park was making fun of the church.:biggrin:


I haven't seen the play yet, but the original Joseph Smith episode was a surprisingly accurate account of Mormon doctrine. I seem to remember reading several years back that Trey Parker was raised LDS, but he doesn't seem to mention that recently, in all the publicity about the Broadway show. Matt Stone is Jewish, and that's the basis for the Kyle character and his family.

If the Mormon church is really changing ward names because of a South Park parody, they might want to rethink the name of their entire church after the movie "Latter Days" :biggrin:

[FORD]

Comedy Central Renews ‘South Park’ For Three More Seasons Through 2016
By NELLIE ANDREEVA Wednesday November 16, 2011 @ 9:18am PST


Cable’s longest-running animated series South Park is headed for the 20-season mark. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the no-holds-barred animated comedy, have closed a new deal with Comedy Central for three more seasons of South Park. The pact will keep the series on through 2016, extending its run to 20 seasons. Parker and Stone will continue to write, direct and edit every episode of South Park, as they have since the series’ premiere in 1997. “The collective genius of Matt and Trey knows no bounds,” Comedy Central’s president Michele Ganeless said. “Week after week and season after season they continue to surprise and delight South Park fans, and that includes all of us here at Comedy Central. We’re thrilled that the adventures of Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman will continue through 2016.”

[Kristy]

Parker and Stone are out of ideas. Many of which they did had were hardly original opting instead to take pot shots at whatever was prevalent in pop culture from a certain movie parody to that week's news. South Park was taking the textbook Jimmy Page of plagiarism and milking it for as long as they could. The other half why South Park as been so dismal is the state of Viacom's "Comedy Central" which is the most unwatchable basic cable channel there is (next to Fox News). Parker and Stone seem no longer seem to want anything to do with Viacom and their contractual obligations. Either way, the show has been in the shitter for quite some time.

[clarathecarrot]

It's getting that time of year when someone ,"in the know" should set up the yearly, Roth Army Awards Thread...I vote for Kristy:cheer: as the sugariest poster of the year, her soft natured love scented posts warm the cockles of my heart,..(??) wherevever they are or whattever those things are called. Do dudes even have those I think they may be something I had removed years ago..??

[ashstralia]

ooooh!!!!! love the new av, k.

my favourite south park ep is the one involving the cripple fight.

[Nitro Express]

Hey I liked Howard Sterns show but it got old and I loved South Park and it got old. You only can live on the edge so long. I have to see that Book of Mormon play sometime. I haven't been to New York in a while so maybe that will give us a good excuse to go.

[Nitro Express]

Joseph Smith episode was a surprisingly accurate account of Mormon doctrine.

That episode dealt with Martin Harris losing the manuscripts of the Book of Mormon which actually happened. There are some inaccuracies but overall it paints pretty accurately the scam Joseph Smith had going. In reality, Joseph was the family member with the magical charisma but the whole Smith family were in on the scam as were other people. The Erie canal had just been built and Joseph Smith's hometown was a boom town because it was right on the canal. That brought in both opportunists and suckers. The Mormon church just happens to be one of the Erie Canal era scams that survived. If that canal had never been built there would be no Mormon church.

[Kristy]

ooooh!!!!! love the new av, k.

my favourite south park ep is the one involving the cripple fight.

And they stole that from 'They Live' Fucking Pagey plagiarists.

[Unchainme]

Squidbillies, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Venture Bros., Metalaclypse, American Dad, and yes, even FAMILY GUY are all better shows than South Park. Seriously Adult Swim on CN is where it's at.

I can kinda pin-point where SP jumped the shark. When it began to use this dramatic sound effect around 03-04, and begin to just forcibly wedge news items from real life into each episode, it got beyond dumb and played out.

it became kinda swarmy and douchey too. I thought the whole "HURR, FAMILY GUY IS DUMB GUYS" ep. was one moment that really kinda solidified it for me.

[ODShowtime]

it became kinda swarmy and douchey too. I thought the whole "HURR, FAMILY GUY IS DUMB GUYS" ep. was one moment that really kinda solidified it for me.

Family guy is fuckin trash. The SouthPark episode where they explained why family guy sucks was perfect. They put it into words for me. Something like "jokes that are completely out of context and have nothing at all to do with the story are way easier than jokes that actually fit into the story like we have"

I wish I didn't hate family guy but I do. It is a big pile of dogshit and anyone could write that crap.