South Park

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I figured with all of the discussion this series was getting on this site all of a sudden, that I might as well re-create its topic, but, uh....not to continue that other discussion, which is done with, now.

Anyways, just share you general thoughts/opinions on this show.

As for me, anyone who knows me knows that I like this show. Personally, its my 2nd favorite modern animated comedy behind Futurama. I'm one of those people who still enjoy the new seasons, though, not as much as seasons 3-8 which were when the series was in its prime, IMO. Still, I find a lot of episodes which get me to laugh out loud a good amount. For season 14, the 2 stand-out episodes for me, personally, were "You have 0 friends" and "Insheeption." The rest mostly ranged from either decent to good, for me, with the exception of 2 particular episodes which I just downright didn't care for; those being "Sexual Healing" and "It's a Jersey Thing."

I get a lot of enjoyment out of this show's style of humor, and for me it hasn't really changed its formula at all since season 5, so it kind of attests to how much I personally enjoy this show that I still haven't gotten tired of it, even if its humor is actually pretty repetitive, if anything.

[Commode]

I guess I am rather polarizing on this show.  I first saw the show in fourth grade back in 1998, thanks to the Today Show showing a clip of Kenny being choked to death by the tetherball poll, and fell in love with it(I was already a fan of Beavis and Butthead and a lifelong fan of The Simpsons).  I really like most of seasons 1-8(with exceptions like Scott Tenerman Must Die, but I won't get into it if you don't want me to), but season nine came along with "Mr Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" and I kind of changed my views on the show(it's really fucking disgusting, and not even the sex change part; more like a tall Kyle have his knee-caps blown out).  I have still watched it off and on, and there have been lots of great episodes since then, like "Make Love Not Warcraft" and "Go God Go" but I haven't been dedicated to it the way I was prior to that episode.

And for the record, I find Bigger, Longer, and Uncut much more enjoyable than The Simpsons Movie.  Always have, from that moment I stepped out of the theater after watching TSM until now after watching TSM on Thanksgiving night and realizing it didn't hold up as well I thought it had.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I agree with you whole-heartedly about the sex-change episode. It easily makes my list of the top 10 worst SP episodes ever. I hate any episode in general that primarily focuses itself on gross-out humor.

As for the Scott Tenorman thing, when have we ever on this site discouraged anyone sharing their true opinions on something? Its fine if you don't like it, and if you want to, go ahead and say why. Though, the only thing about expressing your opinion is that you have to be prepared if someone else is willing to defend their opposing opinion on something like that. In this case, though, I'll make sure to keep that to a minimum on my part.

Personally, "Scott Tenorman Must Die" is one of my favorite episodes, but I suppose that type of humor just really appeals to me.

[Daxdiv]

I kind of agree that I can't really watch an episode based on gross-out humor. Y'know, out of all the episodes of SP, there is only one that I never watched fully, that episode? PEE! Yeah, out of 14 years SP has been on, that's the one episode I never truly finished. I quit after the 2nd commercial break and never looked back. If I had an organized list of worst episodes, I think that Pee might be the bottom tier, along with Stanley's Cup. For some reason, I get that the championship ending was supposed to be from the opposite spectrum, but I thought that beating up those kids was a little extreme, even by South Park Standards.

Though as for the quality, it's been hit or miss for me recently. Chalmer's post about Season 14 in the Boondocks thread hits home for me, except for the fact that I wasn't a big fan of the Coon saga. I thought it dragged on to the point that most of the resolutions in every 3 part felted forced. Also doesn't help that whenever I think about those episodes, I just think of the BP guy saying "Sorry."

[SSJ Jake]

For the record I liked this season. I don't think I disliked a single episode from this one, not even the critically panned Crippled Summer and Poor and Stupid. In fact I still enjoy South Park enough to still watch it. If I truly thought this series was complete shit I would stop. But is it as good as it was in the older seasons? Not at all.

South Park is suffering from the same thing The Simpsons is going through when it's been airing for a long time now and it's running out of ideas. I think around season ten is when it started to show it's age, ironically a season that had huge impact beginning with Chef's death, a poke at both Family Guy as well as censorship and a jab at Richard Dawkins. While most episodes in that season were pretty entertaining, Smug Alert!, A Million Little Fibers, Mystery of the Urinal Deuce and Stanley's Cup were really dull. It seemed to be that way seasons on, only it got worse especially the dreadful season twelve.

What also concerns me is the show's internet fanbase. Not referring to anyone here who is a fan of South Park but I don't think I've seen an animated show, aside from the anime fandom, with a fanbase that has as many nuts on the net as SP. From the disturbing bishi fetishes of the characters (yes I'm aware other shows have these weirdos in their fanbase as well, but fuck they're eight year old kids!) to the blatant suck ups who take any opinion or joke Trey and Matt bring up on their show seriously, it's like SP is a religion to them. And again I am not claiming all fans or even most fans are like this but a lot of whom I've come across on the internet have been.

So yes all that said I still enjoy South Park and I really liked this season. It's not as good as it once was but nothing can be perfect, especially not a show that has been on for more than a decade now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

See, I actually really liked Stanley's Cup. I didn't see the pre-schoolers getting injured being that extreme (we've already seen South Park do bad things to children, and much worse than just getting badly injured), and that's kind of a nit-picky point for me, anyways. I tend to not dwell on short scenes that much, and on the whole I didn't find that episode to be dull at all. On the contrary it managed to make me laugh out loud which very few other season 10 episodes managed to accomplish for me, personally. I just loved the whole sports movie cliche parody.

[Daxdiv]

So, in case you haven't heard, Season 14 is set to be released on April 26, 2011. This is the moment we've all be waiting for. That moment is, finding out of 200 and 201 will finally see the light of day after all. I will say this, if 200 and 201 aren't on the set, I may skip on getting season 14.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I kind of had to stop collecting the series after season 8 because of the whole financial problems that my family started going through and the basic fact that I can only afford about 1 or 2 DVD sets per year, currently.

Still, I must confess that I am also extremely interested to see if Comedy Central will actually be willing to finally publicly release episodes 200 and 201 again, and if they do, I'll be interested to know if it'll be uncensored or not.

Also, even though nothing has been announced yet, does anyone think that this year's season of South Park may end up being the last one? Trey and Matt seemed kind of pissed at Comedy Central for what they did to episodes 200 and 201, and even brought up the fact that their contract with CC ends in 2011 (AKA this year). They did only say that they'll at least continue making South Park episodes until then, but does anyone get the feeling that they won't try to renew their contract with CC after this season finishes its run?

Personally, I actually king of hope that they take the opportunity to end the series with this season, sort of like quitting while their ahead. As you all know, despite what others think, I still firmly stand by my opinion that South Park is still a great show with plenty of great episodes each season which make me laugh. That said, if anything was my problem with this series, its that its a bit too reliant on formulas that it has been using for several seasons since some of the shows earlier seasons. It still works fine enough now, but I can see it getting pretty old really soon, so I'd rather have the series end on a high-note for me rather than be dragged out longer than it needs to be. Maybe I'm just looking too much into this, though.

[Avaitor]

I do think that their contract ends this year, so it's entirely possible that Matt and Trey could end it if they so wished.

This may not have been the first time Comedy Central messed with an episode of SP, but they didn't do anything as extreme to any other episode as they have with 200 and 201.

[Foggle]

Knowing Matt and Trey, if they were going to stop doing South Park out of anger, they'd probably make a horribly disgusting and insulting final episode that completely ridiculed the staff of Comedy Central.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I doubt it, though, since they are a bit smarter than that, in that they know that if they made an episode like that Comedy Central would probably just refuse to air it in order to spite them back and probably wouldn't ever release it in any public format, either.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know, I have to say this time that I really enjoyed this week's episode of South Park. Best episode of the week by far. Sure, it was a Butters episode, but it still felt like classic South Park in just about every way from its tones to its jokes, and there wasn't really a running gag that they used to death in this episode like some of the other episodes from the past couple of seasons.

Its episodes like this where I personally say "fuck it" (in my head) to anyone who still tries to find whatever reason they want to put it down. Maybe it just fits my own personal sense of humor, but this was the first episode in a while that actually had me laughing out loud quite a few times, and the over-the-top yet not so out of place (by this show's standards) twist at the end seemed like a really fitting end to the episode (and I really loved the Psycho scene parody at the end).

So yeah, I don't give a shit about what the people on TZ think this time, since I really liked this episode, and IMO, this episode and the previous one were quite good episodes, not just by this season's standards (which are honestly below par on the whole, so far, I'll admit), but they just stand out as good episodes in general, especially this one.

[Foggle]

Anyone who hasn't seen the newest episode of South Park by now really should, even if you stopped being a fan long ago. All I'll say for now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I really liked that ending montage. I actually hope that Trey and Matt don't give the middle-finger to the fans by resetting that mid-season closing like it never happened with the rest of the season, as some might expect them to.

Also, I think it was quite hilarious that South Park finally has an episode that jabs and makes fun of and criticizes the entire series itself. That's beyond meta....

[Daxdiv]

While I thought the first parts were a little boring, with the symbolism of how when you're younger things you like when you're older is shit and vice versa, I will admit that the final minutes where they said were sick with it was handled nicely. After this, I am convinced that when 2013 rolls around, it will be the final season for South Park, and it will be on Trey and Matt's terms, rather than Comedy Central. I'll admit, I don't want them to go through whatever the hell Dave Chappelle went through with the Chappelle show back in 2004-2005. That was kind of nasty looking back on it.

I'd say good on them retiring the reigns on South Park, since their other productions like Book of Mormon show off that they're not one trick ponies and they want to do more with their life than creating South Park episodes. I mean, Book of Mormon is doing pretty well for itself on Broadway right now. It won like 9 Tony Awards and I believe it deserved them.

I remember one guy at toonzone told me about an interview where Trey and Matt said that they didn't want to work with South Park when they were in their 40's. Last time I checked on their ages, both Trey and Matt are in their Early 40's, so I do think they would want to wrap that up and do more things like BoM or Team America. By that, I mean make another play or movie.