Not the best I’ve ever seen, but still had its high moments.
“Chicks bleed out of their vaginas all the time; its not a miracle”
Wasn’t this the last episode of the season? I hope not. I guess i’ll see on Wednesday…
I liked that they went after 12 step programs, especially all their disingenuous “higher power” evasions, but I think they went maybe a little too far in ridiculing the diagnosis of alcoholism in a disease. Addiction IS a disease in every medical sense of the word. It is a physiological and partially genetic disorder. That word is not applied lightly or figuratively by doctors.
having said that, the notion that people are “helpless” to overcome their disease and that they need a “higher power” is tremendously overstated and somewhat illogical. If a person gets sober, he achieves it by his own accord and will (unless you want to claim it was a miraculous healing by a higher power…in which case all we’re talking about is faith healing).
AA is a sacred cow that needed to be poked but downplaying the very real pathology of addiction and dismissing it as something people can easily control was borderline irresponsible.
I don’t remember the comedian who said it but it went something like, “They say alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only disease that someone will yell at you for having.”
Marc
'Twas the late Mitch Hedberg. He goes on:
“…‘Damnit, Otto, you’re an alcoholic.’ ‘Damnit, Otto, you have lupus.’ One of those doesn’t sound right.”
DtC: you actually just posted that South Park was borderline irresponsible.
This is of course almost every episode of South Park. 
Aren’t you suffering from redundancy. Besides they weren’t saying everyone could control addiction. Just Randy and to make you feel better his line towards the end about 20 beers would seem to indicate that he could not control his addiction.
Borderline irresponsible is a major source of their humor.
I enjoyed the taking AA down a notch. The Vagina joke reminded me of an old Mr. Garrison Joke: “I don’t trust anything that bleeds for 3 days every month and doesn’t die”. Humor to get your wife really pissed at you.
Jim
I think that Parker and Stone have officially gotten full of themselves, spouting their opinions on alcoholism, gender reassignment, etc., as if they’re well informed facts. Sometimes they’re hysterical when there actually is factual evidence (e.g. Scientologists and Mormons really do have some goofy beliefs, John Edward really does rely on edited tapes, standard magician’s tricks and vague statements for success, etc.), but when they try to tackle complex medical and psychological issues they tend to fall flat.
I’m always amazed, however, at how quickly they turn these out. The bleeding Virgin in Sacramento was just in the news last week and is already on an episode.
Just wondering, do you feel strongly about alcoholism or gender reassignment and dislike their being flippant?
I am not condemning. I think when they hit a target you or anyone cares about it offend to some degree.
I am very pro saving Cetaceans, I have rallied to stop whaling and modify tuna nets. So last week’s episode with the Orca dead on the moon bothered me, most people found it funny. I think when they hit our issue it is offensive.
I’m sure Scientologists did not find their Episode funny, but as most people think they’re loony, it was funny to most people. (I loved it).
My Brother has had a DUI and they made him go to AA, he resented have the Courts send him to a religious meeting so I found this episode excellent for blasting courts that force people to go to AA. A judge does not have the background to determine someone is an Alcoholic and not just a drinker who was stupid for a night.
My brother would tell you he was stupid that night.
Of this could just be bullshit.
Jim
“Yeah, and I also know a thing or two about cults, I was the leader of one for a while.”
door slams
“God dammit.”
Not a great episode, but there were some good lines.
At the very least we still need this year’s Christmas episode… so at the very least I think we have next Wednesday to look forward to. If we’re really lucky we’ll get two more, with the Christmas episode coming on the 22nd, but that might be pushing our luck a little 
I won’t say that I feel particularly strongly about either. I’ve gotten drunk once in the last five years and I knew I wasn’t going to be driving and most months I don’t have a drink at all. Neither have I ever wanted to change my gender. However, there is hard science that indicates alcoholism is not just a matter of willpower- some people are born hereditarily predisposed to become dependant on it, others do so for circumstantial reasons, but whatever the case it is a disease. People do die as a direct consequence of the addiction (a rather gruesome death), quitting drinking is not just a matter of saying “whoa, I tied one on last night- I shouldn’t do that anymore”, and while personally I dislike the idea of a judge sentencing somebody irreligious to AA it does work for some people. (On the subject of judges determining alcoholism, I used to work for mental health and had to rely on a particularly arrogant probate judge with a GED to decide if a person was sane, so I’m familiar with lack of qualifications in discerning complex issues.)
The transsexual issue bothered me even more. I have neither the will nor need to have surgery redecide my gender, BUT for those who do it is anything but a spur of the moment decision and a visit to a clinic. In many cases the person is chromosomally the opposite sex already- essentially, nature goofed in not giving them the right plumbing. In all cases the person has to have months and months of counselling, they are psychologically profiled out the wazoo (or wazong, depending on which they have at the moment), they have to take hormone therapy and live as a member of the opposite (or appropriate) sex for at least a year, and even Silence of the Lambs 15 years ago used as a key plot point that the operation (operations, actually- it’s several) depends upon the psychological consistency of the person- many are rejected, it’s not on-demand surgery. It is most certainly not a case of a drag queen saying “man, I really wish I had some real titties to play with”, but a tragic and dramatic step that is actually looked upon as more corrective than cosmetic.
What particularly bothered me about the transsexual episode was the mean spiritedness of it. IANA Trans., I don’t even know any in the waking, but from growing up gay in the Deep South™ I do know what it’s like to be misunderstood and reviled and feel like the world has rejected you, especially as a teenager, and transsexuals have this incomparably harder. One thing that greatly helps misfits is irreverent comedy, where the jokes tend to side with them and show the hypocrisy and idiocy of the puritanical demagogues and give you hope that not everybody thinks like that. Now imagine that you’re a 15 year old ‘boy’ in a Baptist family in Waco, TX, who truly feels that he should have been a girl, and who chromosomes and other testing would indicate, is right, and who is teased mercilessly at school and has parents who are less than supporting and so for comfort tunes into the nation’s most popular cutting edge irreverent comedy, a show that thinks nothing of going after sacred cows, and even there he’s told he’s a freak. Can you imagine how devastating and humiliating that would have to be? Wanting to be the gender that everything about you feels you should be already (nobody has their penis surgically severed because they like to wear pumps and frilly skirts- there are men who have been gender reassigned and became lesbians even [including Ernest Hemingway’s son, the multiply divorced fifty something father of five when he had the surgery]) is absolutely not the same as wanting to be a dolphin or a black basketball player, and it was reprehensible of them to imply that it’s a decision that is entered into lightly for superficial reasons when these people have ridden through hell on a sidesaddle for their decision. Just… arrrrrgh.
Of course it’s a comedy show and not meant to be taken as a medical advice show or in-depth commentary, I know, but… still, arrrrrgh.
Valid points, Sampiro, but Parker & Stone rely on exaggeration and take things to a ridiculous extremeto drive home the point. It’s always been this way with them.
Stan’s dad isn’t an alcoholic, he just drank too much once and got caught. Even when he was starting fights at the kids’ baseball games, he wasn’t really drunk - just a belligerant and obnoxious sports dad.
I did like how everytime Stan quoted his karate instructor, he mispronounce “discipline”. And sounded amazingly like Cartman each time he said it. But otherwise it was a “meh” show for me.
I was a little disappointed that the Virgin Mary miracle didn’t have a an actual explanation, that could have been funnier.
I was waiting for it to be revealed that Cartman had rigged the whole thing as a bizarre joke
I’m not a fan of the 12 step program in general, altho in practice it has helped a lot of people stop their addicitve behaviors, even if it doesn’t address the underlying addictive personality.
IME a lot (but not by any means all) of 12-steppers are religiously fanatical. In fact, I know of one woman raised jewish, bat mitzvahed and all, who, upon completing her 12th step, converted to catholicism
my conclusion after watching this sometimes very funny episode? Randy is a wuss
I liked it. AA has mangled and distorted the whole field of addiction recovery, and many of their dogmas about alcoholism are poorly supported by the literature, yet they maintain a near total grip on how people see addiction treatment as progressing. It’s certainly helped a lot of people, but I’ve found that it seems to cause a whole host of problems on top of that solution. Teaching people to think that they are totally helpless and will die unless you believe/do this ONE THING is just not a great idea: not honest, not the right way to see addiction, and so on.
I thought the “vagina” ending was perfect. Having an explanation for it would have ruined the joke: the whole point is that even if it’s an amazing and supernatural phenomenon… well, yeah, it’s sexist, but that sort of dirty, base punchline is exactly what you either like or don’t like South Park for.
One of my favorites.
But why did Marsh leave the car and walk home? He hadn’t started drinking yet! He’s gonna walk home, have a 12-pack then wonder where his car is. He’ll just end up walking back, drunk, then driving it home!
i repeat:
On another note, the Catholic League has just condemned the episode and asked for an apology (I’m sure Parker and Stone will be rushing to do that…)
Dear Catholic League:
We are terribly sorry to hear you condemned our last episode. We honestly did not realize that the Virgin Mary bleeding out her ass or Pope Benedict dissing vaginas was something your church would find offensive.
That would be the perfect letter of responce.
I am amazed by the number of people who still take offense to South Park.
At this point it should be more insulting if they didn’t do a part of an episode ripping your group.
Jim
Is the Catholic League the group that’s run by idiot, Bill Donohue? From what I understand, that group does not have any official sanction from the RCC. It’s just a fringe group run by a raving, anti-semitic crackpot. Donohue is an embarrasment to the Church. I think the vatican likes to pretend he doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, he gets trotted out on news shows all the time as if he’s some kind of legitimate spokesperson for Catholics.