Nah, they’re not slipping. Great new gags this season, including their new teacher, Miss Chokesondick, and that kindergarten election. “Recount!” “No! I’ve counted the votes 108 times, and it always ends up 7 to 6! Except that one time it was 8 to 5, and that other time it was 12 to 14…”
I don’t think it’s as funny as it used to be and I don’t get bent any more if I miss an episode.
The problem with those 2 dudes is that they seem to have gotten very lazy. They will always go with the cheap gross-funny gag over the superior but more difficult smart-funny gag. Plus their occasional forays into the conceptually surreal fail to amuse.
Every time I have seen it lately it seems to me that they are just trying to come up with new ways of being gross and tasteless, rather than actually doing something of quality. “Why bother doing quality writing,” you can almost hear them say; “We get paid either way, and gross is so easy to do.” “Hey let’s show a fat guy taking a shit on Kenny only this time we show the turd sliding out,” etc. Yawn - hey guys - hate to remind you, but your most important audience isn’t between 6 and 15.
Give me Futurama and K.O.T.H. and Simpsons; these are animated shows which are written PhD-smart and screamingly funny. Those, I care greatly if I miss.
“We already played with our parents. Now we want to play with you.”
“Okay, now I’m scared. That really creeped me out.”
And then when Butters came out of the stripped car with a ‘broken window roller upper’.
There were so many good lines and scenes. This episode was great.
–Tim
I forgot about “Spaceman” Craig and his heavy breathing through the helmet.
That’s been clear for a while.
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They did one episode called “The City On The Edge Of Forever,” which was the name of a beloved episode of Star Trek. And in that episode the first kid to die was wearing an ensign’s shirt.
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The Planetarium episode was a direct homage/rip-off of “Dagger Of The Mind” from the instituion head brainwashing people down to van Gelder the escapee and the Mind-Meld. (“Dagger of the Mind” was the TOS episode that introduced the Mind-Meld.)
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The Molestation episode had a lot of elements of the episode “Miri”, for example: all the grownups are gone, references to “The Before Time,” and the way the kids treated the visitors
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The epsiode where they tried to turn Timmy’s wheelchair into a time machine had the two geeks arguing about the number of ST episodes. I’m pretty damn sure they did that to see how many geeks would write in to say “You had the characters argue that it was either 72 or 73. The actual number was 79.” (80 if you include the original pilot, “The Cage.”)
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In “Spooky Fish” they had everyone from the alternate dimension wear a goatee. In “Mirror, Mirror” the alternate version of Spock wore a goatee.
So yes, Parker and Stone must have some appreciation for Star Trek. (Now I think I have to go slap myself for being able to refer to all of this without checking sources.)
On another note, I have to concur with what some have been saying about the use of so many other regular characters. Butters, Craig, Tweak, Bebe…they add more points of view to the action.
And the kindergarteners are just soooooooo adorable!
Tor
Don’t forget Token! Oh of course, that’s why he’s there. “Shut up, Token!”
This season has just been damn-the-torpedoes. The season premiere rocked (Cartman’s song had me ROFL), and it hasn’t faltered yet.
And I don’t think they have too much vulgarity. What I see is knife-edged satire, spot-on parodies, and barely veiled social commentary. The gross bits are just there to keep it moving. If someone thinks the vulgarity is too explicit, they’re probably rather easily shaken.
Did you notice that the guy first called him “Spaceman Spiff”? If you didn’t get the reference, that’s what Calvin (as in “& Hobbes”) called himself when fantasizing about flying around in space.
What gets me about the show is how quickly they’re done. Something happens in the news and it’s on SP within two weeks. Elian and the election are the most obvious examples.
A couple of good ol’ lines:
Wendy: “Nobody f*cks with Wendy Testerburger!”
Cartman: “My mom says that if you want to be a lesbian, you have to eat a lot of carpet.”
I stopped watching South Park right before the movie was released. It just failed to humor me. Watching the movie, however, restored my faith in Matt and Trey.
The 4th Grade Years have been dead-on funny. The opening montage is hilarious! Does anyone know what the green letters that point to various parts of the characters read during the opening montage? I imagine the one for Kenny reads thing like ‘Improved Drawstring for Hood’, ‘Muffled-voice Technology Upgrade’ and so forth.
Can’t believe I forgot bout the spaceman, that just about dropped me, I was laughing so hard, what with the breathing and the low-gravity-moon-walk. Smiling just thinking of it.
Lazy is one thing that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not. My boss is very good friends witht them and they rarely get to actually see each other. They (being Parker and Stone) make a huge attempt to get episodes out that reflect what is going on in society, sometimes the episodes don’t get one hundred percent finished until tuesday nights, and they air on Wed. I used to be a die hard fan of South Park, I taped it, I own the movie, etc. Now I don’t have a TV and the friend WHo normally tapes my shows doesn’t have Comedy Central, so I haven’t seen a single fourth grade episode, sob.