OMG, I am majorly hating the “Hardly Boys.” Is this joke going somewhere? Copying a Kids in the Hall character and adding penis jokes is not doing it for me.
Hardly boys stupid. Yes, 25% of American are retarded, is muy funny.
Really? Really? Why? 
I’m teaching three classes tomorrow. Odds of me making a crack about “25% of Americans are retarded” in at least two of them are at least 90%. I’d go for the trifecta, but two of the classes have significant overlap and I don’t want the students to hear me do the same thing twice.
I had a mixed reaction. I thought it started off kind of well as a send-up of 9/11 conspiracies but the Hardly Boys bit was just pointless, mean-spirited gay-bashing and the ending was stupid. It also irritated me when Stan said, “the theory of evolution has a lot of holes in it too, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.” That showed a level of ignorance I wasn’t aware that Parker and Stone possessed (not just that they think evolution has “holes” in it, but also that they apparently don’t know what the word “theory” means in science).
I admit that I did laugh my ass off at Mr. Mackey. (Oh, you think it’s funny, huh?)
Yeah, I didn’t get the “Hardly Boys” thing - wtf was that? Were the Hardy Boys stories full of homoeroticism that I didn’t pick up on as a kid?
I didn’t see the episode. Was there more to the comment than what you quoted here? Or is it that a theory can’t be true or false? Or is it that a theory can’t have “holes” in it? Or are you just referring to the conceptual difficulty attached to trying to imagine how a set of statements containing “holes” in that sense could also be “true?”
-FrL-
It was in response to a 9/11 conspiracy nut saying that the “government’s theory is full of holes.”
on a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a “meh”
I think P&S are running out of ideas
Got it. If I understand correctly, then, the guy talking about the “government’s theory” is really referring to something more like a “hypothesis,” by which I mean a proposed explanation for a phenomenon, whereas theories in scientific practice are a different sort of thing. Is that right?
Is it that a scientific theory is supposed to provide an explanatory framework, while a “theory” in the folk sense is just supposed to provide an explanation?
-Kris
Exactly. The word “theory” in science basically means “explanation.” It refers to an explanation for a phenomenon or set of phenomena which follows a certain set of criteria (i.e. it is sufficiently confirmed by evidence and falsifiable predictions that it may be practically regarded as “fact”). Acheiving the status of “theory” is the highest status a proposed explanation can receive. The atom is a theory, for instance. Gravity is a theory. It is a theory that germs cause disease. That does not mean that any of these things are unproven or merely hypothetical.
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Oh, and yes, the word “theory” in the popular sense is basically equivalent to “hypothesis.” A proposed explanation which has not been proven.
A hypothesis is an educated guess, a possible explanation or description of a phenomenon that can be tested or measured, or makes predictions about other observable phenomena. If available evidence contradicts the hypothesis it is rejected or re-tooled based on the new observations.
If a hypothesis has been tested again and again, and is supported by all of the available evidence, it achieves the status of scientific “theory.” A scientific theory has no “holes,” but may make predictions that are not yet testable, or evidence that has not been discovered yet.
In general usage, (in cop shows, for instance) the term “theory” is used where the more correct term would be “hypothesis.”
I think the idea could’ve been okay, they just have been blah on the execution.
As usual for south park of late, too preachy, too repetitive. A few good moments though.
I didn’t like when they seemed to mock the idea that the government used the flag-waving fashionable patriotism over 9/11 as a way to push for Iraq - because that’s essentially what happened.
I didn’t see the ep, but maybe the HardlyBoys gay thing has to do with persistent rumors that the actor who played one of the Hardy Boys on the TV series & who had married Kirstie Allie (sp?) was secretly gay. If so, boy is that a dated reference!
Parker Stevenson? Hell, I knew he was gay when the show was in first run. Shaun Cassidy, however, is questionable (can’t picture 'Keith Partridge’s kid brother as gay)
That was good stuff.
Mr. Mackey describing the act of defecation over and over (mud monkey?) was HILARIOUS. Everything else- not so much. Didn’t get the Hardy Boys thing AT ALL.
A reference to something from 30 years ago that no one was aware of in the first place?
But it did provide some interesting 9/11 theories. 
SP started to run out of gas around the same time (in their respective life cycles)
that the Simpsons did; there’s only so much you can do with the characters before
you either start repeating old jokes, or try to force new (but bad) jokes. The
Simpsons should have started to let the kids age several years ago, but to their
detriment they didn’t. Probably couldn’t do that on SP tho.
The kids are aging. Slowly, but they are aging. Just last year they had some of their best episodes. I do not agree with any part of your theory. Yes there are more meh shows in the last few seasons, but when was the last really great Episode of the Simpsons? 8 years ago? South Park still has highs and lows. This was more of a meh episode but that does not mean next weeks will not be an instant classic.
Jim
Well his Wiki link doesn’t mention it (though I am very skeptical about a lot of the celebrity stuff on Wiki) so I guess we should give him the benefit of the doubt.
Good episode.
Really?
hehe