I used to love South Park. I used to anticipate every new episode with fanatical devotion. Even when Comedy Central only had four episodes to air, I would watch them over and over again, and every time they were captivating. But as was the title of a South Park episode, "Simpsons Did It". You see, South Park and the Simpsons are the same. The first two seasons of both shows are pretty marginal. They were amazing at the time because there was nothing like it, but they don't hold up well. By the time season three rolled around, both shows had come into their own. Every episode was a classic, and that wouldn't change for years. Sure there may be an episode that you didn't particularly care for, but the overall consensus on every episode was that it was great. Then something happened to the Simpsons. It's 8 seasons older than South Park, so it was bound to happen to them first, but suddenly, as if out of no where, the show became terrible. It turned out it wasn't quite out of no where, however. Season 11 had some bad episodes, but they were easy to forget because of the good ones. Season 12 may have been the same, but by season 13 it was clear: the show was done. After every episode in seasons 3 through 10 being an instant classic, the show had completely run out of ideas. Of course, The Simpsons is still in its 20th season with no signs of stopping, now matter how hard we beg. South Park is now in its 12th season, the point at which the Simpsons had more bad episodes than good, and all I can say to Matt Parker and Trey Stone is "Simpsons did it".
Season 11 had some of the best episodes over, such as God Wars and Fantastic Easter Special, but it had some of the worst as well, just as Lice Capades and More Crap. That last title as very apropos, as season 12 has been pretty much nothing except for more crap. Tonsil Trouble and Britney's New Look are two of the worst episodes ever, and they were how the season started. The only good episodes so far this season have been Canada on Strike, Super Fun Time, and Breast Cancer Show Ever. Since coming back from the mid season break, the episodes have not only been bad, but redundant. The only good episode in this half of the season has been Breast Cancer Show Ever, and "coincidentally" it is the only episode that was not a parody. We had a crappy commentary/parody of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We had a completely unnecessary two part parody of movies like Cloverfield, combined with a commentary on pan flute bands that only one person of about a hundred I've asked have ever seen. There's no fucking excuse for this being two episodes, because it was the same shit over and over again. We had an Oceans 11 parody, which wasn't even really a parody, just an Oceans 11 style episode. And finally, we had Elementary School Musical. This episode had the most raw potential, just based on the name, and it was a huge let down. I considered that maybe I'm getting too old for this show, but based on other things I enjoy I know the problem isn't that, it's the show. The worst part of all these movie parodies is that they're not even terribly recent movies. Comedy Central aired commercials saying that you could learn about the how an episode takes six days to make on southparkstudies.com somewhere. I couldn't find it online, but I know it's a lie, anyway. If they spent six days making each episode, they would be far more topical and entertaining than this season has been. This means whatever they said is a lie, and I'm going to show you the real six day process behind each new episode of South Park: Season 12.
Day 1: Matt and Trey wake up in a haze with killer hangovers. Slowly, they realize that their wallets are empty as they blew all their money
at a titty bar the night before. They start browsing news feeds to find something topical to write an episode up, then say fuck it
and decide to sleep off the hangover.
Repeat as necessary, or until the show becomes unprofitable.
Day 2: Matt spends the entire day sitting in an armchair and smoking pot while watching Trey press a loaded gun to his temple and repeatedly
yell "I'll do it! I swear to God if we have to make one more fucking episode of this show I'll blow my fucking brains out" for 8 hours, except,
of course, for 15 minutes in the morning and a 30 minute lunch.
Day 3: Matt and Trey hold a round table discussion about just how much BASEketball sucks and how they never should have made it. No
one else attends the round table as the rest of the world thinks that movie was great.
Day 4: Matt starts to lose his shpadoinkle, so Trey suggests they spend the rest of the day building snowmen. Multiple people are
cannibalized.
Day 5: They again start to check news feeds for anything topical they can write a show about, but then decide they've been working
far too hard the past few days and that they deserve a break. They attend a movie, making sure to save the ticket stubs for their
scrapbook, and then proceed to Casa Bonita for tacos. That's right, it's a real restaurant, and they really have cliff diving and such.
Day 6: Trey pulls out their scrapbook of ticket stubs from movies that or no longer topical. They split up until they can each come up with one joke about
the movie, and throw together a vague parody of that movie repeating each of the two jokes about a dozen times over the 22 minute
episode. Receive a fat paycheck from Comedy Central for said crappy episode.
Day 7: Cash check, go to titty bar.
Kyle, this is not the time to have Cartman jump homeless people on his bike!
© 2008 by Dr. Jeebus