South Park, the Eleventh Season. Out Tuesday. (********8/10)
South Park recently came out with a DVD release of their Imaginationland trilogy, three episodes from Season Eleven that were crammed together on DVD as though they were a full-length movie. I took issue with Imaginationland because it sucked. As a full-length movie it sucked, and as three individual episodes it sucked. Those three episodes are a part of South Park: Season Eleven, which comes out on DVD today, August 12th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. In that review, I suggested that the creators of South Park may well be running on empty. That the well has run dry for them. And, in recent seasons (and the Imaginationland trilogy) this looks to be true.
However, Imaginationland is only three of fourteen episodes in Season Eleven. Of the other eleven episodes, there are two bad ones, six good ones, and three classics. Worth skipping is the Hillary Clinton episode, which is juvenile and painful. You see, apparently just doing offensive things to Hillary Clinton is in itself funny…although the end of the episode is almost worth it, to hear Cartman explain how his intolerance of Muslims saved America. A solid moment in an otherwise mean-spirited and stupid episode. The other bad one is a silly, juvenile and unfunny episode about Mr. Garrison (now Mrs. Garrison) discovering that he (she) is a lesbian and fighting to save a lesbian bar. There just isn’t anything smart or funny in that episode at all.
The good ones involve a Night of the Living Dead spoof involving the homeless, an outbreak of lice at the school, an episode where Stan’s dad says the “N” word on Wheel of Fortune, a spoof of King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters that involves Stan’s dad competing with Bono for the crown of “who took the world’s biggest crap”, an episode about the Guitar Hero phenomenon, and one about a list the girls have made at school that ranks the best-looking boys. All of these are very good, smart, and worthy inclusions in the South Park oeuvre.
The three classic episodes, however, are so much better. The episode where Cartman pretends to have Tourette’s Syndrome in order to swear as much as he likes, whenever he wants to, is fantastic. He attempts to turn his “courageous” battle with Tourette’s into an appearance on national TV, where he can go on as much as he likes, and as offensively as he likes, about Jews. Mostly to enrage Kyle. Not only is it a reasonably accurate and (considering it’s South Park) sensitive portrayal of actual people with Tourette’s, but it’s also a good satire of media culture, and funny all the way through.
The second classic episode involves Cartman playing a practical joke on Butters that backfires in a huge way. While Butters is asleep, Cartman takes a picture of him in a compromising position, to show people that Butters is “gay”. But the picture would more accurately paint Cartman as gay, and he begins to lose his mind trying to find the picture, thinking that Kyle has it and is planning to show everyone. Meanwhile, Butters’ parents, thinking he is exhibiting gay tendencies, pack him off to a camp for bi-curious youngsters to have him “fixed”. This episode is a fantastic skewering of the Christian panic over homosexuality, and also involves some terrific Cartman moments.
And the other classic episode, the best on the disc, is the one where Stan starts to question Easter. This is something I myself have questioned many times. What, exactly, is the connection between Jesus dying on the cross, and being resurrected, and rabbits and eggs? Painting eggs and chocolate rabbits and the Easter bunny are even more removed from the religious reasoning for Easter than are Santa Claus and Christmas. In this episode, Stan’s questioning of Easter uncovers a vast, Da Vinci Code - style conspiracy involving the Vatican, the American Christian League, and a shadowy secret society that protects the secret of Easter. This episode, (I don’t think I’m giving too much away here) also involves the funniest killing-of-Jesus scene in TV history. Although, I can only assume it’s the only killing-of-Jesus scene in TV history.
Five terrible episodes, six good episodes, and three fantastic episodes make this DVD, like the series itself, hit-and-miss. But overall, it’s still a hit, and it has not thrown in the towel. The three classic episodes alone make this DVD a must. South Park: The Eleventh Season comes out on DVD today.