South Park: “Major Boobage”
Umm, I think it’s about time to assume that South Park is running out of ideas. I am always hesitant to say that, because it seems like whenever I do, they smack me in the face with something laugh out loud hysterical, and I have to retract what I had said a week beforehand. But three episodes into the twelfth season and the themes have been: AIDS via tonsil surgery and injection, the tabloids and public driving Britney Spears to attempt suicide and leaving her headless, and last night with cats spraying urine into people’s faces for a euphoric buzz.
I hate when I criticize this or The Office because as of now they are probably the two most consistent comedies on television, so when they hit a speed bump here and there it feels tedious to go about harping on it. But honestly, what was I suppose to do with that episode last night? Any episode that focuses on Kenny always feels tired because half the humor in it comes from him mumbling behind his jacket. They have been doing this for comedic effect since literally the first episode.
This isn’t to say that the entire episode was for naught. Gerald Broflovski’s “cheesing” setup with the harness and the projector had me in stitches, as did the Anne Frank parody (mostly because it came from Cartman), Gerald and Kenny’s fight in the sandbox and the generic 80’s rock music during the hallucinations. But every episode of South Park is good for at least a couple laughs. But everything else about this episode fell flat for us.
If you haven’t seen the movie, this sums it up nicely.
Namely the hallucination sequences. They were an homage of sorts to the movie Heavy Metal, If you haven’t seen it, it’s like the intergalactic Grindhouse for animation or something. But even if you are familiar with the references it doesn’t count for much of an improvement, “Look, everything is shaped liked breasts, HAHA!” It reminded us of the Al Gore “ManBearPig” episode from season ten. That entire episode was hilarious, except for one gag in which all the rocks in the cave are shaped like male genitals. It just distracted from the rest of the story and felt poorly timed.
We’re optimistic about a rebound, but these have been three subpar episodes in a row now. Every season has had dry spells and clunker episodes, and while its not officially a slump because the episodes aren’t completely irredeemable, it is certainly starting to feel like the beginning of the end. Every comedy series eventually hits a wall, even after eleven successful years for them to now be hitting it, still feels too soon.
Back tomorrow with links or something.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:34 am
[...] rather fluctuate in quality. So while we’ll have to endure an occasional (or frequent) “Major Boobage“, we’ll be compensated with the just as frequent “Canada on [...]
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
[...] no longer my belabored friend, the future is now available on their website with the episode “Major Boobage“. We weren’t particularly fond of the episode, but its worth a look never the [...]