Grid Effect

Hmm, that seemed pretty similar to we saw last week, just extrapolated. Instead of just over-sized guinea pigs, we also had over-sized “guinea rats”, “guinea mice”, “guinea T-Rex’s” etc. Instead of Randy running around the house with the camera annoying his wife, he was running around the entire city annoying everyone.

The only real difference between this episode and last were the five boys stumbling around Peru instead of laying to waste in an internment camp or playing Peruvian flute music. We still enjoyed Craig’s adamancy about how Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny always find themselves in trouble, and how he served as sort of a mouthpiece for the audience, but it wasn’t laugh out loud funny like it was last week, mainly because they did the same thing last week.

I get the impression Numan loved shop class.

There were some memorable moments in it. Namely the camera panning out to show us Randy’s camera work, and him jamming his camera in everyone’s face, and the pan flute version of “Three Blind Mice” and Gary Newman’s “Cars” while Craig narrated his story. Beyond this, however, the entire episode fell flat. Site gags like the giant animals only work well when done spontaneously, and since we fully expected their return it felt overdone and desperate.

We really thought they could have done more with Craig. I thought they might bring his affinity for guinea pigs back into the fold or at least turn his kvetching about being in the Andes mountains into a full blown argument with Stan or Kyle in which one of them calls each other an asshole or something. But no, just mild-mannered, rational complaints and remorse for not trusting his better judgment. Again: funny, but they did the same thing seven days ago.

But, to each their own. Whenever I consider a South Park episode a letdown that tends to be when I get the most emails from all the fan boys informing me as to what an idiot I am. So if you enjoyed it, great. You’re watching good television and we just happened to disagree about this particular episode. At least we can probably agree that Chocolate News is a disgrace to sketch comedy. So please, spare me the vitriol.

Nothing much to say about this episode, back with a preview for tonight later.