Grid Effect

Seemed like a closing fit to an unusual seven episodes. We weren’t completely enamored with it, but it definitely had its moments. Since we’re pressed for time we’re going to do this bullet-point style.

• The goth kids and their incessant bitching saved the episode. It was similar to the Crab People episode when Mr. Garrison resents mainstream America taking to the stereotypical forms of gay culture, in that these are two groups of people attempting to distinguish themselves, and for whatever reason, everyone wanted to assimilate and make their trends or lifestyle a fad.

• Best scenes with the goth kids included everything with the kids playing soccer (mistaking them for vampires, and especially the Gap clothes), the scene with them driving the car all morosely listening to that wretched music, followed by them casually going to the trunk of the car to reveal the “head vampire” bound and gagged. And we howled at the randomness of Scottsdale being named the worst place you can send someone. I have no idea if that was from Parker and Stone’s perspective, or the Goth kids disliking it because the sun is always out in Scottsdale and it is permanently over 100 degrees, either way that was probably the highlight of the episode.

This is the first Item to pop up on a google image search for "Vampires": A transexual member of the undead. Enjoy.

• In fact, all the music they listened to was spot on. It was just glib for the sake of glibness, and from what I can recall from high school, that tended to be the point of that genre. I’m not sure if Goth kids actually existed during the time I was in elementary school, but in high school I do remember them being the first to smoke weed, drink alcohol and scoffed at those who didn’t. So it was some nice symmetry with the coffee and cigarettes.

• I was surprised they closed the series up with an episode that had Stan, Kyle, Cartman & Kenny as peripheral characters. They’ve already done a couple of those this season with “About Last Night” and “Eek, A Penis“. This made three and I can’t recall them ever doing three non-main characters episodes in the past. I appreciate it as it keeps the series fresh and demonstrates they’re not a one trick pony, but it looks like they might be running on empty and this contract that expires in 2011 might turn out to be the last.

• With the exception of Randy, Butters is our favorite side character. We loved “Butters Very Own Episode“, but got nothing out of what they did with him in this one. That opening scene in the computer class should have been a lot funnier than it was. In fact, after Mr. Garrison left the room, I’m not even sure if they were angling for humor there or just doing setup.

This episode, kind of like a below average Sunny episode, is loaded with promise but failed to deliver. Maybe they were just exhausted from the election episode and mailed this one in. Not entirely sure, but half of it had us in stitches, the other half had us scratching our head trying to figure out what the punchline was. Sans the pilot episode of True Blood, we haven’t seen any vampire shows films in a long, long time. Blade 2 was probably the last of them. So if anything was a reference to that it flew over our head.  One thing I was confused about, if the Goth kids didn’t shop at Hot Topic, where did they shop at, per say?

Maybe some links later.