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After 13 seasons, it’s hard to come up with new ways to praise South Park. I’m not even going to pretend to be objective here. It’s one of my favorite shows still on the air and one of the longest-running animated comedies to hold my attention (by contrast, I don’t know how long it’s been since I went out of my way to watch The Simpsons or even much of the Adult Swim lineup on Cartoon Network). Even after all this time, South Park still manages to make me laugh, cringe, and nod my head at its deft skewering of popular culture.
The season kicks off with “The Ring,” a spot-on parody of Disney’s frequent attempts to market tween music idols like The Jonas Brothers as tween sex symbols without copping to the inherent creepiness of it all. Even if the point is lost on you, their foul-mouthed, violent rendition of Mickey Mouse is absurdly brilliant, giggling at the end of each invective-laced tirade and showing why it’s not wise to get between the Mouse and the money.
And, as usual, the skewering remains both topical and evenly distributed. Kanye West gets special treatment for his tendency to take everything a little too personally in “Fishsticks.” The convoluted nature of the economic crisis gets viewed through the lens of religion gone awry while one of the boys tries to come to grips with the country’s penchant for buying useless junk in “Magaritaville.” All the while, familiar characters end up in bizarre circumstances and personas as Butters takes a shot at being a pimp (“Butters’ Bottom Bitch”), Cartman channels his inner Glenn Beck (“Dances with Smurfs”), Kyle confronts one of his worst fears (“Pee”), and the boys form their own professional sports entertainment company (that’s wrestling to the rest of you) in “W.T.F.”
There are a couple of duds in the set—while the central joke of “Eat, Pray, Queef” has merit, it wore out its welcome pretty quickly for me, and “Pinewood Derby” goes for absurd humor that doesn’t quite land. It’s inevitable that in any season of a comedy, some episodes just aren’t going to work for you, but there’s enough genuinely strong material in this season to qualify it as a success.
The DVD includes deleted scenes—a first for the show—and after quickly going through them, it’s pretty clear why this isn’t standard practice. Most don’t really add anything, although the original scrapped ending for “The Coon” is interesting, if only because South Park, with its insanely quick production times, may be the only animated show on TV that can go back and completely redo the end of an episode. Thankfully, the mini-commentaries available for each episode remain as entertaining as ever.
With South Park about to begin season 14 (including its 200th episode), there are no signs of slowing down or tapping out. I’m sure that I’m not alone in anxiously awaiting the next new episode, and I hope to keep enjoying them for some time to come.
