Through all the well deserved story line accolades, the aspect that probably has the most to do with the Comedy Central staple being apart of the TV comedy landscape since 1997 are its characters. For the first dozen or so seasons, the show relied heavily on the four established mainstays: Cartman, Kenny, Stan, and Kyle. Stan’s exorable nature is counterbalanced by best friend Kyle’s obstinancy towards a given situation. Kenny’s pin cushion propensity makes for good slapstick chuckles in between the unfettered racism, misogyny, and xenophobia of the one and only Eric Cartman. These reliable and appreciated templates are still effective even through the first few episodes of the season 19 stanza, but the show’s narratives have relied much more on current events satire in the last several years. In response to this shift in writing, previously ancillary characters have taken on newly found prominence. This is no more true than in the case of Randy Marsh. Once the prototypical awkward patriarchal thorn in the side of mischievous Stan, Randy is now a leading vessel for Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s humorous commentary on the most pressing issues facing the United States, and at times the world. Frenetic irreverence has been a reliable mannerism of the show since the infamous anal probe that caused Cartman to experience flaming flatulent, but the focus on socio-political poking in favor of the early days’ toilet humor continues in this collection of expositions.
Fortunately, 2014 was chock full of lightening rod controversies and polarizing social events. Take the first half of the season, for instance. In the lead episode, “Go Fund Yourself,” two points of contention are used as fodder: the rise of cryptic crowd funding ventures and the continued use of the term Redskins for Washington D.C.’s NFL franchise. The boys compose a plan to quit school and get rich from people donating to their Kickstarter page. Their intentions? Use monies given by “Backers” to do absolutely nothing, or “bro down.” As with any new start up, though, there are complications. Chiefly, what to name the company. After running though several adolescent-ly indecent choices, Cartman arrives at the opportunity to label them the Washington Redskins. In terms of the IRL basis for this stunt, on June 18th, 2014, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office cancelled six different trademarks the franchise once held on the grounds of the term “redskins” being a “disparaging” moniker for Native Americans, therefore, making use of title and logo unprotected by U.S. copywrite law. This is the sort of golden opportunity that the show’s writing staff pines over. Throughout the episode, the logo is defaced, sanctimonious press conferences about the companies “innovations” are held to reinforce the startup’s lack of morality, and team owner Daniel Snyder is the subject of more than one form of animated abuse. It’s South Park at its most vengeful. A new writing development in very recent years is a mild continuation of happenings from episode to episode. A thin thread of story yarn now interconnects certain events that gives the season some added continuity without them necessarily being a multi part arc. At the opening of ep. 1802, “Gluten Free Ebola,” the boys are forced back into student life at South Park Elementary after their entrepreneurial venture flat lines. Their return is flouted by their classmates because of their raucous and taunting behavior during their departure from the school. In fact, fan favorite Butters faced a suspension upon re-enrolling due to destroying the gym and spray painting demeaning graffiti along the walls. In order to return to their previous “popular” status among the rest of the 4th grade class, they decide to throw a diabetes awareness party for classmate Scott Malkinson, with unlimited pizza and cake for all attendees. But these plans are foiled when it is revealed that gluten in large concentrations can cause instant death, and the penis of the victim explodes from the body as if it were a bottle rocket. Irrational public health scares are rare in the South Park lore, but can provide great comedy due to the frantic actions of the town’s inhabitants (anther example is a season seven episode entitled “Red Man’s Greed,” in which SARS creates mass hysteria in the sleepy little mountain town). “Gluten Free Ebola” links up slightly with the next called “The Cissy.” Cartman likes keeping a regular bowel movement schedule while at school. Only problem is the stalls in the boys bathroom routinely have no vacancy when his nature calls. In response, he places a bow on top of his infamous teal and yellow toboggan, changes his preferred name to Erica, and says he now identifies as a girl so that he may use the girls bathroom in times of urgent need. Such identification issues also plagues another Park community member, as musical act Lorde, who makes an appearance in “…Ebola,” is actually an alternate personality of a grown man in the town. America’s current gender crisis is explored here, which works as a humorous conduit upon which an effective dialogue about those actually suffering at the hand’s of society’s benevolence and ambivalence to the issue could be had, that is if folks would stop and think and intelligently converse as opposed to spamming their social network accounts with the near-sighted viral propaganda that exists on all sides of the matter.
The second half of the set features light hearted sections that poke fun at more trivial subjects. Ep. 1808 is my personal favorite of the season. Entitled, “Cock Magic,” the latest obsession for the children is Magic the Gathering. Kenny is the best of the bunch, and his weekly matches down at the comic and table top store are the stuff of legend, described as “brutal” and “devastating.” As the previous night’s fight is being chatted up in the halls, a person on the janitorial staff tells the boys about underground Magic tournaments being held in the basement of City Wok. That night, they attend the inconspicuous meeting to find that it isn’t humans participating in the fray, but roosters trained with the sole intention of shedding proverbial blood in the Magic arena. Inevitably, one of the parental units catches wind of the latest trend; Randy overhears the boys discussing the illegal activity, but thinks “cock magic” is a one man show in which the performer uses their “unit” to perform optical illusions and escape routines. Despite Sharon’s (Randy’s wife) disapproval, he claims to have been a world class performer in his college years. And in this time of resurgence, he plans to be a leading figure to raise awareness and safety within the community. The routine two-tier story line scope of the episode is classic silly South Park. The intention here was not to push a hot button topic and antagonistically lampoon the subject. Rather, they took an interest of theirs, as they commonly do, and make fun of it by juxtaposing the innocuous activity against more nefarious dealings. That template is also applied in the season ending two-parter. #REHASH and #HappyHolograms uses the current “Let’s Play” and YouTube commentary trend as the basis for a shift in who is considered a media darling in today’s entertainment climate. Kyle is befuddled to the fact that his brother Ike doesn’t want to play the new Call of Duty release (a holiday tradition in the Broflovski household), and instead would rather watch a Swedish YouTuber named PewDiePie play the game with his gregarious mannerisms and addictive countenance. Kyle explains this new video content model to the rest of the boys the next day at the bus stop, to which they all say is lame, except for Cartman, who dives head first into the commentary realm and brands his stream as CARTMAN BRAH. Over the next 45 or so minutes, war for the eyes and ears of media consumers is waged between the new breed of Internet stars and traditional media big wigs who will stop at nothing to put an end to this usurping of attention from young viewers. When I watched the two episodes as the ran last year, I remember not being very impressed. Sure, there were some good jokes and Cartman being Cartman is always a treat, but I wasn’t sold on the narrative aspects. Upon a second viewing for the purposes of this review, I’m a little more on board, but still think it’s a bit of a hodgepodge. There are some events that happen which come across as a stretch, even by South Park standards. I won’t list them explicitly as to avoid spoilers. I’ll just say that the intermittent layering of actions didn’t display the normal level of continuity, and doesn’t even get close to the level of last year’s “Black Friday” three part arc finale.
The presentation is about where you would expect it to be, which isn’t a bad thing. 1080p quality does great justice to the vibrantly colored “construction paper” animation styling of the characters and backgrounds. Visual quality is good when it airs, but Blu-ray is just a step up from cable and satellite. As always, the soundtrack is washed with a Dolby Digital mastering. And like the video quality, it’s crisp and clean with no unnecessary ornamentation. Despite the dearth in volume, the extras are worthwhile. The most prominent is #SocialCommentary. Throughout each episode, little shots of information about plot points and production notes will appear in the lower third of the screen. These happen enough to be informative, but not so often as to be annoying. There are also “mini” commentaries with Matt and Trey as well as deleted scenes.