Ah, good ol' South Park. Fresh off receiving thinly veiled death threats for depicting someone who was supposedly the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit, they spent most of their season finale showing Jimmy and Timmy at a summer "cripple camp."
Knowing that no matter what they did with the mentally and physically handicapped or how they treated them they were sure to offend someone, Stone and Parker decided to pattern the handicapped off of classic cartoon characters. We had a stuttering Porky Pig, a forlorn-looking Droopy Dog, an Elmer Fudd lookalike who couldn't pronounce the letter"r" to save his life, we even got a kid who bore a striking resemblance to that idiot vulture who popped up as a villain trying to eat Bugs Bunny once or twice. And for the villains in this episode, we got Nathan and Mimsy, a duo who were apparently meant to be Rocky the dwarf gangster and his moronic partner Mugsy.
The episode was set up like the show Intervention, which I've never seen, mostly because using someone else's tragic life for the sake of ratings somewhat disgusts me. What surprised me most about this set-up though, is that, unlike what one would expect from South Park, the episode wasn't so much an outright parody (as they've recently done to reality shows Ghost Hunters and Whale Wars) as it was just ridiculous how serious everyone seemed to be taking everything.
Though I guess that is mockery in its own right, with Towelie's scenes being almost laughably serious and his drug addiction reaching ludicrous heights. I still really liked the show, it's just that the show was shocking to me by not being more shocking by bluntly insulting Intervention.
Anyhoo.... Oh, hell it's the prophet Muhammad! Everyone put your heads in the ground!
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I already told you that the fires of heaven were going to rain down on you for saying Muhammed's name, so watch your step. Anyway, I found this episode the weakest of this half-season, especially compared with the brilliance of their facebook episode, one of their best of all time. The "cripple camp" kids were funny at times, and the use of the screen for naration was a very funny device (especially when they used it to talk about the shark and its member later), but overall I think that they didn't quite go far enough on the Intervention stuff too. I also haven't seen the show, so maybe they did go far enough, who knows? Also, I actually thought the whole camp thing ended up playing like an episode of Lonney Tunes, with the "villians" constanly screwing up and actually having everything bad happen to them, much like in all the old Looney Tune cartoons.
ReplyDeleteChris, I'm pretty sure the whole Looney Tunes short was the point of the "cripple camp," and I did think it was funny. Not as good as their 200, 201 episodes or the Facebook one, but I still liked it.
ReplyDeleteAnd since whatever god is out there hasn't struck me down yet, I'll keep taking my chances.