South Park (Comedy Central) TV Show • Page 4

The beginning of the show is the best. It also had the most Officer Barbrady, who is the show's most underutilized character.

 

The detective they replaced Barbrady with is pretty hit or miss TBH. He's solid in the Michael Jackson one and great in the prostitution episode

 

Barbrady is a great portrayal of the small-town cop. He is exceptionally dumb but quick to use force out of anger or confusion. This is one of the best scenes in the entire show.

 

I wasn't getting notifications for this thread and was wondering why no one was talking about the season premiere. Then I realized I've never posted in this thread before.

 

I want to enjoy the new episode but I just don't get what they're getting at with Cartman. They're usually pretty spot on with social commentary, but this episode and last season have felt like they being fairly anti-feminist, and trying to give credit to those who talk shit on female comedians. I don't know, maybe I'm missing the point. I definitely enjoyed South Park when the social commentary is a bit more subtle and not the sole focal point.

 

I think in the female comedian scene the joke is that Cartman is trying to better himself based on the flavor of the week (i.e. females are funny), and he fails miserably at it because he is Cartman.

 

Cartmans take on the female comic was pretty close to the little I've seen of Amy Schumers brand of comedy. He is clearly an asshole and part of the problem while also pointing out certain truths of the situation. That's why I find this show so morally interesting.

 

I think the show has always been anti-feminist, Wendy is feminist but she's always portrayed as a buzzkill

Cartman has always been anti-feminist for sure

 

Strongly disagree. Wendy is seen as a buzzkill to the characters that do not agree with her and they obviously use that for comedy but in no way do I think the show is in opposition to her values - she is a strong female character who is serious but also correct in how she feels. The breast cancer episode highlights this.

I guess the distinction I mean to point out is that the characters in the show are definitely anti-feminist but I don't think the show/creators are, though they will go to great lengths to highlight some of the absurdities when feminism is taken to extremes, just like they do with any extremist ideology

 

The show has never, and will never, frame Cartman's perspective as being true or correct. Unless arranging for the local bully's parents to be killed, turning them into chili, and feeding them to said bully is something Trey and Matt think should be emulated, of course. The one exception being his opinion on Family Guy.

Trey and Matt's stances typically come through in Stan and Kyle's speeches at the ends of the episodes. At least, they have for the majority of the series up to now. Cartman and basically every adult in the town are almost always stand-ins for some person or concept to be mocked. Cartman's understanding of female comedy isn't so much anti-feminist as it is him just not understanding that what he's saying is so offensive/ignorant. At least, that's my take on it at this point, considering we know he isn't the internet troll and seems like he may actually be being sincere for once (although he probably isn't and has some other motivation we don't know yet).

 

Yeah, Trey and Matt take the piss out of pretty much everyone, equally. Which is why t's always funny to me, when people try and say they're anti-anything specific, because their philosophy is essentially "Fuck you all, stop taking yourselves so seriously." I especially love it when conservatives try to argue that the show agrees with them in any way just because they made fun of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton a bunch of times. It's like, no, don't worry, they hate all of you too.

And "Breast Cancer Show Ever" is a classic episode for sure. Despite Cartman being one of the greatest TV characters of all time, that beatdown is so, so satisfying to watch.

 

I agree with everything you said, the characters obviously don't necessarily reflect their views. If they did, the concept of satire would be completely impossible. Stan and Kyle delivering the morals are clearly their voice, imo.

 

You three above definitely get it! Even as a kid I understood the adults in this show were over aggregated versions of parts of society and the kids were the voice of reason. Well....Kyle and Stan. I feel like Stan has been pushed aside for awhile now btw. I always thought as him as the "main character" with Kyle in 2nd but now it seems to be the other way around.

 

I know he's technically basically useless because he doesn't even really talk but I wish they'd go back to Kenny being a main character

 

True, there's been some great Kenny eps like the Golden PSP and the Jonas Bros one.

 

Yeah was Kenny even in that last episode?

 

Him and Stan were there, just not doing anything or speaking lines lol

 

Cartman definitely seemed like he is mocking the idea of women being funny because he is using the usual critiques about female comedians (they only talk about being fat/their vaginas, etc.). Doesn't seem sincere at all. Cartman was basically saying the same things internet trolls say. Which makes sense because his behavior was a misdirection against the true identity of the internet troll.

It seems this past season Kyle has pretty much been Matt/Trey's actual voice on social topics while Cartman has been used to represent portions of society they disagree with.

 

Completely get where people are coming from with their responses, I guess why it feels different to me is that the latest seasons haven't been like the old ones. The social commentary seems to be above every other thing in the show, which wasn't the case before. There were a fair few things last season with PC Principle that made me wonder what exactly their views were, but can't remember specifics right now! Can barely remember anything that happened in that season.

 

They're strongly libertarians. They think that PC is suppression of speech just in order to not hurt people's feelings, which they generally believe is BS.

 

I watched the premiere. At first I thought the joke about the media fixation on athletes kneeling was funny, and it still is, but the episode reduces the point of the protest because of it, and then the joke falls apart. As I see more and more schools and athletes protesting the anthem, I realize South Park misses the point in their kind of default "above-it-all" mentality. It matters that this has become such a widespread protest. More and more black bodies are murdered every day and #BlackLivesMatter and Kaepernick's protest have become two of the biggest pushbacks to police violence the country has ever seen. Sure the intentions of the media fixating on who will or won't stand can be questioned, but given the nature of the protest, there's a real weight there that South Park ignores. Kaepernick becomes just a topical joke. Black Lives Matter is a joke t-shirt for Cartman. I've liked South Park for a long time but given last season and this premiere, maybe Matt and Trey just aren't acclimating to a new social climate. Cartman and Mr. Garrison and the adults in the show used to be potent stand-ins for real mentalities and the satire used to really work. Now they just don't have any teeth at all. It's the start of a season-long arc, it looks like, so maybe it'll develop into something interesting, but I'm not holding my breath.

The best joke of the episode was their J.J. Abrams jab: his acclaimed movies, often reboots and tributes, are just slapping some new textures on things without doing anything meaningful. The anthem is the same exact thing it was before, he didn't do anything new at all. But he made people feel good.

 

An article today said that last week's episode was finished an hour before it aired. It certainly felt like it. You are never going to get to the heart of an issue when you are grasping for immediacy in that way.

 

Meh, finishing an hour before airtime is pretty par for the course for South Park, even in a season opener.

It's actually pretty crazy how much(deserved, IMO) trust Comedy Central has in Matt and Trey.

 

Favourite show of all time. While I find every season to be awesome, and I love how they've ramped up the current social commentary in the last few seasons, I do miss the very early episodes, like seasons 1-4. So random, with single story plots, more Barbrady, the Mayor, Mr. Hankey and Saddam. It was just such ridiculous, good viewing. The Terrance And Phillip special Not Without My Anus is one of my favourite 20 minutes of television ever.

Season 20's premiere was still solid though, loved the Member Berries.

 

They have to trust them; with no one watching The Daily Show anymore, South Park is the most important show on the channel.

The fact that they have been doing it that way for a while does not mean it is the best way to do things, especially since most people would agree the show started declining more than a decade ago. Did that extra time give them a better perspective on the National Anthem controversy? No, and their "commentary" was completely without an interesting angle. Changing the anthem so no one can protest does not really address the issue of police brutality, the timing and etiquette of the protests, or where they think it will go. It is shallow observational comedy.