“South Park” ‘Imaginationland’ DVD to Hit Stores March 2008

The 11th season of “South Park” was a positive turnaround for the series. I’d been watching the show faithfully since I was in the 8th grade, but noted a steady decline in quality as the years passed. After the lackluster, politically fixated 10th season, I was ready to give up.

Fortunately, season 11 fared a lot better. Trey Parker and Matt Stone shifted their priorities from libertarian preaching (though not entirely) to focus on being funny again. This year saw not just memorable episodes, but wildly creative ones. Who can forget the amazingly screwed up “Lice Capades”, the conversion therapy critique “Cartman Sucks”, or “The List” , which was hilarious and awkward.

And then there was the “Imaginationland” trilogy of episodes, which belongs in a category all by itself. Here, M&T did a number of things. They crammed in over a hundred references to our favorite childhood heroes and villains without resorting to a ‘Family Guy’-type joke structure. They remained consistently funny throughout, put Butters at the helm (which is always a plus) and even brought back the Woodland Critters.

The response was overwhelmingly positive. According to this TV Shows on DVD press release (my source for this) “Imaginationland”was Comedy Central’s most watched telecast of the year, bringing in almost 10 million viewers. Among the 18-24 male demographic, the rating was higher than Game 1 of the World Series. The internet, as strong a reflection of pop culture as ever, was abuzz with praise.

Now, Paramount and Comedy Central are putting together a special DVD of the “Imaginationland” trilogy. The episodes will be uncensored, and the disc will feature bonus footage created exclusively for the release. The press release provides no other significant details, like information about commentary tracks or whether the episodes will be cut together to run like an hour long film.

The question on my mind, though, is if this is necessary. There’s no doubt that this release is an attempt to cash in on the hype surrounding”Imaginatonland”, but the Season 11 box set will likely be released around or about the same time. You’ll be able to get those same three episodes, uncensored (because the season sets are now being put together as such)– why not include the bonus footage as an extra?

Weekend Links

Steve Urkel once guest-starred on “Full House”. The pain. The pain! (poeTV)

The UK battle over “Manhunt 2” continues. (Gamepolitics)

Microsoft is cracking down on profane gamer mottos. (Joystiq)

The Angry Video Game Nerd posted a review of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Atari 2600 game. Possibly NSFW due to language. (Gametrailers)

Saw V is scheduled for an October 2008 release. Enough already! (ComingSoon.net)

Filthy tears apart The Heartbreak Kid. NSFW, language. (The Filthy Critic)

Nintendo Vice President: No Wii Price cut soon. (Game Revolution)

Classic “South Park”. I’m tired of these language warnings, go for it. (poeTV)

Weekend Links

Nintendo DS: 50 million units in less than three years (Game Revolution)

This is easily the most depressing thing I’ve seen all week. Have something on hand to vomit in. (poeTV)

And this is the most annoying thing I’ve seen all week, but at least it will wash the taste of bile out of your mouth if you viewed that last clip. (poeTV)

More “Halo 3” woes. First scratched discs, now some guys claiming that it’s not actually HD. (Joystiq)

Nintendo doesn’t give developers enough credit, leaves their names off packaging spines. (Kotaku)

Resident Evil: Extinction has a current metacritic score of 42 and was number one at the box office last weekend. Metacritic score for the previous RE movie: 35. (Metacritic, CNN)

“Chuck”, a new show about a nerd with a computer in his brain, has earned a ‘generally favorable’ response from critics. (Metacritic)

Can I get away with one more Metacritic link? “Halo 3” has earned (so far) a 95. (Metacritic)

A boy did NOT strangle his sister over “Bioshock” (Destructoid)

 

“Like an advertisement for condoms”

There’s no breaking news to editorialize or major ranting to be done today, so I thought I’d share a couple of classic Youtube videos. Both have been online for a while now, so it’s not like I’m breaking new ground by showing them off.

I should warn you beforehand, though. These two clips demonstrate humanity in its absolute lowest form. They will either make you feel ashamed for being a human being, 0r help you realize that your problems are minuscule compared to other, far more broken individuals.

This first clip is of the infamous World of Warcraft Ventrilo kid. In case you missed out when it initially hit the scene (or your browser isn’t capable of playing flash videos) here’s a synopsis: a WoW obsessed brat (I’m guessing he’s 15 or 16) has been down in his parent’s basement playing the game for hours on end, and mom and dad are tired of it. First mother dearest tries to peel her fat suburban spawn away from the computer screen, prompting lots of screaming, whining, and sobbing. Then dad joins in on the chaos, proving to be just as ineffective as his good lady wife. The video ends with a lot of shrill incoherence from teentoddler, an argument over a lacrosse match, and banter between two guys who were apparently listening in the whole time.

My interest in this clip was renewed by a posting on Game Revolution. Site creator Duke Ferris said that the kid in the clip is “an agent of his own destruction” and “like an advertisement for condoms.” His simile was spot on.

And this one… oh dear Lord, we’re on the train to nowhereland fast. Here, we make a swift exit from the boredom and angst of everyday upper-middle-class suburbia, and find ourselves right smack in the middle of a trailer park. 15-year-old Victoria is determined to have herself a youngin, regardless of what her “stupid mother” has to say about it. And Tori’s had sex over 300 times! That’s right, she’s been counting!

For the life of me, I’ll never understand the mentality of talk show guests. Instead of getting professional help for these sorts of issues, they’d rather go on “The Maury Povich Show” and make total asses of themselves on national television. I don’t get it. Does the warm lighting or eye of a camera make them more comfortable? Are they exhibitionists in some way? Do they think Maury has more insight than a real therapist?

Whatever. Enjoy this heaping helping of sad!

“The Simpsons Movie”: Redemption, or the Final Nail?

Yesterday, I was busy doing what I normally do (lying around, being an introvert, not meeting new people) when a hard fact suddenly hit me:

“The Simpsons” has been around a long, long time.

I was renting “Bart vs. the Space Mutants” for my NES back in 1990, and that was SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO. Since then, my primary, entire elementary, adolescence, teen, and young adult years have run parallel to this show’s continued existence. I was there for everything: the raging soccer mom movement against Bart’s underachiever/sling-shot t-shirts, the show being moved to Thursday nights, the “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” specials, Milhouse dealing with his parents divorce, fandom spreading to the Internet, comic books, trading cards, stickers and posters. I once had a towering stack of VHS tapes where I’d religiously recorded edited syndicated episodes, and a separate one where I taped most of the eighth season when it was originally broadcast (this, coincediently, means I also owned a collection of commercials from 1996.)

And of course, I was there when the show hit absolute rock-bottom. Around about season nine or so, all the old writers were suddenly shuffled out the door and replaced with a staff who had never seen a single previous episode in their lives. The character were reduced to one-joke shells of what they once were, and the stories were lame-brained affairs, clearly the result of producers whose hammers were falling on an empty chamber of ideas. But mostly, it was the jokes. Out of the blue, they just stopped being funny.

So I completely stopped watching any new airings of the show. Instead, I became content on collecting DVDs of the older, better days, and watched “The Simpsons” collapse into utter banality from afar. For some reason, it continues being on the air despite being the equivalent of a maggot-infested, desecrated corpse. Only the “Simpsons” name is keeping it alive.

Now, in less than three days time, The Simpsons Movie will be hitting theaters. It’s certainly no small event, especially for Fox, who have been advertising the hell out of it. As the countdown to the movie’s nationwide release begins, I can’t help but wonder if this will be the redeeming factor in the show’s history. One big upside is that the screenplay was written by a lot of the old writing staff– the ones who didn’t confuse “The Simpsons” with a “Family Guy” marathon.

Will “The Simpsons” be released from its prison of despair? Or will it keep rotting and be forced to go on living, like a 29-year-old cat with no hair and teeth? Only time will tell.

South Park: Season 10 in Review

Last night marked the end of “South Park’s” 10th season. Ever since middle school, tuning in every Wednesday night to has been a weekly ritiual, and to date, I’ve seen every single one.

But the show has definitely gone downhill. It hasn’t quite reached rock bottom, to the point where I refuse to tune in and watch new installments (see: “The Simpsons”) but the lack of quality is distinctly noticeable. Especially now. This has less to do with my own maturity, and much more with the age of the show itself. Once a certain point is reached, any show, regardless of how good it may have been in its prime, loses the shine it once had. That, and I firmly believe that Trey and Matt are ready to move on.

Still, there were some good moments, which has why I keep tuning in. Since the beginning, “South Park” has always been a mixed bag, so if one episode bombed out there was a chance that the next one would be better. In the later seasons, a pattern began emerging where every other episode was decent and the others were crap. But this time around, quality was not as predictable.

Today, I’m going to sort out the highs from the lows and briefly talk about what I felt were this season’s strongest (and weakest) points.

THE GOOD:

The Return of Chef!- Prior to season 10’s premiering, Issac Hayes (allegedly) made a shocking announcement. He wasn’t happy with season nine’s take on Scientology, and decided to walk out on the show. This did not sit well with the show’s creators. So the opening episode ripped on the religion in a more indirect way, turned one of the most beloved characters into a pedophile, and then killed him off. Horribly. Not content with the anger and spite expressed toward Hayes’s desertion, Matt and Trey brought Chef back at the end in a life-support suit; but whether or not his character will ever return is a question that remains to be answered.

Cartoon Wars (2 parts)- The big miss that was “Smug Alert” left more than a few people unhappy with the way the show was heading (including yours truly), so “Cartoon Wars” was a satisfying turnaround. Two-part episodes are generally better than others, and this was a good example of M & T declaring their hate for something but still being able to remain funny. They even took the opportunity to make fun of themselves for getting too preachy– though I wish they’d realized that their social commentary really is bothersome.

Tsst- “Tsst” ended the first half of this season, and it picked up the pace after two previous tremendous letdowns. It goes to show that the guys really haven’t lost their touch, their talent restrained only by laziness and apathy.

Make Love, Not Warcraft- It seems that a few people were inspired by “Red vs. Blue” over the five-month hiatus. Brilliant, hilarious, and with perfect timing, this is how”South Park” should always be. It was entertaining even for a guy like me, who has never actually played World of Warcraft, let alone watched anybody else.

Hell on Earth 2006- One of the things that the CAPalert guy hated about South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was the portrayal of Satan as a nice guy at heart, and I think M & T caught word of that resentment. The character has been like that ever since. After all, what’s more infuriating to the Religious Right than the archenemy of God being the one who earns the most sympathy at the end? “Hell on Earth 2006″ continues that tradition, and saves plenty of room for humor… including a too-soon Steve Irwin joke.

THE ‘ALRIGHT’:

Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy- Teacher-student sex scandals have always been rampant in the media, long before “South Park” ever hit the airwaves. I’m not sure why it was necessary to do an episode about it this late in the series, but here you go. It did a fair job of mocking the double-standard attitudes toward underage relationships with teachers, even if the decision to use Ike as the male half was a bit… okay, it was really disturbing.

Stanley’s Cup- This was last night’s episode, and over its course the quality dropped. It had the potential to be a classic, and in the first act I was laughing harder than I’m used to when viewing latter-day “South Park”. But by the end it had shifted into a lame parody of underdog movies. Kudos to the guys for sticking to their guns and avoiding a happy ending, but as a whole “Stanley’s Cup” could have been much better.

AND THE REST:

Smug Alert- M & T have always been opposed to the liberal ‘protect the earth’ bandwagon, and it definitely shows here. The overall message– that people who choose to drive hybrid cars have smug attitudes– is stupid and misguided, but gets worse with the addition of confusing resolution.

A Million Little Fibers- Whereas all the other ‘bad’ episodes of the season fail because of their preachiness, “A Million Little Fibers” features another common occurrence: beating a gag to death. Having Oprah’s genitals argue with each other with British accents was funny during the first five minutes, but as the episode dragged on it happened again. And again. And again. It eventually got so redundant that I couldn’t stand it anymore. This had to be the worst they could do…

ManBearPig- … But little did I know what horror awaited me a week later. “ManBearPig” is the worst episode in the show’s history, hands down. Not even “Jakovasaurs” came close to this level of absolute banality. Pure crap, from beginning to miserable end. It nearly brought the entirety of season 10 down to its level.

Go God Go (2 parts)- I mentioned previously that two part episodes are usually good. I wish the same could be said in this case. Both segments were mediocre in their own way, but it was part 2 (or “Part XII”) that was the worst of the batch.

I seriously doubt that M & T are going to pay attention to the rantings in some random nerd’s blog. But I think they could learn a lesson or two from season 10’s offerings: the best episodes are the ones that rely much more heavily on jokes than messages. Good jokes, at that.

* 1/2 out of ****.