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March 28, 2024, 06:06:48 PM

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South Park 'The Pandemic Special'

Started by privatefriend, September 16, 2020, 01:34:45 AM

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Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: privatefriend on October 01, 2020, 05:23:44 PM
Thought it was enjoyable enough just to have the pandemic filtered through the South Park world in quite a straightforward way, even if the jokes are mostly predictable. Not sure what else people expect South Park to be at this point. The
Spoiler alert
forrest fires
[close]
were surely a hint that the weed farms storyline is ending for good.

I don't know, the whole Sharon has a moustache and has been secretly smoking weed thing made it seem like it was going to continue.

Anyhow, I quite liked bits of that, Randy's weird animal fucking and some of the satire of the police made me laugh, but it should have just been a single length episode and far more pointed.

Mister Six

Played South Park: The Fractured But Whole and laughed my arse off the whole way through. Did they get funny again for that one game, or is that actually the level of humour in modern SP and I just have low standards?

olliebean

There's not too much Tegridy Farm stuff, is there? Can't believe they're still beating that dead horse after the meta-acknowledgement in the last season that viewers were fed up with it.

up_the_hampipe

Pretty impressive how they made this episode, giving all the crew their equipment and letting them do all the work from home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox1x-OzxRII

I thought it was really good. It really showed the benefit of giving themselves more time to make an episode, it flowed much better, even the Tegridy stuff worked. The police jokes were brutally hilarious, as were Randy's flashbacks to China.

olliebean

Shame it only had the one song. I thought for a while it was going to be a full-blown musical, like the movie.

Moribunderast

It was okay but I feel like there was plenty of stuff they could have done with the virus that would have been better than what they did. I've never liked the Mickey Mouse character (just never found it funny) and the Tegridy Farms stuff is death, so that was a good chunk of the episode lost on me. The stuff with the cops as teachers and Stan's storyline was decent. Loved Cartman's 6ft stay-away stick.

selectivememory

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on October 01, 2020, 09:02:02 PM
I thought it was really good. It really showed the benefit of giving themselves more time to make an episode, it flowed much better, even the Tegridy stuff worked. The police jokes were brutally hilarious, as were Randy's flashbacks to China.

Pretty much agreed with this with nothing much to add. Randy's flashbacks in particular were amazing.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Pretty standard latter day South Park, for better and worse. They finally seem to have got over their twatty contrarian phase[nb]as opposed to the funny contrarianism of the earlier years[/nb], so we were spared Garrison/Trump being portrayed as a hero or somesuch. On the other hand, it was wall to wall Tegridy Farms. Maybe I'm looking through rose tinted specs, but I feel like they could have done something spectacular with this subject back in the classic era.

Tombola

Biggest laugh for me was Death on a little tricycle. More of that please.

Not enough Cartman, it peaked with the social distancing song.

The Mollusk

Quote from: Tombola on October 03, 2020, 11:29:07 AM
Biggest laugh for me was Death on a little tricycle. More of that please.

If you want more of that check out season 1, episode 6.

backdrifter

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on October 02, 2020, 01:30:10 PM
Pretty standard latter day South Park, for better and worse. They finally seem to have got over their twatty contrarian phase[nb]as opposed to the funny contrarianism of the earlier years[/nb], so we were spared Garrison/Trump being portrayed as a hero or somesuch. On the other hand, it was wall to wall Tegridy Farms. Maybe I'm looking through rose tinted specs, but I feel like they could have done something spectacular with this subject back in the classic era.

Could you help me understand the South Park phases? Maybe some examples of episodes that are funny-contrarian, twatty-contrarian and post-contrarian?

evilcommiedictator

Quote from: backdrifter on October 05, 2020, 03:28:48 AM
Could you help me understand the South Park phases? Maybe some examples of episodes that are funny-contrarian, twatty-contrarian and post-contrarian?
Season 19 is where the twattery starts - The new school principal is "PC Principal" and their new teacher (as Mr Garrison is now doing Trump impressions) is "Strong Woman". They get together have have "PC Babies" who cry a lot. Subtle.

Shoutouts to "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" for containing some rather "unsensitive" stuff, but otherwise before 19 take a look at the episode descriptions, and if it contains commentary on an issue - Freemium games, Adam Sandler, Gentrification, College Basketball, The Passion of The Christ, it's pretty good.

JaDanketies

I thought it was good. Also I think South Park get unfairly maligned as being nihilistic libertarians when this hasn't rung true for many years.

SavageHedgehog

I'd say PC Principal and family are far more benign contrarianism (if it's even that) than earlier episodes than Butt Out, Krazy Kripples and ManBearPig. It may have been a better show then, but it's contrarianism was much uglier during the Bush era I would say.

JaDanketies

PC Principal and Strong Woman and the PC Babies are as important characters as Officer Barbrady or Ms Chokesondick. In fact Ms Chokesondick probably had a bigger role than all three. Let's not act like South Park is continually ripping on the idea of being nice to your fellow man because there are some minor characters that are satirising elements of the left. Also PC Principal, when he was first introduced, is a misogynistic dickhead.

Manbearpig being real, and them siding with 'TRAs' over the trans toilet issue, are just some of the examples that they're not nihilistic libertarian contrarians any more.

Pandemic special was one of few new TV shows that have actually made me lol irl

backdrifter

#46
Contrarianism is where you take the unpopular side of an issue out of principle right?

I personally think they genuinely believe their own messages - they may choose to do more episodes about issues where they disagree with the majority opinion but I don't see anything wrong with that.

On PC Principle, I feel the initial point of that storyline wasn't that PC is bullshit but that some people cynically use it as a tool to bully others. "CAPEESH?!?! ARE YOU ASSOCIATING ITALIAN-AMERICANS WITH INTIMIDATION TACTICS?!?!" *Beats the shit out of Cartman*

Agree that the overall quality has declined since season 19 but there's still plenty of gems.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I suppose it could equally be me being a triggered libtard, as much as it was the show show declining, but there was a point at which I definitely noticed it getting less funny and more openly venomous.

Even in the early days, I rarely agreed with the stances the show took - e.g. Rainforest Schmainforest gleefully advocating the destruction of the Amazon, on the grounds that it's an inhospitable place that most environmentalists haven't visited; or Underpants Gnomes wholehearted defence of big corporations - but I didn't care, because it was just so funny. Team America had an utterly toxic message (at face value, anyway), not to mention the hypocrisy of them shitting on other Hollywood types for talking politics, but it was still funny enough to get away with it - just about.

By the time of the first Manbearpig episode, though, they seemed to have switched to venting spleen first and foremost, with laughs seeming like an afterthought. And, while this could be my own bias at play, the target of their ire always seemed to be on the liberal/progressive side of things. Bush Jr. was in office for two warmongering terms and I can only remember one, tame, joke at his expense, while Al Gore had an entire episode devoted to calling him a dangerous panic monger.

I don't know whether Parker, Stone & co. really believed in what they were saying in those years, if they were constantly being ironic, or just provocative for the sake of it. It would hardly be fair to blame them for the (pre covid) state of the world, but I certainly don't think they helped. Like I said though, they seem to have moved out of this phase and have even done a U-turn on some issues (e.g. last season's episodes about Jeff Bezos and Manbearpig).

thugler

This was just like stuff from the last season really, just a bit boring and tired. I used to absolutely love Randy's antics, but he's about the only thing I found vaguely funny in this. It's not a very surprising show anymore, I feel like you can predict roughly how they are going to do their take on whatever current issue they are covering this week. Unarguably past it's peak.

ASFTSN

Quote from: backdrifter on October 05, 2020, 11:16:37 PM
Contrarianism is where you take the unpopular side of an issue out of principle right?

I'd say it's more specifically that you take whichever side of an issue is going to seem most untenable to whoever is listening.

madhair60

Burst out laughing when the music kicked in before the pangolin flashback.

VelourSpirit

Quote from: madhair60 on October 06, 2020, 05:56:29 PM
Burst out laughing when the music kicked in before the pangolin flashback.
Yeah that was the best part for me, just like "AHHH NO HE DIDN'T DID HE AHAHAHA". Almost choked when the police shot Token too.
I loved Cartman's angle of loving isolation and getting around doing online classes too. Really glad they didn't go down the obvious covid truther route with him (or anyone, actually)
More specials confirmed then at the end? That'd be alright with me, I'd probably drop a new season like I did last year but I'd watch those.

Mobbd

Quote from: TwinPeaks on October 18, 2020, 09:14:22 PM
when the police shot Token too.

Is he actually dead btw? That would be fucking ballsy.

JesusAndYourBush

Just a heads-up that last night "South ParQ Vaccination Special" aired in the US.
(I've not watched it yet so can't comment on the content.)

JesusAndYourBush

As with SP for the last few years, it was "ok".  The plot includes some Q-anon stuff as the title suggests, including the Jamiroquai guy.  Look carefully during the crowd scenes as you'll see many old faces from past episodes.

olliebean

What was going on with Garrison in the snowscape? Was that a reference to something I haven't seen/have forgotten, or was it just they felt like doing some weird irrelevant shit for no reason?

madhair60

Quote from: olliebean on March 11, 2021, 05:29:19 PM
What was going on with Garrison in the snowscape? Was that a reference to something I haven't seen/have forgotten, or was it just they felt like doing some weird irrelevant shit for no reason?

I thought it was about Matt and Trey being the "Hollywood elites" who didn't want the truth exposed - very meta

JesusAndYourBush

Quote from: olliebean on March 11, 2021, 05:29:19 PM
What was going on with Garrison in the snowscape? Was that a reference to something I haven't seen/have forgotten, or was it just they felt like doing some weird irrelevant shit for no reason?

It's like they were suddenly teleported there.  Probably a reference to a movie I've not seen.

brat-sampson

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on March 11, 2021, 07:48:30 PM
It's like they were suddenly teleported there.  Probably a reference to a movie I've not seen.

Nah it was part of the 'Animator's Revenge' bit that was going on, trying to silence The Whites now Matt and Trey are in the Cabal.

olliebean

Quote from: brat-sampson on March 11, 2021, 09:57:20 PM
Nah it was part of the 'Animator's Revenge' bit that was going on, trying to silence The Whites now Matt and Trey are in the Cabal.

Still don't get it. What cabal? Perhaps it requires more knowledge than I have of Q-Anon. (Or of Matt and Trey.)