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March 28, 2024, 10:48:07 PM

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6 more seasons of South Park and 14(?!) movies

Started by big egg, August 06, 2021, 01:10:41 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

steveh

Matt Stone on those movies:

QuoteThe show is 22 minutes. It's a sitcom. It is ancient, in a way. But we still really love that.

At the same time, you come up with an idea and realize it's longer than 22 minutes. There are "South Park" episodes that are high concept enough where if you wanted to make a movie you could. We wanna scratch both itches. We feel like we can.

We have this idea where the first ones for Paramount+ are "South Park" but not quite. We have a high concept idea for the first one to set it apart. But right after that we go back and do a six-episode run for Comedy Central and HBO Max, probably at the end of this year or early next year. The classic kind.

But the movie first -- either in one part or broken up in two. We think of it creatively as one big piece. Like a 90-minute movie.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-08-08/-south-park-co-creator-matt-stone-on-his-900-million-deal

Also working on a new South Park game and several non-SP movies, including a deep fake one.

dissolute ocelot

^ So are these "6 more seasons" shorter runs than the traditional 20+ episodes? He mentions 6 episodes there, and streaming services seem to often get shorter seasons. Obviously 6 episodes + 2 movies is only the equivalent of about 12 episodes a year.

steveh

Variety says they are ten episode seasons. So I guess as there were two double-length specials already this year there are then six episodes to belatedly bring it up to the ten.

JamesTC

I watched the pandemic special last night. I liked that they made the cause of the pandemic
Spoiler alert
Randy fucking a pangolin in the arse.
[close]

The Giggling Bean

I gave up on South Park ages ago, I got halfway through a series (can't remember which one) and realised it had used up all my goodwill to it. I stopped finding it funny about 3 series previous, Bar an odd episode or 2, but tegridy farm was just a laugh vacuum.

I really missed the episodes which had the kids being kids while some nonsense occurred around them. Episodes like Awesome O, Ladder To Heaven, Lil Crime Stoppers etc. I felt it lost something when they moved to the five day turnaround so they could keep it topical. We lost the off the wall silliness, which is what attracted me to the show in the first place, and got more cheap political shots which may have been worthy...but weren't funny.

I did watch the Pandemic special which gave me a couple of chuckles...but not enough for me to bother with the vaccination special. I doubt I'll be watching it again, which is fine, I've got the golden years DVDs at home. It's like when they renew The Simpsons, my immediate thought is "huh, they're still dragging this out eh".

JamesTC

I think they had been doing the five day turnaround thing for a while even when they weren't fully topical yet. If I remember correctly, they would mostly finish a few episodes before the season begins and then finish them during the run to give them a break.

Rewatched the Fun Times With Weapons episode earlier. That one is so good.


steveh

Trailer for the first of the movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh-8T1_QU-U.

Seems likely this will be held back in the UK until Paramount+ launches 'early in 2022'.


up_the_hampipe

Quote from: steveh on November 19, 2021, 09:08:16 AMTrailer for the first of the movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh-8T1_QU-U.

Seems likely this will be held back in the UK until Paramount+ launches 'early in 2022'.


Is this going to be a parody of IT Chapter Two?

Dickie_Anders

I hated the COVID specials so much that I had to go back and watch older episodes to see if I'd misremembered, and South Park had always been that bad. I was pleased to find that I was wrong. At its best the show is pretty untouchable, up there with the best of early Simpsons imo. It took a while for them to figure it out though. Those early series are rough. It's mad to see them go from coasting on the novelty of paper cut-outs swearing and doing poo jokes on TV to beautifully written comedy like The Losing Edge or All About Mormons. Season 7 is when the show got truly great imo.

I think that was the point where they had properly figured out the great comedy characters of the show and how to use them (Cartman, Butters, Randy). Kyle isn't a very funny character but works great as a high-strung type to bounce off of Cartman. If any of the main characters had to be deleted from the show, it'd probably be Stan, wouldn't it? Not much to him. At this point I suppose he works best as the disapproving son to Randy's stupidity


Noodle Lizard

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on November 19, 2021, 11:13:53 PMIs this going to be a parody of IT Chapter Two?

Seems like it. Glad they're sticking to the quick turnaround formula so they're able to keep up with contemporary events ...

...

evilcommiedictator

Quote from: Dickie_Anders on November 20, 2021, 05:57:18 PMIf any of the main characters had to be deleted from the show, it'd probably be Stan, wouldn't it? Not much to him. At this point I suppose he works best as the disapproving son to Randy's stupidity

Well given the past few seasons have been tediously repeating exploring Randy and his legal weed, you need a cipher maybe?

Although, they could just replace all the boys with the PC Babies and be done with shitting on their legacy it?

Noodle Lizard

The line's always been that Stan = Trey and Kyle = Matt, so I'd be surprised to see either of them go permanently. Then again, Cartman's probably the least replaceable of the main characters now. That'd be Kenny, as they've already proven.

Mobbd

Fuck it, I still like South Park and I welcome six more seasons.

I kinda wish it weren't so granular in its subject matter these days but I'm always happy to catch up with it. I kinda can't believe it's still going; it's like a lovely gift.

I'm going to compare it (yes, South Park) to Pharoah Sanders working with the London Philharmonic Orchestra last year: hardly their best work but it's a beautiful and unlikely miracle that we can have it at all.

On the granularity of the subject matter, I kinda hope it won't matter when rewatching them in the future. An episode about the Somali Pirates a few years ago (very much a news story at the time) is pretty funny now and you don't really need to know about or remember the Somali Pirates panic. If you read Screen Burn, Charlie Brooker's first collection of TV criticism, it doesn't matter if you don't remember the long-forgotten cable shows he's talking about -- he may be making them up for all you know -- because the writing and humour transcend it. I do hope that happens with South Park, but we shall see.

The 6 Days to Air documentary was superb. I know it was a while ago now but it's still in the era of "South Park not being good anymore" (it involved the making of the "Human Centipad" episode, which doubly dates it). As well as showing the commitment and effort and love that goes into the show, the doc was a well-made thing in its own right. I liked spotting things in the studio like the poster for Bigger, Longer & Uncut (and I think an Officer Barbradey plush toy from the first wave of the show's popularity), showing that Matt and Trey haven't forgotten what they're making. I can't imagine CBS's Star Trek production offices having Deep Space 9 posters up today. It doesn't feel like some cuckolded zombie franchise like The Simpsons or Ghostbusters or Star Wars; they're still making the same thing, not emulating it.

Their way of working during the pandemic was commendable and the Pandemic Special was very comforting somehow; to see the things you're still terrified by passing into the realm of South Park for processing.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Dickie_Anders on November 20, 2021, 05:57:18 PMAt its best the show is pretty untouchable, up there with the best of early Simpsons imo. It took a while for them to figure it out though. Those early series are rough. It's mad to see them go from coasting on the novelty of paper cut-outs swearing and doing poo jokes on TV to beautifully written comedy like The Losing Edge or All About Mormons. Season 7 is when the show got truly great imo.
My opinion is undoubtedly mixed with a heavy dose of nostalgia, but I'd say it found it's footing pretty quickly. I watched a few episodes from Season 1 recently and, while they didn't hit the highs that the show would go on to, they were still very enjoyable, in a silly schoolboy kind of way.

Looking at the list of episodes on Wikipedia, Season 7 doesn't strike me as any great leap beyond the previous seasons. There was a definite decline with season 9 though (in my opinion).

Mister Six

Quote from: Mobbd on November 23, 2021, 11:13:45 AMFuck it, I still like South Park and I welcome six more seasons.

I kinda wish it weren't so granular in its subject matter these days but I'm always happy to catch up with it. I kinda can't believe it's still going; it's like a lovely gift.

I'm going to compare it (yes, South Park) to Pharoah Sanders working with the London Philharmonic Orchestra last year: hardly their best work but it's a beautiful and unlikely miracle that we can have it at all.

On the granularity of the subject matter, I kinda hope it won't matter when rewatching them in the future. An episode about the Somali Pirates a few years ago (very much a news story at the time) is pretty funny now and you don't really need to know about or remember the Somali Pirates panic. If you read Screen Burn, Charlie Brooker's first collection of TV criticism, it doesn't matter if you don't remember the long-forgotten cable shows he's talking about -- he may be making them up for all you know -- because the writing and humour transcend it. I do hope that happens with South Park, but we shall see.

The 6 Days to Air documentary was superb. I know it was a while ago now but it's still in the era of "South Park not being good anymore" (it involved the making of the "Human Centipad" episode, which doubly dates it). As well as showing the commitment and effort and love that goes into the show, the doc was a well-made thing in its own right. I liked spotting things in the studio like the poster for Bigger, Longer & Uncut (and I think an Officer Barbradey plush toy from the first wave of the show's popularity), showing that Matt and Trey haven't forgotten what they're making. I can't imagine CBS's Star Trek production offices having Deep Space 9 posters up today. It doesn't feel like some cuckolded zombie franchise like The Simpsons or Ghostbusters or Star Wars; they're still making the same thing, not emulating it.

Their way of working during the pandemic was commendable and the Pandemic Special was very comforting somehow; to see the things you're still terrified by passing into the realm of South Park for processing.

Lovely post. Haven't seen most of South Park for years, but the pandemic special gave me a bunch of good laughs, and the Fractured But Whole game was the funniest thing I'd seen in years (although not having seen the show for ages might have helped in that respect, because it meant almost everything in it was new to me, whereas I get the feeling that a lot of the gags were recycled from the series straight up. Hearing "I'm A Gay Fish" as some background music was much funnier (probably) when it seemed like a completely random bit of silliness rather than a callback.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Mobbd on November 23, 2021, 11:13:45 AMFuck it, I still like South Park and I welcome six more seasons.

I kinda wish it weren't so granular in its subject matter these days but I'm always happy to catch up with it. I kinda can't believe it's still going; it's like a lovely gift.

I'm going to compare it (yes, South Park) to Pharoah Sanders working with the London Philharmonic Orchestra last year: hardly their best work but it's a beautiful and unlikely miracle that we can have it at all.

On the granularity of the subject matter, I kinda hope it won't matter when rewatching them in the future. An episode about the Somali Pirates a few years ago (very much a news story at the time) is pretty funny now and you don't really need to know about or remember the Somali Pirates panic. If you read Screen Burn, Charlie Brooker's first collection of TV criticism, it doesn't matter if you don't remember the long-forgotten cable shows he's talking about -- he may be making them up for all you know -- because the writing and humour transcend it. I do hope that happens with South Park, but we shall see.

The 6 Days to Air documentary was superb. I know it was a while ago now but it's still in the era of "South Park not being good anymore" (it involved the making of the "Human Centipad" episode, which doubly dates it). As well as showing the commitment and effort and love that goes into the show, the doc was a well-made thing in its own right. I liked spotting things in the studio like the poster for Bigger, Longer & Uncut (and I think an Officer Barbradey plush toy from the first wave of the show's popularity), showing that Matt and Trey haven't forgotten what they're making. I can't imagine CBS's Star Trek production offices having Deep Space 9 posters up today. It doesn't feel like some cuckolded zombie franchise like The Simpsons or Ghostbusters or Star Wars; they're still making the same thing, not emulating it.

Their way of working during the pandemic was commendable and the Pandemic Special was very comforting somehow; to see the things you're still terrified by passing into the realm of South Park for processing.

This is a great post, thanks for that. I agree that Six Days To Air is a fascinating documentary, although I'd argue the season it depicts predates the most recent/severe wave of "it's not good anymore" (starting with the season arcs in 2016) by a fair few years.

I don't think it's necessarily a case of them not caring anymore or just doing it for the money, I simply think they've run out of juice. The "You're Getting Old" episode (from the same season the documentary focuses on) definitely seemed to insinuate that they were losing the passion/inspiration for it, but I also understand that a creator may fall in and out of love with the thing they're most known for, especially with it running as long as it has.

They presently seem to be more invested in South Park than anything else, and they're trying lots of different things with the format to keep it alive, but it feels as though the comedic spark from earlier seasons (and the first game) has gone, which is a shame given how unusually and seemingly effortlessly funny they could be even as early as Cannibal! The Musical. It remains to be seen whether that's just South Park or not (I remember SP dipping a bit when they were focusing on The Book Of Mormon, which was excellent), but I can imagine a couple of 50-year-olds with families and nothing left to prove finding it more and more difficult to tap into the daft and angry energy that made their earlier work so special.

I still love them, of course, and have done since I was 7 years old (Jesus). I'll watch anything they come out with, though I've not been especially excited for new South Park for a while now.

Old Nehamkin

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on November 23, 2021, 06:21:24 PMbut it feels as though the comedic spark from earlier seasons (and the first game) has gone

Took me a few puzzled seconds to realise you weren't referring to this:




idunnosomename

I think if you look back the dialogue is so much sharper on season 2. The first was running on shouting rude words they could get away with (like chode, ass and nuts or whatever) and copious bleeping really. The manic plots always had such memorable setpieces though. It's certainly consistently imaginative.

I still think Not Without My Anus is fucking hilarious.

I don't know why Scott hates us so much.

'Maybe he's homophobic'


But... we're not gay, Phillip

'We're not?!?'

Dickie_Anders

In one of the commentaries Matt and Trey said that season 2 had the least involvement from them of the series. They were told by Hollywood guys to get others to run South Park while they used its initial explosion of popularity to get their other ventures off the ground. I think they were also making BASEketball around the same time. They didn't like how that season turned out so they doubled back and South Park became their main thing again.

That being said, if you look at the credits Trey directed pretty much all the episodes and was co-credited for a lot of the writing, so I think even then they were still fairly involved

Old Nehamkin

#51
Did anyone watch the Post-Covid special then? I've only checked in on this show very sporadically over the last 5 or 6 years and I'm a bit fuzzy on the some of the recent ongoing storylines like Randy's weed farm/Mr. Garrison becoming Trump/any previous Covid stuff they've done, but I found this likeable enough if a little hit and miss gag-wise. Some of the satirical "future" material felt a little limp and uninspired and the actual plotting was pretty awkward and clunky in places, but I did think there was some genuine emotional resonance in seeing the world and the characters actually move on several decades down the line.

It actually left me with a lingering feeling of melancholy and nostalgia, I guess partly based on the fact that South Park itself (at least the early seasons and the movie) was such a huge, pervasive cultural deal to me when I was around 7-11 years old but is something I've checked in with less and less often as the years have gone by. The special as a whole was far from perfect, but just a simple moment like the part where a character wistfully holds up an old polaroid photo of the four kids huddled together pulling faces - I have to admit that got to me a bit.

Moribunderast

I have found the previous COVID specials (and a great deal of the recent seasons) pretty uninspired - mostly because I find the Tegridy stuff incredibly tedious. That said, I really enjoyed this one. Some things didn't work for me (lazy "you can barely tell jokes anymore" stuff with Jimmy, Stan's "Alexa") but I actually liked the plot and thought things like Cartman's future, the doorbells, the visual presentation of the old folks home were very funny. It's never going to be as good as peak South Park but they can still really get laughs out of me when they have a flourish of inspiration.

olliebean

I will watch it but the hour long runtime (without ads) has made it something I'm going to have to be more in the mood for than usual.

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on November 27, 2021, 08:56:40 AMDid anyone watch the Post-Covid special then?

Yeah, I saw it a few days ago.

I never liked the show but I thought I'd give it a go.
I thought it was going to be a self contained film so I was happy to sit through it for an hour, but it wasn't.
Don't think I'll watch the rest.

I smiled once, the last time Cartman was shagging his wife and doing the whole "You like how Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, yeah? You like that?"

Seemed like they were really running on fumes and not making the effort at all.

Dickie_Anders

I thought this one was better than the previous couple of specials. The Cartman stuff was definitely the highlight, I actually burst out laughing at the very first shot of him. The "Jimmy is a comedian but can't say anything offensive!" stuff was horrid. There's probably a way of making that funny, but they didn't manage it. I found the Alexa stuff funny. The "chin diaper" thing is still shit

The fact that they're still plugging away with Tegridy Farms, even though they've acknowledged that everyone hates it and it doesn't have much legs as a concept, is funny enough that it has somehow made me like it in a weird way

I watched a documentary about SP recently and there's a bit in it where Trey remembers being borderline suicidal about an episode and begging execs not to air it, and it ending up being one of the most well-liked episodes (the World of Warcraft one). It's clear that for the longest time they were very protective of the show's legacy, that's probably why it was so good for so long (Season 5 - Season 11 imo, though I know a lot of people also like the earlier stuff). The show recently just feels really self-indulgent, which means there's still quite a few funny jokes that get through, but also a lot of shite



Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Still with the Tegridy Farms? If Jerkass Homer Randy had opened a sports shop and went around saying people needed some balls, it still would have been shit, but at least it would have been a proper pun.

up_the_hampipe

Jimmy being a "woke comic" is just like that fucking John Cleese tweet from a couple of weeks ago https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1459398678293196800 Trying to say comedy isn't funny if you can't make fun of minorities? I don't even understand the logic. We're losing all these once great comedic talents to this delusion.

As for the rest of it, there's something exciting about seeing them all older, but there wasn't much in the way of laughs at all. And, yeah, Tegridy Farms still being in the story is just exhausting. I'm enjoying the Cartman stuff mostly.


Noodle Lizard

I liked it well enough, but it didn't have an ending! When does the next one happen?

idunnosomename

#59
Not many laughs but I found it interesting. Especially Eric and his family.

The Jimmy's unfunny inoffensive jokes is just an absurdity such as people saying "this is the future" all the time

otherwise surely the joke here was how straight it was all played