Did Matthew Kill Kenny?

I just finished watching the 12th season of “South Park”. Over the years I kind of lost interest in the series. Trey Parker and Matt Stone go to some deranged places and it was getting to the point where they were trying too hard to be offensive and they forgot that they were being broadcast on a channel called Comedy Central. The Comedy was no longer Central. They were editorialists, much as they always have been, but they were bitchy and unctuous.

Well in the 12th season they return to form. But in a matured form. I don’t mean to say that their humor is mature. Fart jokes still predominate. But they have matured as artists and satirists. In the 12th season, Parker and Stone remember why their show became a cultural milestone. For this season the show has a definite existential bent.

The season contains many episodes which the intelligentsia will consider classics, as soon as the intelligentsia discovers Comedy Central. The season starts with “Tonsil Trouble.” Cartman gets his tonsils out, but gets infected with AIDS as a consequence of the surgery. Any fans of the show will immediately get the irony. Eric Cartman isn’t simply a homophobe; he is the ultimate racist, misanthrope. Kyle Broslofski thinks it’s funny and laughs. So Cartman sneaks into Kyle’s room at night and medicine drops blood into his mouth – infecting him with AIDS. Hilarity ensues involving Magic Johnson and the lesson of the episode is that extraordinarily large amounts of money cure AIDS. There’s a life truism for you. Money cures all problems.

The first episode of the season echoes what has been done before and essentially presages what is to come for the rest of the season. That is to say, the humor will be infantile. Preposterous events will occur and the protagonists will act selfishly always. In fact in episode 7, “Super Fun Time,” Eric espouses exactly that philosophy to Butters. “Life goes by pretty fast and if you don’t stop to smell the flowers some time and do what you want to do all the time, you will miss it.” So the show doesn’t break ground in its approach or its premise. The revelation comes in the gems of shows or lines which happen throughout the season.

My favorite existential moment happens in the second episode, “Britney’s New Look.” I don’t intend to recap every episode here and, in fact, in order to motivate the reader of this blog to watch some of the season for himself, I’ll try not to recap any more episodes. Suffice to say that, “Britney’s New Look,” is a condemnation (yet also an explanation and justification, not exactly humorously, but somehow almost believable) of the culture of elevating preteens to celebrity status and then watching, almost wishing for, them to fall. And the final scene, viewed two years after it was broadcast, is agonizingly prescient.

In all long running series there has to be character development as well. And for me the episode which stands out is episode 9, “The Breast Cancer Show.” This episode legitimately is very educational. If you read certain parts of the script, you would think you were reading a PSA about breast cancer and testimonials about surviving breast cancer. Those portions of the script could stand as great Lifetime television. But this isn’t Lifetime. The joy of this episode is watching Wendy Testurburger kick Cartman’s ass. The leadup to the ass kicking is hilarious as Cartman reveals what a poser he is. The restraint, and the reasons for that restraint, with which Wendy holds back her anger builds tension. The Principal’s counsel to Wendy on how she should handle the situation that she is in provides a turning point towards resolution. And the unbinding of all that dramatic tension is released in a scene of pure, raw, animal aggression not equaled, on any TV show, since season 5’s “Cripple Fight.” Truly a fight scene that should go down in the annals of history as one of the best.

Of course, in any South Park season there must be unfounded, goofy, silliness. Well. Okay. The entire show is goofy. But there are peaks in any season. And Butters, as usual, provides the peak. In episode 8, “The China Probrem (not a misspelling on my part),” Cartman convinces Butters that the Chinese will invade and take over America. A more racist and offensive episode you will never find. It is hilarious. Really no life lesson here. Just f’en hilarious.

And here I must interject and say that I watched these episodes without all of the bleeping going on. South Park is far funnier with no censoring sound effects. I never realized exactly how much they cursed or how varied the curses were. The conversation flows much better when the bleeps are turned off. The conversations sound more authentic. Therein my appeal for adult programming to be allowed to be broadcast as it was intended. Not that this appeal will come to much.

So finally a note on the rest of the season. There are good episodes in this season which I haven’t mentioned yet. Heavy Metal fans (the movie) will enjoy episode 3, “Major Boobage.” If you remember the movie, the title gives away what the episode is about. Politicos will debate the ethos expressed in episode 12, “About Last Night,” for some time. That episode follows the events the night after Obama won the presidency. Anyone who knows school age children will be able to identify with episodes 13 and 14, “Elementary School Musical,” and “The Ungroundable.” Parker and Stone have to beat up on Canada. They do so in episode 4, “Canada on Strike.” And further exposition on the main characters is done in episodes 5, “Eek a Penis!”, wherein a penis growing out of the back of a mouse pauses for a minute on a fence to sing a love song to the moon (not the exposition I was referring to, just a thought provoking scene), and the dual episodes 10 and 11, “Pandemic” and “Pandemic 2: The Startling.” It is in the second part of this story arc that Craig Tucker, a new character, reveals the essential nature of the four main protagonists (Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny) by rebelling against it after they drag him on one of their adventures. But in the end, the life lesson is that possibly we all should embrace their philosophy of life.

And possibly we should.

Matthew