Killing three birds with one stone, South Park took on Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, and Osama bin Laden this week. When animated versions of Teresa from Housewives and Snooki from Shore invaded South Park, Colo., the citizenry became enraged. It’s one thing for Cartman and his buddies to be crude and vulgar; it’s another thing when the crudity and vulgarity (“muff cabbage!”) emanates from reality-show cretins.
The first half of this South Park was at once predictable and funny. As soon as I saw cartoon-Teresa, I was waiting for her to turn over a dinner table, and sure enough, she flipped out. Stan complained of these new neighbors, “All they do is hump and punch each other.” South Park reserved particular scorn for Snooki, making her a hilariously, hideously crouching, rutting figure. (Seeing her atop Cartman was scarier than most horror movies.)
Kyle and his mom returned to their previously undisclosed Jersey roots (Sheila was shown to have had a wild youth as “S-Woww”), and it looked as though the half-hour was going to be a good-not-great snipe-hunt with an easy, if deserving, target.
But then South Park made one of its great leaps in logic and world-historical criticism: Randy decided that the solution to the Jersey “problem” (orange-skinned Jerseyites overrunning the entire country) was to send a taped appeal to Osama bin Laden. The desiccated terrorist watched in mute fascination as Randy fawned over him (“You have witnessed the very worst of mankind”) and begged for al-Qaeda aid.
Soon, suicide bombers were crashing into South Park’s Jersey population, and it seemed bin Laden would be the hero of this piece, but… blam! A uniformed American sniper put a bullet in bin Laden’s head. “We got him!” Randy shouted triumphantly.
See? It was all a clever plan to lure bin Laden into the open and dispatch him. Well, him and bad reality TV. By conflating the two, South Park managed to trump all the bad taste it was satirizing with its own. On the show’s terms, that was its real triumph.
Did you watch?
Follow: @kentucker
I love south park, but this episode was way tooooo out there. I agree the first half was an ok, not great, episode with some easy jokes. But then bringing in Al-Qaeda was both strange and unfunny. I just don’t understand what they were smoking when they wrote this one.
This episode was hilarious!Shows like Jersey Shore and Real Housewives, and the people on there are the bottom of the barrel of society and just plain trash. This show got it right, and introducing Al-Qaeda suggested that these shows are worse than them. Great job Matt and Trey!
You are so dumb.
“an ok” is the correct grammar, you stupid douche.
If you had read the rest of the sentence you would have seen, it was an ok, not great episode. Do you not know how to read? Are you not literate? Here is the real failure of our school system.
The real failure of the school system is how many of it’s products have been taught to ridicule ignorance, rather than acknowledge and correct it.
Stop the Hate Crimes.
Please stop using the name Larry David. You’re such a moron, it’s a huge insult to the real Larry David.
Larry David you are dumb, if you kept reading it says an ok episode. wow.
Best episode in about a year! Instant classic.
Larry David, you are the most f-ing retarded piece of s*it that I have ever met.
It is correct as “the first half was OK”; adding the “an” is grammatically correct.
Except that the sentence is “I agree the first half was an ok, not great, episode.” While I would’ve set off the midsentence “not great” qualifier with hyphens and not commas, it’s still a valid construct. Remove the qualifier and you’ll see: “the first half was an OK episode”.
Why is everyone so bent outta shape about grammar today???!
You ask about grammar and I say
Hello, were you just born today
One even wonders if you’ve ever met
Me, the one, the only – internet
“I agree the first half was an ok, not great, episode with some easy jokes”
“ok” is an adjective modifying “episode”. “an” is an indefinite article referring to “episode”.
You’ve hit the ball out the park! Incriedble!
Wow. Who would have known a grammatically correct sentence could cause so much drama? Can we please get past the structuring of my sentence and on to what people thought of the episode?
I love how people on the internet try to prove their “smartness” by trying to correct other people’s grammar and constructing proper sounding sentences while “schooling” them. Grow up, people are stupid and have a keyboard and a computer so they can type any poorly constructed comment through posts that they want.
Dont waste your time and just let the dumb be dumb.
PS – the origional poster had correct grammar and that Larry David guy needs his keyboard taken away.
I thought that was an okay, but not great, internet rant.
It should have read “okay”, not “OK” or “ok.”
How that Mr. Grammar?
OMG ITS THE END OF THE WORLD! A TYPO,
I am sure he meant, “an ok show”.
Yo’ur an jerk Larry%
Ahhh – do you know English. You use “a” when followed by a consonant and “an” when followed by a vowel like in OK. Or did no one ever teach you that O is a vowel. Do you know what a vowel is? Where did you drop out of high school?
Hey, it’s South park. It shoulda been “mmm-kay”
Bringing in al-Qaeda and ultimately taking out Bin Laden was one of the best parts of this episode, I thought the tape was genious also.
I like how you’re having a grammar war without pointing out that it’s actually okay, not ok.
Thanks alot – your answer solved all my porblesm after several days struggling
Snooki want smush smush!!!!
…sheesh
the word is actually okay not ok so all of you go back to school and get off the computer. also you should have used parentheses and it would’ve worked better.
What he should have said was M’KAY!
&%$* I forgot this show was coming back on. Then again I dont have cable so I wont be able to see this episode till tomorrow anyway.
Thanks for the reminder though.
“orange-skinned Jersey-ites overrunning the entire country”
::shudder::
Atrocious episode. I hate it when they do “timely” humor, especially with such easy targets. It was lazy, uninspired, and I’m kind of losing my faith in the show. Here’s hoping they amp it up for the rest of the season, both in term of bite and intellect.
They always go through rough patches, but then they always bounce back. I thought this episode was definitely an improvement over last week.
couldn’t disagree more. i enjoy their timely episodes if their funny, to put it perhaps too simply. The topics being relevant to our actual modern world doesn’t negate the episode’s value from an intellectual standpoint. And to be honest with you, I think their ‘timely’ episodes have generally been the better ones, especially in that they’re less likely to be overly fabalistic (yea not a real word, my apologies to any of the apparently many ‘intellectual purists’ in this thread) and preachy. My two cents.
What’s worse for America… Jersey Shore culture or Al-Qaeda? Hahaha, I love it.
I didn’t care for the season opener that much. It really didn’t say much. And the first half of tonight’s episode was a little generic, I will say that. But the Jersey-terrorism bit was brilliant.
(P.S. The answer is Jersey Shore culture.)
I’ve never watched any of the “Jersey” reality shows, so I found much of the the first 15 minutes to be very flat. It didn’t really pick up until Randy started organizing the assault. The commercial airliner thing…..it was one of those “wow, so wrong” moments that won me over in that special kind of South Park way. Last weeks Nascar episode was full of purely cheap, right-on-the-nose laughs but there was a steady stream of them. Not a classic but very satisfying.
Actually, liked the first episode of the season. You might not have picked up the contrast of Cartmen thinking to be in NASCAR you are dumb and poor, but really these drivers are multi-millionaires and do require a decent level of intelligence and understanding of technology. Better than when they go over preachy.
They made fun of Jerseylicous to!
Yeah, but I think you and I are the only ones who watch that show so nobody else understood that reference…lol.
Cool! That’s a ceelrv way of looking at it!
Larry,
An is the correct article and it was an OK episode. Idiot.
The way he wrote it is not correct. It should just be “it was OK,” or, as you wrote, “an OK episode.” You’re as dumb as he is.
he did write “an OK episode” – take out the “not great” qualifier and there you have it. why is this so hard for people to understand??
It’s because nobody teaches grammar or proofreading anymore.
Having had to sit through the episode surrounded by college guys, it was definitely a hit with the target audience.
Yeah pretty much, very clever though. For some reason I doubt you appreciated it…. All of you saying they took it too far are stupid btw. That’s exactly what Stone and Parker want you to say you tools
that was one of the funniest episodes i’ve seen in a loooong time….snookie want smoosh smoosh. lol
I agree
+2, the kids & I loved it
John,
you’re a grammar nazi faggot. Idiot.
Sweet episode, though.
uh, do you know how to read? John was correcting the all-too-moronic Larry David, who decided to inappropriately read a post and then insult its correct grammar.
Moral of the story: Larry David and Deez are ignorant fools.
Seriously, this thread has some of the dumbest people I’ve seen in a while.
deez..fa^^ot is a racial slur you closeted moron!!
cigarettes have race?
Sooooooooo much better than last week’s show!!! And you forgot to mention another part of the show — Kyle’s transformation ala The Incredible Hulk into a Jersey-ite.
It seemed more like a Teen Wolf moment there in his room with S-Wow Tittybang at the door where he opened it. Great episode!
of course! I didn’t catch that.
I could not stop laughing at the portrayal of Snooki! And there was huge satisfaction at seeing Randy beat the crap out of The Situation.
The Snooki creature was hilarious, they even gave her a spot in the opening to the video sent to Bin Laden! But raping Cartman took the cake.
I have no understanding of this Jersey-mania whatsoever, can’t wait for the fad to run its course- not happening quickly enough though!
Snooki creature was the best part. They were very detailed with the pickles and the furry slippers. Great stuff!
Any episode where Kyle almost bitch slaps Cartman, sending the corpulent little bastard into tears, gets a “thumbs up” from me.
This is the first TV show to slam Jersey Shore! Everybody’s been holding back for 10 months during Shore’s meteoric success, not saying nothing, but South Park’s the first and only one to chastize the show’s trashy image and over the top attitude. That Jersey show’s is overexposed so much (even with its increasing audiences week after week) that they’re going to get tired of it!
Not the first – for example, “Bones” did a spoof on it last week when one of the Shorites was a murder victim.
Except that “Bones”, as its lazy writers are apt to do, just jumped on the bandwagon and actually celebrated this gross and imbecilic phenomenon as charming. Don’t put “South Park” which is actually still intelligent and that past its expiration date pile of crap “Bones” in the same thought. ‘South Park’ knows how to do satire, ‘Bones’ doesn’t even know how to write a good script.
Overly defensive fan boi much? I just said it wasn’t the first show to satirize “Jersey Shore”, not that it was better or worse. Just a statement of fact.
Jeff -
Preston wrote “[South Park's] the first TV show to slam Jersey Shore!” And you wrote “Not the first”.
Slamming has a different definition from satirizing, just a statement of fact. Slamming is not for better or worse, it’s just for worse.
I don’t think that bhm1304 is defending anything, except perhaps Preston. Are you implying that bhm1304 is defending Preston’s statement? I can see doing that.
I quoted you several times here in a negative way. While I was satirizing your comments, I was also slamming you. Do you understand the difference?
Kudos! What a neat way of tnhikign about it.
hahhaha yeah finally someone owned this brainless jersey toasted-people retards
beautiful!
I love irony