Craig Reviews South Park: Cash For Gold

*SPOILER WARNING*

I’m happy to report that this week we finally got a great episode of South Park again! It’s been a while, and after last week’s episode I was not holding out much hope, but this was a clever, relevant and even at times poignant episode. There was barely any toilet humour in sight this week, and no recycled jokes, instead we get a ton of really smart humour as the boys tackled the recent emergence of Cash For Gold stores, in an episode that felt really driven and focused for the first time in a long time. I’m not about to start praising a glorious return to the old ways for South Park, after all even last season had it’s flashes of inspiration, but if this is any indication of things to come then I’m very excited indeed.

 The episode opens on the Marsh family saying goodbye after a visit to Stan’s granddad. Anything that gives Randy an excuse to be on screen is generally fine by me, and he doesn’t disappoint in this scene. Stan’s granddad then gives Billy (that’s Stan) an expensive gift, a “f*cking gay as f*ck” bolo tie. After an appropriate amount of mockery from Cartman, Stan takes the offending item to his local Cash For Gold store because “it’s worth so much I feel really bad accepting it, so I just want the cash”. I’ve noticed these stores popping up all over the town I live in myself, so it was nice to see them in South Park, and the Taco Bell that also bought gold in exchange for burritos was a nice touch, as were the sign spinners. After being offered practically nothing for the bolo tie that cost $6000 Stan questions how this could possibly happen, and then we meet Dean.

"Faux is a French word. It's got an X in it, but you don't even pronounce the X, how do you like that for prestigious!"

Dean is the host of a TV shopping channel, and he’s a great South Park caricature. His Faux Sapphire earrings speech had me laughing out loud, and listening to him making up the prices as he goes along is so true to life. There are a lot of laughs in these shopping channel scenes, as the poor old folk virtually throw their money at the screen for this crappy jewellery, and the show probably didn’t have to go any further with it, but when they explored the way that these shopping channels  are exploiting old people the episode really moved up a gear. When Stan hears his granddad on the shopping channel he rushes over to stop him from buying anymore of this crap and we get a scene that’s actually really emotional, especially by South Park standards, it’s unexpected and touching. The episode had been making light of the old man’s memory loss, with him repeatedly calling Stan Billy, but this brief scene really brought home the sadness and desperation of a loved one losing their memory. After hearing his grandfather’s story, Stan vows to bring down the jewellery channel, while Cartman believes that the channel holds the key to the alchemic formula for gold, which of course leads to him setting up his own jewellery channel.

It starts off small, with Cartman buying crappy jewellery from kids in the playground, complete with Butters as a slightly useless sign spinner, but eventually he gets in front of the camera, and watching him ask the little old lady who just bought his plasticine ring “do you like f*cking little boys?” is one of the episodes many highlights. Meanwhile Stan’s assault on the shopping channel begins with him calling up to tell Dean he should kill himself. There’s something about this really morbid conversation playing out against the cheesy background music and images of jewellery, and the fact that Dean seems to take the suggestion quite seriously, that makes for a very funny sequence. Then in a jump that didn’t entirely make sense, but just about works anyway, we find Stan, Kyle and Kenny at a smelting plant accusing the owner of destroying the lives of old people. They pass the blame to the Cash For Gold Stores, and so the boys end up lecturing a group of sign spinners, who in turn pass the blame to the Indian manufacturers for making such cheap jewellery in the first place. Stan telling off an Indian child who works in a factory for exploiting the old people of America is utterly inspired, and it’s not long before the boys realise that this whole thing is a vicious circle that they’re never going to stop. Throw in a touching yet hilarious finale, and the demise of Dean, and you’ve got one of the better episodes of South Park in recent memory.

The story may not have been superb, but it was solid, maybe even good, and the humour was most definitely there. It’s great to see South Park tackle something relevant again, and it’s even better to see an episode that doesn’t rely on the same jokes being repeated over and over. This would’ve made for a much stronger opening episode than last week’s ‘Reverse Cowgirl’, as it stands that episode’s weaknesses aren’t quite covered up by this episode’s success, but it does still leave me with a little hope that perhaps the show isn’t completely out of ideas just yet.