Craig Reviews South Park: I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining

*SPOILER WARNING*


This week's episode is a really good example of bad South Park. It takes one joke, squeezes it for every laugh it was worth, then keeps squeezing it anyway until the episode is left flailing around in it's final minutes for anything funny enough to end on. An all-out parody of Discovery Channel-style documentaries, the episode is presented in the format of those shows, complete with a narrator and interview footage, the joke being that instead of anything dramatic happening the boys are having a disastrously boring day. It's interesting at first, but the premise ultimately falls flat. Not even an extremely weird final chapter can save the episode, instead only coming off as desperate.

Craig Reviews Spring 2012 Anime

I came into this season expecting to finally get the chance to start working my way through Gintama, since I couldn't find anything that really appealed to me in the previews I'd seen. Curiosity has ended up getting the better of me though, and I've found myself picking up quite a few of the new series, which is no bad thing. It's looking like there are a lot of potentially great series this season (though why people are still watching Queen's Blade is beyond me, guess that's the power of boobs!), and a select few have really impressed with their opening episodes. Of course, it's difficult to really judge a series based on the first couple of episodes alone, and several of these could go on to disappoint, but I thought I'd put up some impressions based on what I've seen so far, while everything is still fresh.

Craig Reviews Smash: Understudy

*SPOILER WARNING*

We’re back to the musical this week, as Bombshell waits for it’s star to arrive. Having randomly re-watched The Producers last week I was quite excited to spot Uma Thurman’s name in the opening credits, but it soon becomes clear that she’s barely going to be in the episode at all, as this week’s episode revolves almost completely around her character not showing up. Am I the only person who thinks it’s slightly weird that Uma Thurman is playing a character rather than herself? They spent all that time name-dropping actual actresses and then they get an actual movie star to play a fictional movie star. Anyway, Uma aside, since she has very little impact on the episode outside of not being in it, Understudy was entertaining enough, though I found that things started to get a little too predictable this week.

Craig Reviews South Park: Butterballs

*SPOILER WARNING*

‘Butterballs’ immediately felt like it had the makings of a great South Park episode. A brief, and one-sided, conversation with Cartman on the subject of girls in music videos provides a giggle, and then we find out that the episode will be taking a look at bullying. Straight away it felt absolutely right for South Park to be tackling this. It’s topical, given the current hype surrounding the movie ‘Bully’, but it’s also an ever-present, pervading issue, one that South Park’s often witty approach could do wonders with. Unfortunately the episode fails on almost every count. It becomes clear halfway through the episode, if not earlier, that ‘Butterballs’ isn’t really sure what it wants it’s message to be, which seems like dangerous ground to be on when dealing with bullying. To make up for the lack of anything real to say on the subject the episode resorts to that time-honoured South Park tradition of repeating the same joke over and over, and while there are a couple of undeniably funny references, this ends up being a really weak episode of South Park.

Craig Reviews Smash: Hell On Earth

*SPOILER WARNING*


Not much happened on Smash this week, as the show seems to be stalling, much like the Marilyn musical, which now has a name at least! There was, however, just enough development to make for an interesting and entertaining episode, with several key characters getting in on the drama. It isn’t entirely without it’s flaws, but overall this was one of the better episodes of Smash so far, perhaps because it stopped and took a breath for a moment. At any rate, it’s definitely an improvement over last week’s disappointing filler.

Craig Reviews South Park: Jewpacabra

*SPOILER WARNING*


I found myself a little hesitant when it came to this week’s episode of South Park, especially coming off the back of two great episodes. After all, while the Cartman-centric episodes are often very good, the character’s anti-Semitism is hardly new territory, and at this point in the series it’s really not enough to carry a whole episode anymore. Fortunately the episode doesn’t fare quite as badly as I’d imagined. It’s not a great episode by any means, and it certainly feels a bit run of the mill after the two previous episodes, but it is undeniably funny, and there’s not a recycled joke in sight.

Craig Reviews Smash: The Coup

*SPOILER WARNING*

I have to admit that when I saw the title for this episode I was very excited by the possibilities, so maybe I was just coming into it with unreasonably high expectations, but unfortunately the episode really didn’t deliver. The events of The Coup aren’t nearly as dramatic as the title would suggest, and with no musical to focus on the show seemed to be floundering this week. It’s all about the personal lives once again, and frankly it’s a little bit boring. I remain intrigued to see where the show is going, but I definitely felt that this episode needed a more solid direction to take. Hopefully this was simply the means to an end that we’re currently unaware of, but right now it just seems like a very unnecessary episode.

Craig Reviews GCB: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

*SPOILER WARNING*


I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by this episode of GCB, even though it was as entertaining to watch as ever. The plot was the problem this week, as it all but stalled for some reason, and outside of one notable exception everything reverts back to where we started by the end of the episode. The comedy is great as usual, with a lot of big laughs, but it can’t carry the show completely. The episode was very predictable, and on a show all about the supposed secrets of this community predictable is not really where you want to be.