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.
After a dramatic title sequence showing the boys wandering through the woods, covered in mud and alone, the episode cuts to the last day of spring break, as the boys try to decide what to do with their final hours of freedom. The boy's settle on zip-lining, unwittingly finding themselves trapped in a nightmarish tour group. It's funny for a few minutes, the narrator providing scientific explanations for Stan pretending to care and Kyle faking a smile was particularly funny, as was the detailed explanation of Cartman's fart, but by the time the tour group is bundled into a shuttle the joke has worn thin. Unfortunately this comes far too soon, at just over 5 minutes into the episode, the exasperating 'make a long story short' sequence providing the final nail in the coffin, and from then on the episode really starts to lose it's way. The boys discover that zip-lining is actually really boring, while Cartman attempts to deal with the onset of Stage IV Diarrhoea, before the tour group stops for lunch. At this point I began to hope that the episode might make that frantic title sequence a reality, that perhaps that mud the boys were covered in wasn't mud at all, and this would end up being a fantastic gross-out episode. Unfortunately this doesn't happen, and while the boys do manage to escape the tour group, it is only to then end up in another tour group.
"If I crap in the woods the blood will attract beavers Kyle!"
Repeating the 'tour groups are lame' humour does little to make it any funnier, but it is at least brief, as when the second tour group stops for lunch the boys break free once again. It's at this point that we reach that weird final segment, as the show switches to live action in a much more direct parody of those awkward re-enactment scenes. Suddenly the boys are four adults in the back of a boat, and while it's jarring, and the initial shock may provide some laughs, the scene falls flat very quickly. Rather disappointingly, Cartman's explosive diarrhoea finally comes to pass during this scene, and is nowhere near as funny as it could've been if animated. Everyone gets herpes, the boys all end up close to death from boredom, and Stan reveals that he was the one who wanted to go zip-lining, in order to get a free iPod Nano, but none if it's funny. I thought that the show was grasping at straws at this point, but then it really pulls out all the stops, lashing out to try and find anything that might make this episode work. The 'You killed Kenny!' gag makes a return, before Mr. Hankey (yes, really.) shows up to save the day. The episode even grasps at the previous week's hilarious finale, when Stan ends up jacking it in San Diego once again. It's a desperate attempt to get a few final laughs from the audience, but none of them work, and if anything they wind up ending the episode on a sour note.
This may well go down as one of my least favourite episodes of South Park ever, and it really highlights that the 'six days to make an episode' method, which the show has been using for so long, may not be the right one anymore. Yes, it means we get cutting edge satire occasionally, but those episodes seem to be few and far between recently, and instead we end up with one-joke episodes like this that could've been much better with more time. Everything about this episode feels rushed, I can only assume that's what led to the weird live action sequence, and it's a shame to see potentially great episodes getting pushed out to meet a deadline before they've been fully realised. This episode was beyond disappointing, South Park is much better than this, and I only hope the show can find it's way again soon.
Oh please. The episode was hilarious, stop over-analyzing.
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