Thursday, June 4, 2009

Season Thirteen: Impressions on the first half

Just finished watching all the seven episodes that have came out so far and decided to give some thoughts.

I was a little dissapointed to be honest. There was some moments where I laughed out loud, but they were few and at times the show seemed a little predictable and a bit silly. I mean, Mickey Mouse? C'mon? I laughed, but still.. wtf. But that's South Park for you, crazy stuff happen.

But still, I think the downward spiral continues. I still enjoy the show, but true classic episodes come few and far between. I'm still hopeful that the fall season improves. Besides, maybe those episodes grow on me eventually. But like I said, I'm not going to give real reviews until some time has passed.

Edit: It's been few weeks since I made this post and.. Well, I haven't rewatched those episodes or anything, but I have still started to think that well, they weren't that bad of an episodes. Well, at least not all of them. I also say "downward spiral" and that's bit dramatic, considering that the quality of the shows is going down only a bit, if even that. Besides, most of internet kiddies still loved the new episodes.

But I'm not going to talk about them until I rewatch the episode sometime next winter. Why then? Since I want to wait out for the whole season before starting the reviews.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Season Twelve: The End (Episodes 10-14)

Episode 10: Pandemic
This is again a twoparter, and most of the twoparters are well made. It can be said from this too, although I think for example Imaginationland was way better (though Imaginationland was a trilogy, but whatever). Introducing Craig as main character was a fresh twist, although I still think Craig is a dick. Bringing Craig in produces many scenes where Craig is whining, and they're pretty good. I have to ask that how the hell should have boys anticipated that the military's gonna move in on peruvian pan flute -bands? The giant guinea pigs were also a great addition. You gotta love their sound, it's really intimidating. So it's good stuff, I'll rate it 7/10.

Revision: I think I bit overrated this episode. It really doesn't stand multiple views that well. But still it has it's merits, so I only drop it's rating to 6/10.

Episode 11: Pandemic 2 - The Startling
Alright, the second part. This included lots of boring walking (courtesy of Craig) and same Randy videotaping everything while guinea pigs lay waste of South Park that we saw in the first part. Well, there's obviously some twists to it, guinea pigs dressed in all kinds of costumes, which is funny at first but it wears down during the episode. It's worse than part one. I didn't like the ending either. Craig's still a dick. I rate this 4/10.

Episode 12: About Last Night
I kind of liked this, even though remembering the first viewing wasn't all excited about seeing this again. This focuses more on Obama, McCain and Co. so it's a bit of un-South Parkish if you will. It's obvious parody of Ocean's Eleven and I've been complaining about too much of this kind of stuff, but I guess this episode manages not to cross the border where it's annoying. The other part of the show isn't that funny, but it's necessary so I don't complain about this. Decent episode, I rate it 5/10.

Revision: I still think it's a decent episode, just think I had miscalibrated my rating. I'd rather watch almost any other episode rated 5/10 and even some rated lower. So I lower the rating of this episode to 4/10.

Episode 13: Elementary School Musical
They didn't even have to change anything. They could've just put High School Musical scenes with South Park characters and it would've been funny. Cause that' how ridiculous they are. It's funny enough episode, even though it's torture to sit through those songs, but I was disappointed in the end for the fact that they gave in. The subplot with Bridon is ridiculous, at least in his dad's part. Perhaps the most satisfying moment of the episode was when Bridon and his mother started beating him up. I love Kyle's restyled hair. As for rating, this earns 5/10.

Episode 14: The Ungroudable
So the last episode I'm gonna review this way in a while. I guess it was decent, although again wasn't the boys as a main characters. But as much as I have complained about it, it's good to have these kind of episodes once in a while for a change. But that still counts as a negative in my ratings. Anyway, I like goth kids as characters as I've earlier stated, but it isn't obviously your standard South Park when they're in the spotlight. What kids are doing at the IT class is pretty much standard nowadays. Who goes to school to learn anything anyway? And I agree with the ending speech goth kids gave. If you're going to dress all black you should at least hate living. I rate this 4/10.

That's it. That's Season Twelve for you. It wasn't that good of a season since it had two absolutely shit episodes. Overall quality dropped a bit. But Major Boobage was a highlight, rest of the episodes failed the hit the heights of recent seasons. It still managed quite ashtonishing 4,5 for average, still you have to be bit dissapointed. The show peaked at Season Six and has continued it decline since. It's still better than the first couple of seasons, but those episodes have their nostalgia value already. I guess it still is what you should expect, it's hard to keep on topping yourself season after season. Even this season had few very good episodes and most of the others were at least solid.

As I'm writing this, Season Thirteen has aired it's first half. I haven't obviously seen any of those episodes. What I'm going to do now is watch them, return to them probably some time next winter and write my reviews of them after second viewing, like all of the other episodes. I might write something South Park related on here in the meantime.

Here's some statistics for you:

Seasonal Standings:
Season Six 5,29
Season Nine 4,93
Season Four 4,82
Season Ten 4,71
Season Eleven 4,57
Season Twelve 4,5
Season Five 4,43
Season Eight 4,43
Season Seven 4,27
Season Three 4,18
Season One 3,92
Season Two 3,39

Average of all episodes 4,42. Wow, I got the scale almost right.

Episodes rated 10/10:
None

9/10:
Bebe's Boobs Destroy The Society (Season Six)
The Death of Eric Cartman (Season Nine)
Return of Chef (Season Ten)
Christian Rock Hard (Season Seven)
Kenny Dies (Season Five)

8/10:
Cartman's Mom Is A Dirty Slut (Season One)
Raisins (Season Seven)
Imaginationland I & II (Season Eleven)
Spooky Fish (Season Two)
Wacky Molestation Adventure (Season Four)
Woodland Critter Chrismas (Season Eight)
The Losing Edge (Season Nine)
Chinpokomon (Season Three)
The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers (Season Six)
Major Boobage (Season Twelve)
Asspen (Season Six)

Season Six beats the rest in terms of number of quality episodes too. I decided not to make a top 10, since it's really hard for me to judge between these. I might do it in the future though. Let's have a look at the worst episodes:

Rated 1/10:
Sexual Harrasment Panda (Season Three)
The Mexican Staring Frog of the Southern Sri Lanka (Season Two)
Mr. Hankey's Chritmas Classics (Season Three)
Prehistoric Ice Man (Season Two)
Over Logging (Season Twelve)
Terrance And Phillip Not Without My Anus (Season Two)
Britney's New Look (Season Twelve)

Almost all of them from the earlier season's especially from second season, which was by far the worst. I'm not going to list all the episodes that got 2/10, there's too many of them. Season Twelve's episodes with the bottom rating suck in a different way to those early episodes. Did I really give Sexual Harrasment Panda 1/10? It's not that bad really.

That brings me to the next point. I'm probably going to do some revising also. Nothing major, I might for example give better rating for SHP, etc. But nothing major. I was thinking about 2/10. When I started this thing, I had no set patterns to rate episodes, nor after 182 episodes there's certain standards that earn the rating, I think those standards might merit a different rating for some of the episodes.

But enough about that, see ya in the future.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Season Twelve Stalemate (Episode 6-9)

Episode 6: Over Logging
There's many reason's why I don't like this episode. There's isn't that much funny stuff going on. In general, references are a good thing, but lately at South Park it's been more usual to see a reference than something original. This episode is again filled with references to movies. Besides, the whole idea of internet disappering is technically absurd. What a bunch of retards those guys at the Internet HQ or whatever are when they don't even try the obvious unplugging the power cord trick? But it's standard South Park. Unsurprising and stale standard, by now at least. I rate this 1/10.

Episode 7: Super Fun Time
This is kind of a good episode. Cartman and Butters holding hands just can't fail. Super Fun Time -part was decent, though we have heard better Cartman-songs.. At least seeing Butters' resiliency in holding Cartman's hand made it worthwhile. The other subplot was again a referencefest, but at least it was decent. This episode once again resorts bit to the retardness in terms of the pioneer village's employees, but I can handle it. All in all, it's decent episode and I'm rating it 5/10.

Episode 8: The China Probrem
This is a great episode. There's once again two plots going on at the same time, Cartman & Butters vs. China and rest of the guys trying to deal with Indiana Jones getting raped. The latter is great stuff. They managed to make those rape scenes in a way that they weren't too appalling. Lucas' & Spielberg's expressions in those are just hilarious. Of course they're again references, but they're references the way references should be. The other plot isn't as good, but it gets interesting when Butters starts shooting people to the balls. I rate this.. 7/10.

Episode 9: Breast Cancer Show Ever
I've referenced to this show many times in my reviews. That's because when starting this I had most recently obviously watched 12th season and this was the thing first in my mind. The disappointment of seeing Cartman getting beat up by Wendy.. It turns out good in the end, with Cartman being delusional and all, but still, I kind of hoped Cartman wins. Wendy pisses me off, and I kind of like Cartman in all his shittyness. Though Cartman had it coming for him. There's not really that much more to this episode. I'm still somehow disillusioned, can't really explain it more than this. Maybe it's because Cartman was such a pussy in this episode too prior the fight. But whatever, I'll still give it 5/10.

And as Wendy put it "I'm finished" (for the night at least)