Season Thirteen, Episode Eleven: First Impressions

This is a bit of tough one. I mean, who doesn't like Cartman singing Lady Gaga? That was the highlight of the show and the rest was alternating between mediocre and okay. You can't argue that it was a bit of a silly plot. And silly plot is okay only if it is funny. I don't think it was that funny. It was funny in theory, but not in practice. Well, there were funny parts though. At least there was nice kind of subtle message in the episode. Not the worst of the season, but not really that good either. Perhaps one of the season's best, but that's down to the fact that it has been weak season so far.

Kenny - Sex, Drugs and Rock N' Roll

It's hard not to like Kenny. Character that always dies, yet always comes back, and was supposed to have been killed of for good but still ressurrected again, because we just couldn't live without him. Kenny lives life to the fullest, probably because he knows that it'll, once again, end soon. It's not so easy to write about Kenny though. There's the obvious route to write about his deaths but much have been said about those and pretty much anybody knows Kenny dies, even those who don't watch the series. Since I don't want to write about his numerous deaths, my only alternative is to discuss his life, which is wild when he happens to live.

"That is the sickest thing I have ever fuckin' seen"
Kenny used to be pretty much a prop. But we always knew that he were more hardcore than the other boys. It was asserted early in the series that Kenny is foul-mouthed and he is the one to ask when there's sex-related vocabulary that needs some clarifying. For a long time though all Kenny would really do was dying. In "Rainforest Schmainforest" he finally gets some action - his first girlfriend and certainly not the last either. Though he has only had two so far when you think of it, Kelly and Tammy. The fact though is that they always get him killed. Kenny dies firts because of Kelly by spontaneous combustion and then Tammy kills him with syphillis. You'd guess though that Tammy won't be his last relationship.

"How can I calm down? You should've seen those titties."
Well, Kenny had a some sort of relationship to the lady in "Major Boobage", though she wasn't technically real.. Kenny's boob obsession is also one thing that has been well documented. Major boobage wasn't even the first time it happened, right off the bat I remember the "Lil Crime Stoppers" episode and Kenny's "sketches". Kenny's Most Wanted sign was on the wall and it consisted of drawings of big titted females. So Kenny's crazy for titties, but that's not the only thing he's crazy for.

"Well, I'm gonna give my grandfather a full-body sensual massage."
Kenny is, at times, literally krazy like in episode "Fat Camp", where he had his show. He'll do anything for money, but sometimes he'll do nasty stuff without that much of a reason. In "Volcano" he drinks gas and is all out hardcore during that episode. Then there's also the fact that Kenny does drugs too.

"I'm not ruining my life, okay."
Again we're referring back to "Major Boobage". Kenny's "cheesing" is the whole point of the episode. But there's other moments alike which show how Kenny is never afraid to do drugs. In "Cancelled" he snorts some of the stuff those executive aliens are doing. I'd love to list more examples, but you get the point and my brain hurts. So in conclusion, Kenny is one fucked up kid.

Best. Ending. Ever. This ended up bit on the short side, but I don't really have that much to say about Kenny. Next week Butters would be up, but like I said, I'll be taking november off.

Sorry that I'm late, I just couldn't write this shit yesterday. Just downloading the newest episode, I'll be back with the comments again in a short while. See ya.

Season Thirteen, Episode Ten: First Impressions

Now this was a letdown. To be honest I wasn't expecting too much. When you have subject like wrestling there's lots of potential but they just got the most obvious jokes out of it and dragged it way too much. It was just so unsurprising and a bit stale along with some ridiculous plot twist. Most jokes were very obvious so even if they were a bit funny, they didn't have much of an effect.

Hope they pickthemselves up for the next episode and for the rest of the season or this is going to be worst season even (which, frankly, would be hardly surprising).

Stan & Kyle - The Gayest Moments

I didn't know if this was the best idea for writing when I came up with it and I'm not still sure, but here goes. This will not be long article anyway.

I had not heard about that StanxKyle -stuff until just recently so you might think I'm living under a rock. It's rock worth living under though. I mean I had stumbled upon the term but didn't know what it was about until recently and.. Damn, that's messed up. I can't really say that I could've thought of something like that. But it got me thinking if there were any really gay moments in the show.

"Goood boy. Now, don't be gay."
Stan's dog is/was gay (where's Sparky anyway?) and Stan didn't like it until he learned to accept that in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" And there's no real point in delving into Stan's sexuality really more - I mean he had a crush on Miss Ellen and we've also seen how much he pukes around Wendy, so that's that. What about Kyle? Well, Kyle had his little thing going on with Rebecca in "Hooked on Monkey Phonics" and he turned him into a slut. If that isn't straight then what is? But it is obvious that it isn't their sexuality being questionable that springs stuff like stanxkyle up. In fact, it doesn't need to be anything on the series. I mean if it would be, then there would be CartmanxButters stuff rather, since Cartman has sucked Butters' penis and vice versa. Butters even gives Cartman a kiss in "Tonsil Trouble". But that's enough about that.

"Just best friends, best friends are we."
There could be though some matters that in the series support these gay ideas. The most obvious reason is of course the fact that Stan and Kyle are so close friends. Or are they? They spend most of their time together and trust each other most of the time. There has been some instances where the other haven't been so truthful to each other and some other where they've been flat out bad friends. Let's look more closely into that.

"I hate having Cartman as a best friend. "
We remember that in "Prehistoric Ice Man" they get into a row about the name of the frozen guy and in the end they decide to fight it out till death. In the end though they make up and there's quite a gay moment where they agree on hating Cartman. At least they didn't make out. There was also couple of instances in season three where Kyle didn't fit in with the rest of they guys and Stan was among the others to ridicule him. Then we have to go all the way to the "Bebe's Boobs Destroy the Society", where it was all vs. all for Bebe, but they were primates, so that doesn't count! There has been lot of small stuff, too much to really go on and list here so I'll just cut to the big one's. "South Park Is Gay", "The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" and "Follow That Egg".

"You're straight like a freeway!"
In "South Park Is Gay" Kyle were really left out of the group when he didn't want to appear gay. Stuff like this has happened in other episodes like for example in "The List" where Kyle was thought of as the ugliest kid. But even then you didn't see Stan to take any part in it. Here though Stan abandon his friend. Kind of ironic, isn't it? It's like they were trying to make a subtle point and perhaps reacting to StanxKyle stuff (I doubt they really were thinking about that though, but perhaps). In "The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" though nothing really friendship wrecking happens - except that Stan points gun at Kyle and takes part in a conspiracy deceiving Kyle.

"Yeah, well, so is your hat."
Well, they might view themselves as good friends but they're really not that 'good friends', mostly Stan isn't, that is. Final nail in that coffin is the "Follow That Egg" episode. The whole thing about Stan's jealousy of Wendy spending some time with Kyle makes Stan mad. But at the same time, episode has some subtle feel that Kyle and Stan are compared to gays - it's not even that subtle in the end when gays can marry because of their egg making it. But the gayest moment ever comes bit before that, when they finally make up again and following dialogue comes up:

Stan:	Come on, buddy, let's go! [walks happily towards his door. Kyle steps forward, then stops]
Kyle:	Stan... [Stan turns, then he turns away] Do you really think my hat is stupid?
Stan:	[walks back and puts his left hand on Kyle's shoulder] As a matter of fact,... I think it is the nicest hat I've evern known.

I'm sorry, but that's pretty gay.

"I'm obviously just a crappy best friend to have."
So in the end, I didn't cover as much the gayness of Stan's and Kyle's relationship as I thought and it once again proved to be a pretty shitty article! Maybe I shouldn't always leave these to the last minute, though this wasn't best idea for an article to begin with. Anyways, thanks for reading this shit and have a good day/night/whatever.

PS. I'm currently downloading the newest episode so I'll write my first feelings about it here probably today. Also, since I already have these "columns" about Cartman, Stan and Kyle I figured out it would only be fair to do one on the other two most prominent characters; Butters and Kenny. I'll write the Butters one next week and then I'm going to break off from the schedule because I'm participating in NaNoWriMo and I really won't need then any more writing workload. I might still write the Kenny -article in november providing I have the time and ideas.

Any feedback will be appreciated, even moaning about grammar since I don't want to write bad English.

Season 13, Episode 9

I really liked this episode. I had high expectations since seeing the preview pictures and hearing that it's about Butters and luckily it pretty much managed to meet them. Butters is just great in the episode and there's some of that naivety in this that we've been looking for that seemed to have lost.

So it's a good one and it's relieve to see one of those in a while. Though I might have been harsh on some episodes - most of them will probably get better during second viewing.

Anyway, it's a good episode, hope they start hitting their stride and this will be great run.

Cartman - FUBAR?

So, time for my first "column" or whatever you want to call it. I'm going to talk about Cartman and more exactly about his personality. We all know that Cartman is a sociopath that has no regard for other people's emotions or in fact even their lives. He's extreme selfish and insensitive and all in all pretty fucked up kid. But was it always like this? Well, not exactly, but Cartman has always been a dick. During the first seasons he was just this annoying little egoistic and spoiled brat, but he never did anything that serious. But as the series has progressed, he has just gotten worse and worse - the prime example being the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die". Everybody who reads this knows what happened in that episode and lot has been said about that, so I'm not going to get into anymore detail about that. That episode, however, was the point where Cartman turned from that little brat in the fucked up monster - pretty much at least. That deveploment seems to be heading still more and more extreme in the newer episodes - albeit he hasn't killed anyone anymore, but he's just more of a prick.

"..Maybe that alone doesn't make us friends, but it makes us something."
Remember that line from "Casa Bonita"? Cartman has always been a master of manipulation and he's good faking emotions. That is, if it does something good for him. We saw similar behaviour in numerous episodes, but first that comes into my mind is "Cartoon Wars", since I watched it recently. But he has pretty much been busted everytime and nobody is supposed to believe him anymore. In other areas too Cartman has had to push the boundaries to more extreme behaviour all the time and we're about to reach the limits.

"Shut your God-damned Jew mouth!"
How has Cartman's deveploment affected his relationship with Kyle? Well it's obvious that is going worse direction. Their dialogue and constant hate for each other has become redundant. It's stale and boring at this point. Cartman has saved Kyle on couple of occasions of course so you can argue that there's something there, but even that Cartman has done for his personal reasons - Butters makes for a lousy Jew and he needs Kyle to have someone to rip on. When you compare early season's and later season's you'll notice that Kyle hates Cartman now much more and they can barely get along anymore. That kind o stuff affects the perception of Kyle too, since he spends so much of his time nowadays just hating Cartman. But this writing is not about Kyle, this is about Cartman. Only way for things to change would be if Cartman would really change. But can he change and do we really even want him to change?

"Alright, maybe I tried to have Timmy's turkey crushed by a stage light, but I didn't do anything else. I'm not an asshole."
Is there any hope for Cartman to ever turn more humane character? Has he ever shown any signs of remorse, pity or feeling bad for someone other? There's not much evidence for that, but there's few episodes that I can refer to - "How To Eat With Your Butt". There Cartman allegedly "blew a funny fuse" after seeing the Thompsons. But Kyle thought that Cartman couldn't laugh because he felt bad for them. If Kyle was right, there is some humanity after all in Cartman. Other instance I can recall is the "Tsst" episode, where he turned ok by proper upbringing methods and realised that the world doesn't revolve around him. Unfortunately for him his mom ruins it all in the end. That episode still showed that he has the better side also. Finally there's also the "Major Boobage", where he had pity for the outlawed cats and hid them in his attic.

So could Cartman change and more importantly should he? Like I said, some interactions inside the series has become stale, but if we get rid of them completely will Cartman and the series lose some of their charm? Probably it would, so the Cartman shouldn't change that much, especially since we've seen the unexpected side of Cartman still shows up every now and then.

We're pretty much in the end of my first "column" and I gotta say that it ended up much like my school writings used to go. I start it off with a clear opinion, but while thinking from another perspective and finding counter-arguments to myself I soon find myself undecided (and it leads to bad grade since I'm indecisive on the matter). It has happened again and I'm pretty much undecided should Cartman change as character. It's really hard question because we've seen that he is a very multidimensional character character. This also ended up a little bit of a mess, but I guess with some feedback I can only get better. I hope the Stan & Kyle one will be better, though I think it's going to be a bit shorter. Discuss and give feedback, see ya!

Edit: Weird how this is dated October 12th. I guess I made the draft them, but still it's kind of weird.

Season 13, Episode 8 First Impressions

I wasn't going to watch them until all of them had aired, but I changed my mind and downloaded it so I'm going to comment it briefly.

I thought the episode was a bit of a mess. A very slow start and a good amount of references I didn't get (well, that's my own fault). I was also more disturbed by the guys jacking off to the girls than amused. The best part of it really was the re-introduction of Michael Jackson with his all old mannerisms - and even that was mostly recycling old jokes.

I'll give you a more detailed version obviously when I give this a proper review, but for now I think it was a bit of let-down.

Putting Myself On A Schedule

Just what the header says. I've been frushtrated with myself for not adding content to this blog, so I'm forcing myself to write something here, every wednesday. Well be starting off by something Cartman -related, then I'm going to post about Stan & Kyle something later. You'll know exactly what when I post them.