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South Park "Truth and Advertising" Review

I created this blog because I wished to write about South Park, to stare down writers' block with a steel gaze, and see if I could not review forever, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not blogged.

-Henry David Thoreau Keys


Hope you enjoyed that. On to more serious matters. We got some South Park sh** to talk about, more specifically "Truth and Advertising". I've read some complaints about this episode, and I don't believe they're truly warranted. This episode wasn't the best of the season, but it delivered on several levels. There were some storyline nuances that needed sorting out, but I didn't feel they really made the episode horrible.

There was no true main or side plots, but about three or four seperate branching storylines that I'll go through one by one. We start with Jimmy, the star of last week, who has just discovered that Leslie is an ad. Despite that, she manages to fool him into letting her go("His d*** has been compromised!"), which is pretty bad, yo. Leslie acquires the assistance of Nathan, and Jimmy gets beat up for his efforts. Up next is the return of Mr. Garrison, Principal Victoria and that hot chick to South Park, leading to an encounter with Randy. As the main proprietor of South Park's gentrification, Randy draws the ire of the group. When they go to investigate the PC folks, they've mysteriously disappeared, but that's okay because the group gets distracted by ads. Finally, the boys return to relevancy with a fight between Kyle and Stan after some ad shenanigans. This fight is just shoe horned into the episode, with the main plot twist coming later, as Kyle joins up with Leslie.

Alright, that's it. That's about as brief as I could make this, with some plot exclusions. Most of the episode is solid, with almost every character getting a good moment or two. But that is the problem with this episode, heading into the finale. There's no true focus, no plot that seems better or worse than the others. They all just kind of exsist, without anything truly tying everything together. In that way, it's like watching WWE programming right now. Stuff happens, and you can pay attention if you want, but you could easily turn away and not miss anything entirely important. The Kyle and Stan fight didn't have enough build up to make it matter, as all the weak storylines the boys have been involved in this season make this worse than it actually was. Although Matt and Trey took special care to make the enemy feel very powerful this season, but that was another problem with this episode. The enemy felt way too strong, and it's going to be difficult to believe that it can be stopped. South Park has always been great because the heroes felt human, rather than unstoppable superheroes(in most cases.....). The way this episode went, the final victory will likely not deliver on it's promise.

Despite the criticism, I did enjoy the episode. None of the content was particularly bad, and there were plenty of entertaining moments. Just don't think too hard about any of this, otherwise you might get a headache. Morgan Freeman is coming on Finale Night, right?

7/10

Not bad for a penultimate episode, and I still look forward to the final conclusion. See you at the finale, brothers.

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