After a week away, South Park delivers a fun but forgettable tie-in to their upcoming video game, featuring Facebook and the return of Coon and Friends.
It it wasn't obvious enough by the title or the description of the episode, "Franchise Prequel" is mostly here as a reminder that a new South Park game is on the horizon. In that way, it does work, and if you weren't planning on purchasing the game before, I think this episode would do a good job of selling it to you now. I did find this episode enjoyable enough, but as I said in the intro, it's completely forgettable. This is your standard, run of the mill, mid-season South Park episode, with enough good gags to be funny, but without the content or stories to make the landing stick.
This episode is basically broken into two two parts: there's the on-going conflict between Butters' Professor Chaos and the boys' Coon and Friends, and the involvement of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. All told, I think the episode was quite balanced between the two, and that's honestly the biggest problem. Either one of these stories could have worked if given the time to breathe and take center stage, but crammed together into the same episode, they really didn't mesh. "Holiday Special" worked because it centered so heavily on Randy, allowing his antics to completely dominant the episode. Here, it just felt like there were too many moving parts, tied together by the loosest of threads.
Really, this should've been entirely focused on the boys. It's been a while since they donned their superhero personas, and it was quite fun to see them back. Butters using Facebook to take down his arch-enemies with fake news was a surprisingly effective tactic, perhaps too much so, given his character. He was defeated in the end, and the scene with his father was comic gold, but it's so rare to see Butters do anything right that it completely took me by surprise. I did also love Coon and Friends ridiculous expanded universe plan, although the scene in the basement was just the one in the E3 trailer. Ultimately, this story didn't really mean anything other than a tie-in for the game, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Anyone who didn't love Heidi's interruption during Cartman's big speech just hates comedy.
I've seen divided opinions on what other critics thought of this episode's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg. Personally, as someone who doesn't really care about Facebook or whatever new features they're rolling out, I can't say that I have any real opinion. I didn't really care for the character personally; he was so one-dimensional, even literal superheros came across as more complex. In terms of South Park villains, I can't imagine he would rank very high.
6/10
This was a clear step down from last episode, but wasn't necessarily a train wreck. It had a lot going for it, but was ultimately held back by it's own premise.
It it wasn't obvious enough by the title or the description of the episode, "Franchise Prequel" is mostly here as a reminder that a new South Park game is on the horizon. In that way, it does work, and if you weren't planning on purchasing the game before, I think this episode would do a good job of selling it to you now. I did find this episode enjoyable enough, but as I said in the intro, it's completely forgettable. This is your standard, run of the mill, mid-season South Park episode, with enough good gags to be funny, but without the content or stories to make the landing stick.
This episode is basically broken into two two parts: there's the on-going conflict between Butters' Professor Chaos and the boys' Coon and Friends, and the involvement of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. All told, I think the episode was quite balanced between the two, and that's honestly the biggest problem. Either one of these stories could have worked if given the time to breathe and take center stage, but crammed together into the same episode, they really didn't mesh. "Holiday Special" worked because it centered so heavily on Randy, allowing his antics to completely dominant the episode. Here, it just felt like there were too many moving parts, tied together by the loosest of threads.
Really, this should've been entirely focused on the boys. It's been a while since they donned their superhero personas, and it was quite fun to see them back. Butters using Facebook to take down his arch-enemies with fake news was a surprisingly effective tactic, perhaps too much so, given his character. He was defeated in the end, and the scene with his father was comic gold, but it's so rare to see Butters do anything right that it completely took me by surprise. I did also love Coon and Friends ridiculous expanded universe plan, although the scene in the basement was just the one in the E3 trailer. Ultimately, this story didn't really mean anything other than a tie-in for the game, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Anyone who didn't love Heidi's interruption during Cartman's big speech just hates comedy.
I've seen divided opinions on what other critics thought of this episode's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg. Personally, as someone who doesn't really care about Facebook or whatever new features they're rolling out, I can't say that I have any real opinion. I didn't really care for the character personally; he was so one-dimensional, even literal superheros came across as more complex. In terms of South Park villains, I can't imagine he would rank very high.
6/10
This was a clear step down from last episode, but wasn't necessarily a train wreck. It had a lot going for it, but was ultimately held back by it's own premise.
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