After two back-to-back strong episodes of “South Park,” social commentary was high, but laughs were low this week, even to the point where pulling in Bane from Batman couldn’t save the show.
Poor Ike got the whole ball rolling. As if walking in on your parents having sex wasn’t bad enough, he walked in on his parents role playing, with his dad dressed up as the UPS man, you know, delivering a package.
One misunderstanding, and as usual, the whole town of South Park was in an uproar. The men in town all become scared that their wives are also getting treated to special packages from the UPS man, and set out to find a way to stop him from having his way with all of their wives.
The social commentary that strung the whole thing together was provided by the old-timer farmer character (who we’ve seen at some points before, or at least they’ve used the same idea), telling everyone about how the same thing used to happen when people started getting milk delivered instead of buying it themselves. The price of shipping and the convenience of delivery, it turns out, is having the milk man, or the UPS man, have his way with your wife.
Just like last week, the show suffered from too many ideas at once. But this week it wasn’t nearly as funny and the execution suffered. Ike’s drawing of his mom and the UPS man having sex was kind of somewhat slightly funny the first time, but as it kept popping up over and over again it lost anything it had going for it. Cartman’s whole side plot with the security system people had a few moments, but never really amounted to anything but a few tame one-liners.
And then of course there was the inclusion of the Bane masks, which all the men in town used when they kidnapped and beat up the UPS man, and there are just so many places that the show could have taken the joke, only to leave it as a one-note (OK, two if you count the ending) gag that could have been so much more. Props to the voice recreation though, as that was dead on.
Then, midstream the show jumped focus to the security company, and the In-Security alarm systems that could actually be installed in people and go off when people got worried or stressed. Again, it was a good idea, but a lackluster “taking it to the extreme” tangent for this show, especially considering where I thought they were heading for (putting an alarm on the certain specific entrance that the UPS man may have been using on their wives, for instance).
Instead we got several jokes about the In-Security device going off at the wrong time, and then the UPS man’s own security device going off when Kyle tried to get him and his mom and dad to confront the truth. Of course, there was nothing really to confront, Kyle’s dad cleared up how, you know, sometimes you just need to role play to bring that spark back into your love life, and life moved on. No digs at Amazon, no digs at the UPS, and the practical gold mine that is the USPS was left untouched, untapped, and sadly, the show seemed to pass up a lot of marks it should have been hitting.
I loved the idea of the premise, and the social commentary is dead on: we are a lazy generation, and there are costs associated with expecting everything delivered directly to us. And while the premise tied everything together on some levels, the execution just wasn’t that funny and the show got bogged down in everything it was trying to do. The Bane gag was funny (especially with Cartman at the end) but was largely underdeveloped and seemed quite random, and the show, unlike the UPS man, failed to deliver.
Willie Clark does agree with the episode though, as he is not a stranger to packages showing up that he forgot he ordered. He also wishes that he grew up when people still delivered milk. If you want to deliver his milk, send a resume to him on Twitter or Facebook.
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2012.
Wow, I really disagree. I thought this episode was by far the best of season 16. It felt so much sharper and cleverer than previous recent episodes. For once they didn’t kill the joke and the escalation of ‘InSecurity’ was genius. I lost it at Jimbo’s alarm going off when they tell him he doesn’t have a wife. I’m hoping that the end of the season will continue to be this good and we can forget about the crappiness of the spring episodes.
“Social commentary” are you fucking psychotic? Anything that vaguely or even remotely defines as social commentary was such a tiny insignificant part of this episode. Are you a comedian or something? Or just a mindless monkey who NEEDS to be tricked into laughing? I just find it annoying when people judge an episode of something as brilliant as south park based on how FUNNY it is. Thats your opinion I suppose. . .But my opinion is that your opinion sucks, and you’re annoying. People who write negative blogs about anything even if it does suck are pretty much my definition of fucking annoying. I thought this episode was brilliant. Its written beautifully with all the cause and effect with one event leading to all kinds of shit, and its put together well, good directing, cool production. It was better than Sarchastaball. Almost every episode this season was very well done if you observe the show as a show with characters and a plot. Faith Hilling was probably the weakest episode and it was still entertaining. I feel like we didn’t even watch the same episode. 7 good episodes in a row I’d say. This is the 7th episode since faith hilling. Reverse cowgirl and cash for gold were great too.
This episode was good to me because of the creativity of the story. Its great writing. I almost prefer episodes that aren’t that funny. Was imaginationland laugh your ass off funny? No, it was fucking ingenious.
I have to disagree with your review of this episode, i thought it was one of the strongest of the season. Very sharp and as always the mob-rules mentality of the residents of South Park guaranteed entertainment. More like this please and less about social networking and poop jokes – which have been done by so many shows now it’s beyond being even mildly amusing.
Are you serious??? I was laughing from start to finish- the voice of all the ‘Banes’ and everything else was just damn funny.
Does anybody know what was the music that was playing in the background on this episode, when the towns’ people were spying after the UPS guy with the binoculars?
My ears just loved it and I’m trying to figure out what it was..
Anybody?
Plus, I just wanna add, “that old-timer farmer character” is actually Jud Crandall from “Pet Cematary” 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP7zXMGMiHE
Thanks for all the comments everyone! I’ve found a lot of people disagreed with me on this one, I just didn’t feel it was up to the past two episodes (even with Bane!). But, sincerely, thanks for commenting, I love hearing what other people think: Reminds me of coming into school every Thursday morning and fighting with my friends over last night’s South Park. Ah, the good old days.
I do just want to point out though that I’ve been reviewing South Park for several seasons (and watching it forever) and don’t just review the episodes that I think are bad or the ones that I think are good. South Park holds a special place in my heart and is one of my favorite (if not *the* favorite) of all the shows I watch. That doesn’t mean it is immune from low points or criticism, and I think we all can agree the show has been on and off the past few seasons, for better or for worse.
I tried to find the song, but didn’t have any luck. Anyone else been able to pin that down? (And Jake, I remembered him from “Pet Semetary,” but I did not think they ever named him on the show, so stuck with leaving him unnamed. Good find though, that was a nice throw back.)
I actually had to watch this twice to fully get it. Yeah, there was a lot going on, but when you see it all again it makes sense — and IS very funny. Every time I saw that Ike picture, it got funnier. I’d like to buy that picture!
It’s a great episode, but it might take more than one viewing to get it.