dude, I had no idea that they create each episode in the week leading up to the airing, thats nuts

Quote :

"Scripts are not written before a season begins.[57] Production of an episode begins on a Thursday, with the show's writing consultants brainstorming with Parker and Stone. Former staff writers include Pam Brady, who has since written scripts for the films Hot Rod and Hamlet 2, and Nancy Pimental, who served as co-host of Win Ben Stein's Money and wrote the film The Sweetest Thing after her tenure with the show during its first three seasons.[58][59] Television producer and writer Norman Lear, an idol of both Parker and Stone, served as a guest writing consultant for the season seven (2003) episodes "Cancelled" and "I'm a Little Bit Country".[57][60][61] During the 12th and 13th seasons, Saturday Night Live actor and writer Bill Hader has served as a creative consultant and co-producer.[62][63][64] After exchanging ideas, Parker will write a script, and from there the entire team of animators, editors, technicians, and sound engineers will each typically work 100–120 hours in the ensuing week.[47] Since the show's fourth season (2000), Parker has assumed most of the show's directorial duties, while Stone relinquished his share of the directing to focus on handling the coordination and business aspects of the production.[26][65] On Wednesday, a completed episode is sent to Comedy Central's headquarters via satellite uplink, sometimes in just a few hours before its air time of 10 PM Eastern Time.[26][66] Parker and Stone state that subjecting themselves to a one-week deadline creates more spontaneity amongst themselves in the creative process, which they feel results in a funnier show.[26] The schedule also allows South Park to both stay more topical and respond more quickly to specific current events than other satiric animated shows.[8][67] One of the earliest examples of this was in the season four (2000) episode "Quintuplets 2000", which references the United States Border Patrol's raid of a house during the Elian Gonzalez affair, an event which occurred only four days before the episode originally aired.[68] The season nine (2005) episode "Best Friends Forever" references the Terri Schiavo case,[24][33] and originally aired in the midst of the controversy and less than 12 hours before she died.[34][69] A scene in the season seven (2003) finale "It's Christmas in Canada" references the discovery of dictator Saddam Hussein in a "spider hole" and his subsequent capture, which happened a mere three days prior to the episode airing.[70] The season 12 (2008) episode "About Last Night..." revolves around Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, and aired less than 24 hours after Obama was declared the winner, using segments of dialogue from Obama's real victory speech.[71]"

6/12/2011 12:58:01 PM

not trying to be a dick but i thought everyone knew that

6/12/2011 4:01:10 PM

they very well could since I got that from the wikipedia page

6/12/2011 4:19:58 PM

back when obama won the election, I think they had two versions (other for mccain of course), but they dubbed in part of obama's victory speech at the last minute or something

6/12/2011 4:53:21 PM

ya, I mean I knew they HAD put out episodes very quickly (saddam episode days after his capture, etc.), but I thought those were just exceptions. I didn't think every single episode was created at the last minute

6/12/2011 6:54:37 PM

this was a pretty good episode about TWW

6/13/2011 9:49:26 PM

which one? the one about everything being shit?

6/13/2011 11:15:49 PM

Yeah where stan turns into a cynical asshole. Just watched it tonight lol

6/14/2011 12:37:34 AM

Didn't South Park have another episode like this before? Where the kids are news reporters and fight to stay on air and once they win they have to come up with new ideas each week. The episode ends with them saying this is hard and they quit.

6/14/2011 7:45:03 AM

it came on WGN last night around midnight

6/14/2011 8:59:17 AM

I have random episodes record and its funny to see the level of cursing for shows that air in certain timeslots. I think shows that air during the day have most swears bleeped, shows from like 10-2 at night only bleep fuck and other really profane words, and the shows recorded late at night don't bleep anything. Its weird hearing them actually say fuck and I kind of prefer it with the bleeps.

6/14/2011 9:06:31 AM

^3 that ending was nothing like this one though...

^ WGN is going to be far more bleeped, because it's an over-the-air station, they can't say anything like cable can, although if they only air it after midnight then it's a little more relaxed...

like the episode where cartman shoves food up his ass and craps out his mouth, the OTA version doesn't show crap coming out of mouths at all.

[Edited on June 14, 2011 at 10:51 AM. Reason : and i agree, for some reason i find bleeps funnier sometimes]

6/14/2011 10:51:26 AM

WGN is like melting pot of TV. A nightly schedule will be like Frasier, Cubs Game, Scrubs, Southpark and then Matlock.

6/14/2011 10:58:20 AM

followed by 4 hours of in the heat of the night. then i dream of jeannie

6/14/2011 5:42:39 PM

well at least they have the Vancouver riots to make a story with

have Ike go up for game 7 and stuff

6/15/2011 11:41:36 PM

they came off as not nearly as gloomy as we have been about their future with Southpark on TDS last night...could be just a front, but they don't seem the type to not speak their mind

6/16/2011 9:18:01 AM

Quote :

"well at least they have the Vancouver riots to make a story with"

no way, won't be relevant anymore

6/16/2011 11:11:05 AM

Since there aren't any new episodes until October, I'll do a mid-season review.

Note: There is a 95% chance that you won't agree with any of my picks (cynical assholes).

Liked
Royal Pudding - Other than the slow play rehearsal parts, it was a great Canada episode
City Sushi - Asian stereotyping with another Butters episode where his parents/adults around him are idiots. The plots merged in an unsatisfying fashion though
You're Getting Old - Mainly good because of the last 2-3 minutes

Didn't Like
HUMANCENTiPAD - Not a lot going on in this one
Funnybot - The Tyler Perry scenes were the lone bright spot
T.M.I. - The opening with Cartman measuring penises was good but it dropped off after that
CBAA - I kept waiting for something more substantial but it seemed to fall short

Asian Count: 4 of 7 episodes (off the top of my head)

6/16/2011 7:36:36 PM

i stopped recording SP a few weeks back

it's just not funny to me anymore. i rarely made it through each episode, never cared to see how they ended.

6/16/2011 7:52:43 PM

the one on right now is a good one, when cartman thinks he's dead because everyone ignores him

i like the song "im gonna make make it riiight.."

6/16/2011 8:10:36 PM

Is that the Twilight Zone? Oh, this is a good one !

6/16/2011 10:03:13 PM

So I saw The Book of Mormon last night finally, had to get tickets a long time ago for it, and I gotta say, I was hugely disappointed.

Before I give my quick summary, I gotta say, I can't possibly understand why so many people find this to be one of the greatest things they've ever seen. The only rationale I can come up with is that the vast majority of people seeing it are people that love musicals, which are mostly extremely shitty, so this being at least somewhat better and different made it seem like a revolution.

And now on second thought I don't even really want to give a full summary because it's making be depressed thinking about my shattered dreams...here are the basic points:

* This was not very different than most other musicals out there. The songs were mostly stupid, except for maybe one or two. It seemed like they just tossed in naughty words into songs or made the whole song, "Fuck You God", without putting any actual good jokes in there. They had a song about the Joseph Smith story, and all I could think the whole time was how the "Dumb, dumb..." song from the Mormon episode was so much better, and I'd rather be watching them perform that.

* This was highly, and I mean HIGHLY inoffensive. I can't see how any single person other than (A) someone who can't stand to hear swear words or (B) someone that can't bear to hear that God might not be real would take any slight offense to anything in the play, even Mormons

* Most of the laughs were just cheap and "sitcom". People seemed to be laughing the loudest every time the lead guy called the African girl something like "noxema" or "neosporin" because her name was hard to pronounce. Really guys?

I dunno...maybe I expected way too much from them after all the good reviews and awards and all. I love just about everything they've ever done. I didn't even have a problem with this past season or Baseketball. After all these years of my favorite tv show, the movie, and Team America, this felt like a huge letdown. Avenue Q was better, and I didn't even think that was exactly fantastic.

If you saw this and have a different opinion of it, please tell me why. And not trying to be a troll or anything here, but if you can have specific examples of what you thought was good or funny, that would helpful. I would say I actually laughed out loud 4-6 times through the entire 2 and a half hours, and you have no idea how much I wanted to like this.

6/30/2011 12:30:51 PM

I haven't seen it, but let me try to clarify a few things (based on what I understand)...

1. Its not supposed to be very different than many musicals out there. Its just supposed to be a well-done, humorous musical. If you were looking for South Park on-stage, you had the incorrect assumption from the get-go. From what I understand, its more of a traditional show than even Avenue Q. If you don't like traditional Musicals, you were in the wrong place.

2. Of course it was inoffensive. What were you expecting from a Musical that is being widely acclaimed showing on Broadway? Matt and Trey have always said that they find Mormons fascinating. They don't constantly bring them up in their work because they explicitly want to mock them, they find the religion fascinating and wanted to make a theater production revolving around it. They specifically said they wanted Mormons to see it and enjoy it as well.

-------

From what I can tell, it just sounds like you had some incorrect assumptions about what the show was supposed to be.

6/30/2011 1:05:50 PM

I will absolutely agree that I went in expecting something different, no argument there, and that's mostly my fault.

However, I have heard numerous people over the past few months talking about how funny the show is, including hearing two girls leaving the theater yesterday saying, "OH MY GOD that was HYSTERICAL!"

And not to cause an argument on this note as I have no qualm with your points in general, but they can reach critical acclaim with funnier stuff...didn't they win a grammy for one of the songs from the movie?

6/30/2011 1:19:59 PM

My gf and I have seen quite a number of musicals on stage by this point. Thinking back, though, I think only two of them that we saw were true comedies (Ave Q, Spammalot). The former was great, but the later was atrociously horrible. There are a few others that have come and gone, but they were mostly gimmicks or spinoffs of movies that quickly fizzle out. So I suppose that when a rare traditional musical comedy comes out and its good, it will get quite a bit of acclaim from those who enjoy musicals.

And as per the last comment, "funnier" can definitely be in the eyes of the beholder. My guess is that for this particular creation, they were going for funny but not in the same sense that South Park is funny. I haven't seen it yet, so I really cannot comment on how the humor went.

6/30/2011 1:40:35 PM

Well if you see it I'd like to see what you think.

6/30/2011 1:52:17 PM

I've seen it, and thought it was absolutely awesome. I laughed the entire time, at both the obvious and cheap jokes and the more subtle humor and pokes at religion in general, and Mormons specifically.



**I guess some of what I write below could be a Spoiler to some degree, so don't read on if you don't want to know a bit more of the jokes/scenes.**





First off, I can easily see how it would be offensive to people. People in our country get offended when you say Merry Christmas so it isn't surprising people would get offended when you make fun of a religion, not to mention the language etc. I mean they talk about "fucking babies" and raping virgins several times, having AIDS, having sex with frogs...

It is almost like you went into it hoping they were all just going to stand on stage and say, "FUCK YOU, FUCK EVERYONE..." which they didn't. Their goal wasn't to create something massively offensive, but like I said I can see how people would/could be offended because we have people that are overly sensitive in our country and those are the ones that have been and were vocal about it. Your average person wouldn't find it offensive but you only hear from that vocal minority. Seems like it really got to you that you went in expecting highly offensive stuff, but since you are a rational person who isn't offended by every little thing you got really hung up on that part not delivering.

The scene where he is dreaming and in hell was one of the most visually ridiculous and hilarious things I've ever seen. How often do you see a musical dance number that features Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Johnnie Cochran. I don't get how someone wouldn't have found that scene funny. It is unlike anything you'd ever see, especially in a Broadway show(And yes they've done other great hell scenes before in SP but this was really good).

Other things I found to be funny : Both scenes with them ringing the doorbells, especially the last one. The scene where the natives act out their version of the book of mormon. The scenes where they act out the real story of Joseph Smith and the gold plates, which is very similar to the Southpark Episode but doesn't mean it wasn't still funny. The premise of the book of Mormon is so easy to make fun of. I loved the Star Wars jokes and references, especially since we were sitting literally 3 feet in front of George Lucas. The gay mormon was very funny. Planet Orlando.

I went in not knowing what to expect and it exceeded expectations for me. Thought the music was good, acting was great, there was a nice mix of subtle humor and jokes to go with the more obvious and "cheap" humor like the dude screwing the girls name up. There is nothing wrong with some cheap laughs, I'm not some comedy elitist that can't laugh when the dude was talking about having maggots in his scrotum. That is funny shit.

I just didn't see any weaknesses in it, everything was done well and it was a really enjoyable theater experience.

6/30/2011 3:47:26 PM

Well first I know I won't be offended by anything they do. I guess I meant more that I didn't see a lot of stuff that would be offensive to other people.

After reading your post though I do think I see one issue that is ruining it for me. Almost every joke they made (almost) has either been done in their prior works, or has been to a much greater/more offensive/more funny (to me)/cruder way. Is Johnny Cochran in hell with Hitler and Dahmer funny? Sure. But putting Ghandi there is a much better joke to me.

The few laughs it got out of me were some or most of the parts you mentioned, HOWEVER...

...The doorbell part. And maybe this is just representative of the particular crowd at last night's show...the guy walks up to the front of the stage, acts like he is ringing a doorbell, and a doorbell sound effect is played...and EVERYONE LAUGHS. How is this even a joke? The bit got somewhat amusing as it went on, but I really didn't understand that.

6/30/2011 4:18:08 PM

People laugh because everyone immediately relates to having their doorbell rang at some point in their life and opening up the door and seeing a blond kid in a bike helmet and button up short sleeve t-shirt staring back at you.

I mean people are going into this expecting to laugh so when that is the expectation it is much easier to get that result. Think about how many times you were told a movie or something was really funny, you watch it with a crowd that laughs and you laugh but then think back or watch it again and realize it really wasn't that funny. The atmosphere and just the expectation of who wrote it I think drives maybe a bit of overlaughter(that is a made up word) at some scenes.

If you are showing up at this show you've probably had a few drinks, walked around NYC a bit, and are ready to laugh and have a good time. I wouldn't be so critical of the crowd just because they LOL'd at scenes or moments that were more deserving of a chuckle. I certainly wouldn't let it go so far as to ruin the entire show for me. I have a friend that dresses up as a Mormon each year for Halloween and he got laughs just walking down Hillsborough so it isn't surprising that you'd get a laugh seeing the same thing walking out onto a Broadway stage.

Again, the point wasn't that it was suppose to be a Broadway South Park episode. They weren't trying to push the line and make the crudest/most offensive thing ever. That is why it is getting awards and critical acclaim, because it is actually a well done Broadway show, it just also happens to have a dude singing Fuck God and a scene where a bible gets shoved in a guy's ass.

Sounds like it also could just be a case where high expectations can ruin something. I went in with really no expectations, I didn't know much about it, I was there with my friend and his parents who are pretty straight edge/stiff parents who bought the tickets, and thought it was great. It exceeded anything I would have imagined, but I didn't hear much about it and had little preconceived ideas of what I was expecting to see.

Humor is obviously something you can't really argue over, so you can certainly have your opinion. But to some degree when theater after theater week after week are selling out and people are coming out raving about how great/funny it was there has to be something to that. The best compliment I can give it, is that in a time where everything is over-hyped and very few things ever live up to or exceed my expectations, however high or low, this actually did.

6/30/2011 5:21:35 PM

^why don't you explain it more

6/30/2011 6:06:21 PM

Explain what more? The plot of the show or why it was funny/good?

6/30/2011 8:00:48 PM

- To each their own then I guess, not exactly an lol moment for me though

- I went into this expecting to laugh, not to be critical at all. I've been looking forward to it for months, but sure, I see your point, some people will laugh just because everyone else is...and to be fair, it didn't ruin the show for me, it was just another thing that bothered me

- I will concede here that I generally hate musicals, and since they seemed to be going for the exact boring songs and other play cliches that I hate, it was not the show for me. But in my defense, I liked Avenue Q and love just about everything Trey and Matt have ever done including their songs (especially the movie, which was technically a musical), I put all my preconceptions about musicals aside and went in with the best expectation I could.

- No, we can't argue over what's funny and what isn't, all I can say is that I can probably count on my two hands the number of times I actually laughed out loud during the show. And I don't think the last point about it selling out needs a proper argument, other than to mention that Fast Five is so far the second highest grossing movie of 2011. Or to put it more simply I turn to Bill Murray, "People like blood sausage..."

6/30/2011 9:44:45 PM

To each their own, but, you're wrong.

6/30/2011 11:08:28 PM

your face is wrong

7/1/2011 9:03:13 AM

So is your mom.

7/1/2011 9:24:40 AM

Quote :

"I could be wrong and have no source because I'm lazy, but I'm pretty sure they're under contract all the way to a Season 17."

I knew I didn't pull that out of nowhere:

http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/07/19/south-park-return-date-announced/

From the article:

Quote :

"Parker and Stone are signed on through 2013, Comedy Central told EW, which will bring the show to a staggering 17 seasons"

7/20/2011 12:53:21 PM

I had no idea that Casa Bonita was a real place.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42266618?slide=10

7/20/2011 2:50:53 PM

was this episode a metaphor for Parker/Stone not seeing South Park as they did 15 years ago and this being the reason this is the last season?

7/27/2011 10:31:56 PM

Quote :

"was this episode a metaphor for Parker/Stone not seeing South Park as they did 15 years ago and this being the reason this is the last season?"

No, because they just signed a contract for two more seasons (after the seven episodes we get this fall).

Look two posts above yours.

7/27/2011 11:18:16 PM

hmmm, so were they just making fun of the fans who thought the show has gone downhill?

7/27/2011 11:24:12 PM

haha wow. touché

7/27/2011 11:58:07 PM

Quote :

"hmmm, so were they just making fun of the fans who thought the show has gone downhill?"

It was still a metaphor for how they feel about the show, worrying that it might turn into shit.

But it isn't a statement that they're ending South Park. Just acknowledging their own fears.

7/28/2011 12:00:11 AM

kinda old but

http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/07/19/south-park-return-date-announced/

7/31/2011 2:30:32 PM

Why would you repost the same link 7 posts after I put it on this very same page?

7/31/2011 2:45:52 PM

because I'm stupid and dont read

8/1/2011 1:27:43 AM

Bump for the new episode tonight.

10/5/2011 9:10:47 PM

hahahaha, starting out great

10/5/2011 10:08:00 PM

isn't it kind of late for a matrix parody?

[Edited on October 5, 2011 at 10:28 PM. Reason : ahahahaha the episode was mainly meh, but the ending was worth it]

[Edited on October 5, 2011 at 10:31 PM. Reason : should have seen that coming, done perfectly in south park fashion]

10/5/2011 10:20:44 PM

They've still got it.

Not an uproar of laughter but I still liked it.

Kinda wished they'd jabbed more directly at Michelle Bachmann instead of making it really just a passing mention with the HPV thing.

10/6/2011 1:05:26 AM

It was ok, but I still say it would have been funny to keep Randy single at least for a few episodes.

10/6/2011 1:29:43 AM