Is South Park getting weird...er?

[Odbarc]

You may have missed the "Safe Space" episode (which you definitely need to watch it's great). In it, Butters tries to commit suicide but just winds up badly injuring himself, hence him wearing the headcage.

No, I saw it but I didn't really pin it together. Never expected that kind of continuity. Maybe it's because of all the original Kenny deaths.

 

[Scytail]

Good hard laugh at the people who think that just because Trey and Matt havent done an episode bashing climate-deniers, they must be some sort of secret Republicans.

I recall an interview done a few years back when they were asked which extreme of the political spectrum they hated more, and Stone said something to the effect of "Y'know we all hate the extreme right, but, I really fucking hate extreme liberals".

Can't fault them there. I'd fall middle-left on the political spectrum and I find the extreme left to be far more insufferable than my political opposites.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

snip

The words don't mean what you think they mean. "We'll offend anyone" doesn't mean they go out of their way to offend everyone by being jerks. It's not, has never, and will never mean that no matter how much you want it to.

"We'll offend anyone" is not, has not, won't ever be an apology. If it were, they wouldn't KEEP MAKING THE JOKES THEY'RE SUPPOSEDLY APOLOGIZING FOR.

"We'll offend anyone" has meant that they don't care who they offend on their show. They consider no cow sacred if it can be humorous.

Oh, and they HAVE joked about violence and rape, of children or otherwise, repeatedly.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Not really, most of this season's episodes have just taken real things like PC culture or yelp reviews and parodied them. No manbearpigs or imaginationland or whatever.

 

[Zontar]

This is 2015. The show started back in 1997. Its older than a lot of people here. ManBearPig was 2006. Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow was 2005, two days after the very first episode of The Colbert Report. Ten years ago. Not only is it eight years into their show's tenure but it predates the trend of comedic news shows

The Colbert Report wasn't the first comedic news show, it was a spinoff of The Daily Show which started in 1996, which itself is pre-dated for the genre by This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which has been running since 1993. Hell, it wasn't even the first spinoff of a fake news show, 2004 saw the Rick Mercer Report begin airing.

 

[Josh123914]

Not in the way you want them to.

I don't know where you're getting this idea that I want them to do an episode on "x" subject matter. They can do an episode on whatever they want. They can't, however, say that they are indiscriminate in who and what they make fun of. That is untrue. They are entitled to their show and they are entitled to say what they want on their show but they are not entitled to their own facts. Nobody is entitled to their own facts. They are not indiscriminate in what they comment on so they do not get to say that they are without being called out as liars. When somebody says that they are doing "x" and they know they are not doing "x" they are lying.

You're confusing saying their claim that they're willing to offend anybody, with the concept of them going out of their way to offend everybody.

And how many of those people watch South Park?

Well lets re-examine your claim

"and something most of the target demographic is unanimous on?"

You can:

a) take the data I provided as relevant

b) provide your own specific data regarding a significant data size of the South Park's specific target audience in 2005 and their personal take on climate change, showing that they are unanimous as that is the standard you are setting

or c) back off on your claim

Do you reject the idea that Comedy Central has a predominant demographic of young liberals? And you know you're never going to find the poll at (b) that you're looking for. Submit one to /r/Southpark if you care so much.

When was the big event wherein the Prominent Creationist set out the manifesto for how and why Climate Change exists? For a charicature to work, South Park needs a celebrity. Without that, they just have a mean-spirited strawman, which is not funny.

Donald Trump, the guy who you think its going to become President of the United States. Ben Carson, the guy who is currently trailing right behind Donald Trump. Many, many sitting senators, sitting congresspeople and presidential candidates in the United States between 2005 and now. This [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/17/climate-change-denial-scepticism-republicans-congress] is the very first search result for "climate change denial politician".

You didn't learn about them through their Climate Change skepticism.
You'll also notice that they're running for President, and the Climate Change episode that would dispell all of your allegations is unlikely to happen around this lot because Ben Carson believes the Egyptians stored grain in the Pyramids (among other nonsense) and Donald Trump is a successful businessman that they would never insult. Climate Change is not unique enough for them to make an episode about.

Because, as said in the interview linked above, Climate Change has been done a million times, and making fun of somebody like Al Gore (who was fading into irrelevance before he came out swinging with AIT) is way more fun for them.

While I know this is a matter of personal taste I can't see Al Gore being more deserving of ridicule than politicians sitting at the federal level who don't know how ice cubes work. *shrug* Personal taste though.

Because the politicians are same shit, different day. Al Gore has been explained several times in this thread (I think even to you) that his doomsaying made him a fun charicature, since after he lost the election, he was irrelevant if not for the Inconvenient Truth.

Are we even watching the same show? Have you watched the first two episodes of just this season? If you have, you'll know why the creators have issues with Jenner. Not even Jenner, just PC culture in general.

But there's nothing wrong with her. She's a person. Thats about it. I mean the transgender has a big beef but thats not what is being acknowledged by them.

You're right. She's a person. A fallible person. People should have a right to express opinions beyond blind praise about a flawed person regardless of their gender.

Oh this is too funny. There is no way you actually watched that episode.

I've watched every episode of the show. I know whats going on.

I know some diehard fans of the show that haven't seen every episode over the past 18 years, but I won't say I don't believe you.

10 years have passed, and Climate Change isn't front page news. Deal with it.

What news are you paying attention to?

The type that covered ebola for about 3 weeks, and then moved onto something else despite people still dying in the thousands for months afterwards. You can't expect people to talk about the same thing all day long without any exciting developments.

Goobacks is satirizing illegal immigrants, but once again they avoided using any nationality by making the immigrants future humans who are a mix of every ethnicity.

That link you provided is evidence of your own misunderstanding. Those people in the meeting are there to be laughed at and made fun of, because they are dumb hicks brainstorming ways to get rid of the immigrants. The global warming suggestion was done to kill the Goobacks off, not a serious plea to stop Climate Change.

Yeah, I know. When they want to get rid of the goobacks they try to come up with ways to ruin the future so that the goobacks won't exist to travel back in time in the first place. Somebody says, paraphrasing just slightly, "how about we bring about a major climate shift to make future planet inhabitiable?" He gets called a "fucking retard" for suggesting that such a thing is possible.

The show creators literally just used a character as a mouthpiece to call people who suggest the possibility of a dangerous climate shift "fucking retards". How could they possibly be any more clear? I know it wasn't a serious plea. It was the exact opposite, and that was my point. Honestly, not being condescending, are you even understanding what I'm saying? What can I do to make this more clear?

No they didn't. Those hicks are renowned for being uneducated idiots, "They tuk ur jerbs!"?
The humor stems from someone in the crowd suggesting they allow Global warming to get completely out of control, and he gets shouted down by the Alpha Hick, who obviously doesn't believe in Global Warming.

If anything that scene runs against your argument, because it made a comic relief idiot one of the only characters to take a stance on Climate Change, and it was to oppose it.

Stop jumping to conclusions.

Tom Cruise has told follow workmates not to diss Scientology, the woman who voices Bart Simpson has warned the Simpsons writers not to ridicule her religion after she converted.

Yes, why would people who make television shows satirizing things ask somebody to not satirize their religion after the religion has been receiving public ridicule? Hmmm, why would they ask their colleagues to not jump on an ongoing bandwagon to bash their religion?

Its not cultish brainwashing when somebody ask their colleagues to not ridicule them on national television. You may disagree with that behavior but its not the result of being in a cult.

They knew signing up to these shows that satirizing things would be on the agenda. The Simpsons and South Park have routinely made fun of religion, in fact the Simpsons has devoted entire episodes just to sectarianism. I mean telling co-workers on a comedy show not to speak ill of your new religion is already kind of red-flaggish, but then all the accounts from ex-Scientologists say that the church would punish believers who allowed Scientology to be made fun of. For somebody that has watched all the episodes, you seem to think it would just be in Stone and Parker's nature to viciously attack Chef's VA the way they did. If they were that malicious, why did you insist on still watching all the episodes?

Furthermore, if it was the case of them just victimizing Chef's VA, wouldn't that validate the assertion that they are willing to target anyone?

 

[LetalisK]

You mean the deliberate targeting of a group of people for a specific reason? Because that would be completely antithetical to the "no target off limits" approach they say they're doing. "No targets off limits" is supposed to mean "we'll target anybody for any reason" but since they don't target indiscriminately it reads more as "if we targeted something that offended you we didn't really mean what we said".

I agree they have a bias in how they do things, but this argument is an appeal to ignorance. Just because any given target has not been engaged does not mean it's exempt from the target list. The possibility still exists that it is exempt, but that's not the only possibility on why the target hasn't been engaged yet.

As a personal metaphor, I tend to target liberals and their causes for arguments. Overwhelmingly so. One might assume from that I'm a conservative, then, or at least non-liberal. But I am liberal, if not more left wing. I target liberals and their causes because I also tend to target people I fundamentally agree with, but disagree with an aspect of their argument/cause, so there is something there to work with. I find arguments with conservatives to be pointless because we see things so differently from a fundamental level that talking about anything outside of those fundamentals is a waste of my time. Chances are I will never convince them, they'll never convince me, and we'll probably just argue right past one another anyway. But change does come, just in the small things. People's beliefs typically change a little at a time and not in a big revelation, so it's going to be those little arguments that actually change minds over time, either theirs or mine. I would rather sharpen my edge against a whetstone than blunt myself against a brick wall. I could even go more into why I go after liberals, but I've been blow hardy enough already.

 

[Redryhno]

This is 2015. The show started back in 1997. Its older than a lot of people here. ManBearPig was 2006. Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow was 2005, two days after the very first episode of The Colbert Report. Ten years ago. Not only is it eight years into their show's tenure but it predates the trend of comedic news shows

The Colbert Report wasn't the first comedic news show, it was a spinoff of The Daily Show which started in 1996, which itself is pre-dated for the genre by This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which has been running since 1993. Hell, it wasn't even the first spinoff of a fake news show, 2004 saw the Rick Mercer Report begin airing.

Hell, you can go even further back and you get the orignal SNL cast in like 1970 with the Better Belushi that had some pretty in-depth satirical news shows. They did like half a dozen ElizaJohn Taylushi faux-terviews alone, along with faulty weathermen with shoddy roofs(rooves?), over-invested sports casters, televangelists, etc. Then the later years with Eddie Murphey's stint that had James Brown hosting another religious program in a jacuzzi...

South Park didn't come before anything near comedy news programs. If anything, it was inspired by some of the late 80's, early 90's cartoons that went in-depth for some things that kids would have NO idea of what was going on, but adults would get the little nudge-smirk.

 

[Qizx]

especially of the creators terrible views, like climate change denial

They've never pushed that message in the show, so why should that be relevant? It's not as though people in the entertainment industry having controversial opinions is abnormal.

No they've pushed it in the show a couple of times. Manbearpig is them equating global warming to a mythical beast.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was a joke making fun of Al Gore.

Are you serious? There have been multiple episodes about how climate change isn't real and groups that want to stop it are bad. What do you think ManBearPig was about? Or the episode where Terrence and Phillip re-unite, where the town is basically enslaved by Greenpeace or a similar organization?

Again with the ManBearPig, I seriously have no idea how anyone connects that to global warming outside of the fact that Al Gore is the one being made fun of, and obviously that's what they're making fun of (even though one could just as easily argue it's making fun of the internet).

I'd also like to point out that the "not-Greenpeace" people where pretty hilarious, and when it comes to Greenpeace, it is an organization worth ridiculing. They're anti-nuclear power (despite it being the cleanest form of power and their own founder denouncing them for it), they're anti-GMO because they don't understand science, and they think blocking the Keystone pipeline was actually good for the environment because they don't understand economics or the simple fact that trains pollute more then a pipeline.

Greenpeace and many of its contemporaries are dominated by people who don't even have a basic understanding about the environment, so I think knocking them is something even those who completely agree with their causes should have no problem with. They're pretty much opposed to everyone: those they disagree with for obvious reasons, and those they agree with because they're actively working against their own stated goals. Given the "nothing's off the table" mentality Trey and Park have it's only natural that environmental activists would eventually be made fun of. I actually can't think of a group which hasn't.

Just going to say I always thought they were equating Manbearpig to global warming, especially if you played the SoutPark game. It's actually pretty clear because he's always talking about the danger of it, how we need to stop it, and how it can destroy the world etc... It's possible they were just making fun of Gore but that's not at ALL the impression I got. To me it was always really clear they were talking about global warming as a joke.

 

[Vausch]

Eh. I actually think the recent stuff suffers for its continuity. It makes the ends somewhat unsatisfying and lacking 'bite'. They do all this work to set up the episode, then bungle it and the last hurdle. Worst 2 for this are the 1st episode, where the brawl between pedo-Jared, the PC-bros, the pregnant Mexicans and the Syrian refugees just kinda stops because Kyle finally caves to his abuse, and the one where they're trying to get a Whole Foods, and a perfectly ruinous street brawl between the town the the child labourers just goes nowhere and they get the store like nothing happened.

Not sure if these were part of the 'message' the show was going for, but they didn't make me laugh.

What do you think ManBearPig was about?

Al Gore being mental? It doesn't seem to be a controversial opinion now that he massively exaggerated the 'Global Warming Threat' in his documentary. South Park generally seems to go after people being stupid with their ideas, rather than the ideas themselves. Best example off the top of my head is the Smug episode, with the 'message' Hybrid Cars are fine, maybe even important but don't be a self righteous prick about it.

Didn't they once make an episode in which a character who proclaims themselves as an "ultra liberal" says that there's no link between smoking/second hand smoke and cancer but they perpetrate it to keep people from smoking?

It's worth noting Parker and Stone are self-admitted libertarians who "hate conservatives but really really hate liberals".

Heck, there's another episode in which they take the "there is no global warming because scientist X says so" stance and treat the environmentalists as people using Jedi mind tricks.

 

[Politrukk]

South Park is in its 19th season and I am finding that it is getting weirder than ever.

I know that the show has never been anchored in reality and the characters have never been truly what you call "stable" but season 19 has gone a bit awkward in some places, such as P.C. Principal.

What are your thoughts on this season so far.

Do you hope for the death of P.C. Principal?

Or am I the only one that finds the guy truly unlikable.

Have you looked outside?
Have you read the news?
Have you been anywhere near internet discussions?

Southpark this season is absolutely spot on with their satire.

 

[hooblabla6262]

I honestly think South Park has reached a level of brilliance that is going over a lot of heads.
People are quick to dismiss it due to its early years when it was just another late-night cartoon with more crude jokes than actual thought.

The recent seasons have really found their place. The on-the-fly production style allows for the content of the show to be catered to current events, and tackles issues that have been cropping up in the media and various social settings. The newest season in particular feels very fleshed out with a not-yet-clear direction, and continuity to give South Park a sense of "progress".

All in all, I can understand why some don't like it but I do feel that it is a bit more clever than people give it credit for.
And certainly not as weird/random/stupid as it used to be. I mean, do you remember the Joozians, c'mon!?

 

[Wolf Hagen]

I Still kinda like the new season, even the fact that they developed continuity along Season 14.

But I swear to god, if the Season Finale doesn't go out and over the top with what the town has become, I#m going to call out the biggest misfire in ages.

But yeah, weirder.... not so much. And yes, the Character Development of Randy Marsh (seriously, he's the Story Focus of 1/4 of all episodes by now. >.<) is the most annoying thing ever. But hey, they at least acknowleged some of that within the season (not only with Stans Dad, but with the "NO SPEECHES!!!" rule for Kyle.

It is still kinda brilliant, but I really sometimes miss the anarchic but relatable fun of the beginnings of the show.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

If you gave up on the series I'd say give either season 18 or 19 a chance since they've changed the formate to a more serialized style where jokes arc over the whole season and I have to say it feels as though the show has improved greatly as a result.

People said previous seasons had improved too. I gave them a chance and they were horrible.

I would be willing to give season 19 a chance if someone who says 10-18 (of which I admit I haven't seen in their entirety) were absolute crap, tells me that season 19 is good. The problem is most people are either of the opinion that the series either turned to shit 10 years ago and stayed that way, or it's still great. After the rubbish churned out over the last few years it doesn't need a "slight improvement" it needs big, huge drastic changes to make it good again.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Honestly what bugged me was the shifting focus towards Randy, and the newer graphic style that made all the gore look...semi-photo real I guess you could call it, and giving them fingers. And the loss of Officer Barbrady and Mr. Slave, those two were utter cards. South Park's politics either go over my head or I find myself not caring since they're funny.

 

[the_dramatica]

Definitely not. It's now more formulaic and less controversial than it's ever been. I don't particularly mind, since before it was always hardcore hit or miss, and now you get a point and some cutesy drama and jokes.

In times of old you'd have all the kids jumping onto gay sex piles, entire episodes about two guys sucking eachother off with a single joke, the episode where cartman commits and confesses to homicide and gets away with it in cannon, the assface episode where the joke was that there was no joke, et cetera, and that god forsaken period where the teacher was dealing with a sex change and we got to deal with it in every episode.

P.C. principle is a character that's designed to be hated, like joffrey. You do know that southpark is, at least allegedly, a comedy show right? It's supposed to be funny?