South Park: Season 14

It's difficult to adequately review a season of South Park. The show is as episodic as any other animated comedy, so seasonal arcs are absent and character development doesn't exist. Furthermore, each season is split into two separate runs of seven episodes each, broadcast farther apart than the typical gap between seasons. Let's call them Seasons 14A and 14B going forward. Yeah? Good. So, I loved Season 14A. Four solid episodes kicked off the run, but the highlight of the season was the two-part 200th episode, a double feature laden with callbacks to thirteen years of South Park highlights that managed to stir up a shit storm of controversy by kind of sort of depicting the prophet Muhammad. I was actually very disappointed that the version of "201" included on this DVD set was the same incredibly over-censored one that originally aired. Come on, Comedy Central. Bad enough that you pussed out and didn't air the episode uncensored in the first place, but now I can't even watch the original cut of the episode despite being a paying customer? Regardless, "200" and "201" marked the apex of the season and were very excellent episodes. Unfortunately, Season 14B was pretty terrible. Even the seventh and final episode of 14A felt like a real throw-away episode; its two primary plot lines focused on Towelie and a summer camp for retarded kids. Next came a string of lazy-feeling and uninspired episodes with easy targets. NASCAR. Jersey Shore. Hoarders. Inception. There was no real bite or wit in any of these episodes. In the Inception episode, the writers even ripped off a CollegeHumor parody (and to their credit, confessed to doing so, with an apology, in the DVD commentary track). The season hit its nadir with a three-part episode about the kids' superhero identities that aimlessly wandered around between the BP oil spill, Cthulhu, a parody of that LeBron James commercial, Totoro, and most startlingly, Kenny's propensity and ability to regenerate after dying. This last aspect really left me torn. It felt like a real shark jumper, in a way, to suddenly acknowledge and even attempt to explain why Kenny is always dying and then returning an episode later with no one the wiser about it. It almost felt like Matt Stone and Trey Parker had absolutely nothing left in the idea tank, and needed to betray the unspokenness of a principal character's key trait just to get themselves through seven episodes. Oh well. Lastly, the season ended on, of all things, an elaborate Shake Weight joke. Oof. So as I said from the beginning, it's hard to judge Season 14 as a whole. It featured some of the best South Park had to offer as well as some of the worst. And unfortunately, the dip in quality seen in 14A definitely continued and bled through into 15A. I guess I can't blame Matt and Trey; they spent a lot of 2010 (and 2011) working on The Book of Mormon, which I've yet to see but which is apparently fantastic. So, good for them. Also, Season 15B felt like a marked return to form. But now I'm getting a full season ahead of myself.