One of the golden rules of television comedy (and one of the rules least heeded) is this - when you run out of things to say, shut up. John Cleese apparently called a halt to the delirious FAWLTY TOWERS after only a dozen episodes, because only twelve things annoyed him about hotels, and once he'd worked out those grievances, there was nothing more to add. That's why FAWLTY TOWERS remains a classic. There was no jumping the shark, no undignified senescence, no ratings decline. Ideally, SOUTH PARK should have ended after the first thirteen episodes, leaving its mark on comedy history as a hilarious smash and grab raid on pop culture, American morals and political correctness. Had that been the case, it would still be revered as a classic to this day. Unfortunately, its creators Parker and Stone realised there was a huge cash cow in their midst begging to be milked regularly, and the world promptly sank under a welter of t-shirts, dolls, spin-off albums (their decision to rescue coke-addled wife-beater Ike Turner from obscurity on the Chef Aid disaster speaks volumes about their warped sense of 'cool'), posters, stickers and God knows what else, most - if not all - of it aimed at prepubescent kids. Early fans, who struggled through Channel Four's erratic scheduling and lack of sleep to catch the first run, got their first whiff of high-smelling excreta when series two limped into 'action' with a Terrance and Phillip 'special'. Yes, thanks guys, twenty-two minutes of sped-up Canadian voices, worse animation than usual and fart gags. Go ahead and insult our intelligence, have fun, I'm sure the rest of the series will be better. When the rest of the series turned out to be dismal, the damage was done. People jumped off the SOUTH PARK bandwagon in droves, and although the third and fourth seasons offered isolated moments of bad-taste fun (Cartman inadvertently joining NAMBLA being a particularly warped highlight), the glory days were dead and gone. The movie, unsurprisingly, ran out of steam after the first twenty minutes, and expected adults to laugh at the sight of a small boy watching his mother eating feces on a German fetish website. In their endless desire to be perceived as 'cool' by the world's immature teenagers, Parker and Stone painted themselves into a corner and fell asleep, leaving the coast clear for the far more intelligent, ballsy and tightly-written FAMILY GUY to replace their paean to bad taste in the hearts and minds of discerning viewers on both sides of the Atlantic. I've read that they hate Seth MacFarlane's subversive satire, for what the opinions of a the one-trick lame donkeys behind ORGASMO and BASEKETBALL are worth. Probably not enough poop jokes or ejaculating dogs for them.
I never liked THE SIMPSONS - too arch and self-referential for me - but in the final analysis, SOUTH PARK stands as the bigger disappointment because it took a giant, corporate-sponsored dump on the very people it initially set out to entertain. Screw Parker and Stone, I'm going home.
I never liked THE SIMPSONS - too arch and self-referential for me - but in the final analysis, SOUTH PARK stands as the bigger disappointment because it took a giant, corporate-sponsored dump on the very people it initially set out to entertain. Screw Parker and Stone, I'm going home.