South Park

Notably absent from the blog have been the big adult animations.  Both The Simpsons and Family Guy have been among my most cherished viewing over the years, yet there’s no sign of them here.  While I’ll slag off telly I don’t like despite having seen not much of it (Gogglebox, The Apprentice), to do justice to the shows I love, I need to have seen everything, and that simply isn’t the case with those two American families.  But, fear not, today I finished off the twenty-third series of South Park and am now completely up to date with this most subversive of all the adult animations, making my way through two decades’ worth of toilet humour, biting satire, charming characterisation and laugh-out-loud comedy.  Finished off might not be truly accurate though, as certain episodes don’t seem to be available on any platform (season 5 episode 3, season 10 episodes 3 and 4, season 14 episodes 5 and 6).  But don’t worry, the other 305 instalments have all been devoured and now we can begin our journey through my relationship with South Park.

It’s 1997 and I am 12.  I’m still living at the parents’ because I am legally a child, but I do have my own room.  I don’t quite have my own telly though, but there’s an old black-and-white set that hangs around the upstairs.  Traditionally it gets wheeled out only if my sister or I are off school poorly and need something to entertain ourselves with.  This is a rare occasion as we were raised to be sent into class no matter what.  I could have a leg off and my mum would still tip me out the car in the school car park at 8am and then speed off to work.  But yes, being properly ill means two things.  One is crumbs in bed, as it’s the only time we’re allowed to eat in our rooms, and honey and toast is typically on the menu so the sugar can give us our strength back following whatever affliction has attacked us, though I suspect this scratchiest of all the foods is simply used to punish us for needing bedrest in the first place, making the very sanctuary of our convalescence an unpleasant collection of the sharpest morsels.  And the second is having the old TV set on a chair by the bed.

Somehow, its position in my room became permanent.  I hadn’t become sickly, but maybe my sister had got her own or some other treat, and therefore my claim to the spare set was recognised.  This meant I graduated from discovering shows alone in our breakfast room (see post on Friends) to being able to tune into all sorts of late-night fare in the privacy of my own room.  In fact, tuning in is fairly literal here, as the set was so old it had a dial-knob for channel selection.  You would twist this to work through the four available terrestrial channels, enjoying an exhilarating burst of snow and crackle between each.  How primal.  This might all seem like self-indulgent preamble, and it is, but it’s also relevant as this is how I discovered South Park.  Channel 4 had acquired the rights to this cult show from the US, and late on Fridays it was going out in the UK too.  Often criticised for its crude animation in those early days, I was able to tolerate not only this but also the lack of colour on my antique telly because South Park was brilliant from the start.

The furtive late-night viewings made it feel inappropriate and offensive, but that’s because it was.  It was some of the rudest stuff you could watch (pre-internet), besides maybe Eurotrash.  But it was also, and still is, very clever.  We’ll come on to the reasons for this, but back to me.  Suddenly, South Park merchandise was everywhere.  You couldn’t move in Clinton Cards for plush toys of Kenny, or sets of highball glasses featuring Cartman and Mr Hankey The Christmas Poo.  I still don’t know what a highball glass is, but I probably had one anyway.  Even my dad revealed he enjoyed the show, catching the odd episode and immediately finding his undying passion for fart jokes catered to by South Park’s storylines.  By 1999 we had a feature-length film complete with musical numbers that I still dream of seeing performed in the West End.  In fact, the lending out of my DVD of this film while at college in 2005 was the first act of cultural exchange in a friendship that is still going strong to this day (love you, T).

But university saw me lose track of South Park.  New seasons emerged as an annual tradition, but I was having the time of my life transferring my student loan to night club owners in Oxford.  Once I started work and moved to London, though, someone showed me a site called allofsouthpark.com.  It’s not there anymore, but it offered great solace during my poverty/grad wage years, with me saving money by staying in and watching up to season 10 before the streaming finally gave out around the 9.0 IMDB-rated Imaginationland episodes.  Even then, it was a lot of content, and the quality was in no way compromised by the quantity.

Spotting this old favourite, then, on Amazon Prime, I found myself revisiting those old series from my childhood, making my way through episode after episode as background entertainment while I built IKEA furniture in my new flat.  I passed Imaginationland and a whole new world of South Park madness was revealed to me, the humour catching up with more recent events.  I had to download series 23 from Sky and fast forward the same handful of inane adverts that are stitched into every segment over and over again, but it was totally worth it.  I can now go around saying I have seen (almost) all of South Park.

And with that, let’s look at what made that a worthwhile experience.  South Park focuses on four young boys in snowy Colorado.  They almost always face forwards, their legs and arms hardly move at first, their winter clothing is mostly the same and they have potty mouths.  We join the boys in third grade, but they journey to the fourth, putting them at eight/nine/ten years old.  Stan feels like the hero – he’s learning what his morals are while his family exasperate him.  His best friend is Kyle who is slightly more impatient, mostly because overweight frenemy Cartman is constantly abusing his Jewish heritage.  Then there’s Kenny, whose dialogue is muffled by his parka hood, and who dies in all the early episodes (creating a great set up for Coon & Friends in later series), while also being absent in some seasons, with the other three auditioning other friends, from Butters (my favourite) to Tweek (too caffeinated too young).  The boys rag on each other like any bunch of friends would, but it’s the innocent response to the stupidity of their parents and the other adults of South Park that leads not just to toilet-themed humour but also to scathing commentary on our modern society and all of its nonsense.  Over time, Cartman comes to signify the right-wing end of things (excluding his behaviour in season 20), while the others are more liberal.  But, eventually, conservative or woke, South Park will come for anyone that takes themselves too seriously (or cereally).

This has proved controversial throughout South Park’s lifespan.  An example is its approach to US school shootings from series 22 onwards.  A background soundtrack of gunfire complements every school scene from the first episode, setting up a wealth of humour where the South Park citizens focus on every other problem besides gun control.  South Park isn’t making light of school shootings or laughing at its victims, it’s viciously parodying the lack of solution in real life to something that requires an immediate response.  It’s true, though, that human life has little value in South Park.  My mind was first blown by this in episode 6 of the first series, Death, when the adults of South Park catapult their bodies into the network building to protest the foul language of Terrance And Philip.  It was funny, but it haunted me – surely each adult experienced a moment of regret at their choice before hurtling through thin air to their death.

As such, let’s run through, in chronological order, a handful of my top most mind-blowing moments from 23 series of South Park:

Chickenpox, season 2, episode 10

The boys hire a hooker to give all their parents herpes as revenge for a chickenpox party, and the scenes where she goes about using all their toothbrushes remain deeply harrowing for me.  It not only foreshadowed the inordinate generational conflict that drives many of South Park’s storylines (and, increasingly, our actual lives), but gave me a permanent reservation about where my own toothbrush might have been when I wasn’t looking at it.

Cat Orgy, season 3, episode 7

Shelley Marsh remains a joy of a character, perfectly personifying older sister-awkwardness and employing increasingly creative ways to use her favourite word (turd), so it’s inevitable that she should try her hand at babysitting.  Her fatal error comes when she babysits Cartman, with events climaxing in all the stray cats getting invited round for a cat orgy.  Now, whenever someone leaves me home alone, I threaten them with holding a cat orgy in their absence.

Towelie, season 5, episode 8

New character alert: we meet Towelie, who is a towel.  Yes.  He also smokes too much weed and is consequently always too high to be effective.  I can’t get enough of him, even though weed is one of the worst smells available to humanity.

Krazy Kripples, season 7, episode 2

I don’t know what to say about Timmy and Jimmy.  Are they driving greater visibility of disabled people on the TV screen, or are we laughing at children for their handicaps?  The fact that they’re treated as fully formed characters who happen to be disabled edges me to the former of the two perspectives – and this means they simply get rinsed as much as everyone else in South Park.  In this episode, a series of misunderstandings lead to them getting involved in the Bloods versus Crips gang warfare while blind to any of the sensitivities around this.  Oblivious Jimmy encouraging everyone to get along is priceless, and this all unfolds during an aggressive storyline about stem cell research.

All About Mormons, season 7, episode 12

Potentially a precursor to The Book Of Mormon (which I have seen twice on my own money and would happily pay full whack to see again), all the exposition of this curious faith in this episode is soundtrack with a choral accompaniment of “dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.”

Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset, season 8, episode 12

Taking aim at bad role models for young girls, Mr Slave’s performance in the episode finale is not something anyone was expecting.  Jesus Christ.

Woodland Critter Christmas, season 8, episode 14

What begins as a cute festive tail takes a turn for the murderous when the charming fluffy animals’ eyes start to glow red and they indulge in a Satanic blood orgy, all with a really positive attitude.

Make Love, Not Warcraft, season 10, episode 8

I’ve never even played World Of Warcraft, but I learnt everything I need to know about it from this episode.  The boys’ transformation into online gamers is enough to put anyone off.

Imaginationland, season 11, episodes 10, 11 and 12

Every imaginary creature ever inhabits a separate dimension (including the satanic woodland critters from before): this concept allows for a deep pastiche of our hysteria about terrorists when these mostly imagined baddies storm the realm of leprechauns and fairies.  Meanwhile, all Cartman cares about is getting Kyle to suck his balls.

Major Boobage, season 12, episode 3

This episode is art perfectly capturing the hetero male response to big boobs.

Crème Fraîche, season 14, episode 14

One of many episodes where Randy Marsh comes into his own as one of the best and most interesting characters, South Park here takes on the growing passion for food porn in a way that means you’ll never be able to pronounce this ingredient in the same way again.

Sponsored Content, season 19, episode 8

Working in advertising, this episode takes on an issue close to my heart – the power of marketing to disrupt the truth of news.  Jimmy’s school newspaper becomes the last remaining bastion of trust, while Butters’ dad succumbs to clickbait in an amazing montage (that we use in meetings sometimes).

All of season 20

Whereas episodes in early seasons were standalone, by this series we have full narrative arcs taking us through from instalment to instalment like some sort of high-tension drama.  Taking on the challenge of explaining why something like Trump could ever happen (the answer: nostalgia for an easier past that can never be brought back – bit like Brexit), season 20 introduces us to the member berries.  These are small grape-like creatures that provide reassurance by constantly posing questions about retro things you might remember, reaffirming each other by indeed recalling and praising that bygone thing that was once great (such as Star Wars).  I can’t get enough of their scenes, nor can I commend this series enough.

Later season arcs take on increasingly ambitious societal trends, including social media, trolling, the rise of Amazon (which was awkward given my viewing method).  I’ve barely scratched the surface here of the wonderful contributions that South Park has made to popular culture and the world of entertainment, as well as genuinely getting me to reconsider my opinions about important topics that constantly affect us.  Even if I were to list out favourite characters (Lemmiwinks, PC Principal, all of Korn) we’d be here for thousands and thousands of words.  In fact, I’ve already gone on too much, which shows I haven’t the skill of South Park’s creators, crafting everything into the brevity of 22-minute-long episodes.  Matt Stone and Trey Parker: thank you for the offensive comedy.

Sally4ever

One of the most-read posts on Just One More Episode has been my piece on Nighty Night, a slightly obscure and incredibly offensive sitcom from fifteen years ago.  It remains one of my favourite shows of all time and its creator and star, Julia Davis, has long held hero status among a group of friends and me who live our lives by the teachings and best lines of this comedy.  Whenever Julia is involved in anything else, I am there.  She’s known for playing the perennial sourpuss Dawn Sutcliffe in Gavin & Stacey (whose recent Christmas special was the best thing about the festive season this year), while her 2016 series, Camping, pleased fans with its trademarks of Davis’s brand of comedy: inordinate social awkwardness caused by politeness forcing others to tolerate unacceptable behaviour and the sexually predatory jezebel.  I’ve also watched a series of Hunderby, a period black comedy that again explores many of the same tropes.  While the BBC was Nighty Night’s home, all subsequent vehicles have operated within the empire of Sky, and 2018’s Sally4ever is no exception.  Lacking a subscription during its debut and subsequent BAFTA win, I’ve only just caught up on my Julia Davis fix.  So, journey with me as we turn my ill-thought-out responses into another one of these posts.

Firstly, I’ve been able to assuage some of my Julia Davis withdrawals through the medium of podcast.  Dear Joan And Jericha sees Davis team up with Vicki Pepperdine (who steals the show in Camping) as a pair of local radio agony aunts responding to listeners’ letters about relationship and anatomy woes.  Rather than sympathy, they deal out female-hating judgement while criticising graphic accompanying photos and dispensing appalling advice.  All the while, their own ludicrous backstories are fleshed out, cementing the view that they are in no position to be telling anybody else what to do with their life.  Either way, its first series was a joyous listen (if you enjoy turning heads on the bus by laughing out loud uncontrollably) and the second delivered more of the same.  In fact, I was lucky enough (through work) to go to the launch party of the sophomore season.  So, er, yeah, I got to see Julia Davis in the flesh.  And by see, I mean stand as close as possible to her while my eyes bored into her face and she (hopefully) was unable to detect my fandom.  I was offered the chance to meet her (and two thirds of My Dad Wrote A Porno) but I don’t cope well with celebrities (see post on House Of Cards) so I scarpered off into the night, colliding with Cardinal Burns’ Seb Cardinal on the way out (more on this later).

With that distance from its creator, then, allow me to crack on with my unsolicited views.  Let’s organise them into the three best things about the show and then we can look at the three worst things.  It’s important to be balanced in your arguments, as we all learned doing our GCSE essays, alongside the holy rule of always read the question.

First best thing about it

Sally.  It’s not called Sally4ever for nothing.  Sally is played by Catherine Shepherd who you’ll recognise as one of Mark’s girlfriends from Peep Show.  As the programme’s name suggests, people get obsessed with Sally.  The funniest part is that it’s very difficult to see why.  Shepherd’s performance perfectly captures the mousey blandness of this sort of non-character, making everyone else’s fixations all the more alarming.  Her outfits are all impractical flowy cardigans and such.  She is terrible at thinking up reasons to say no to things, relying on “I’m really tired actually” or “I need the toilet” when it’s already too late.  It’s equally charming and infuriating.  Her ineffectiveness sees her in a loveless relationship with skin-crawling David (Alex Macqueen – Neil’s “gay” dad from The Inbetweeners and not his first collaboration with Davis) and his terrible bump, before getting inexplicably smitten by Davis’s own character, Emma.  Its Emma’s self-serving manipulation of Sally that propels us through the seven half-hour instalments, duly escalating beyond all repair thanks to Sally’s overruled protests.  She’s all of us lost in our thirties with out-of-control lives.

Second best thing about it

Felicity Montagu is here for another great character turn with Davis, this time as Elanor, the personification of the annoying office swot.  Using her mobility chair for sympathy and privilege, Elanor’s every line is a condescending drawl that will irk you senseless before you can muster the ability to start chuckling.  From her fluffy-topped stationery to her infatuation with Nigel (Julian Barratt as the office’s most desirable chap, and that’s scraping the barrel), she’s a joy to behold, particularly when she is aiming her wonderful passive-aggression at Sally, who can barely stick up for herself.

Third best thing about it

It’s Julia Davis all over.  If you loved Nighty Night, you’ll love this.  Because it’s nearly the same thing.  Which leads me on to the negatives.

First worst thing about it

It’s the same as Nighty Night.  Instead of Jill Tyrrell chasing Angus Deayton, you’ve got Emma ruining Sally’s life.  There’s the same gentle mocking of Christianity (easy target, though), obsession with toilet humour (especially poo), delusions of sexiness, cuckolded hideous lover and many other Davis-isms, right down to the self-entitlement around fancy hot drinks, graduating from Nighty Night’s “It would be nice if someone got me a cappuccino” to Sally4ever’s “I’m just waiting for that cortado.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll continue to campaign for Davis’s national treasure status.  As a fan of anything she does, I’ll celebrate that Sally4ever is similar to Nighty Night and lap up every moment, spurning more populist trash like The Apprentice and Gogglebox.  But that enjoyment is all sadly tinged with a slight concern that this is all we’ll ever get.  But, who am I to criticise?  I currently have zero successful sitcoms against my name, and just one unsuccessful blog, so I’ll try not to be some sort of angry internet troll.  I still lolled through most of Sally4ever.

Second worst thing about it

It does sort of bumble along.  Well, why shouldn’t it?  Let’s just leave Julia alone – she’s a goddess.  Episode one sets up all the business of Sally’s dreadful relationship with David, her terrible job and ineffective performance at it (under batsh*t boss Deborah) and initial encounter with the exotic sexy promise of Emma’s alternative lifestyle.  But then episode two is just more of this.  Luckily things pick up with the introduction in the third part of Sally’s old friends who invite the new couple to dinner, throwing into contrast Sally’s meandering approach to life against the settled-down-with-kids routine.  In conclusion, neither seem very happy.  Cast as the dissatisfied husband is Seb Cardinal (from paragraph two of this very blogpost).  Clearly having too much fun playing the dad who doesn’t want to grow up, his character is easily corrupted by Emma, culminating in her sliming into a film he’s directing with an ill-gotten background role.  What unfolds on set is toe-curling in its cringeability, but what happens in the trailer afterwards will have you question everything about this production.  Well done Seb, though.  He also coped really well with my fanboying over him when I bumped into him when leaving the podcast party.  “You’re Seb Cardinal,” I said, as if pointing out useful information, “I’m a massive fan.”  Cue awkward pause before he mentioned texting Julia about getting the access code for the party and I die inside about not being cool, talented and famous.  He had liked my tweet promoting my blogpost on Cardinal Burns that very week but going into that would have just been too painful, so I’ll write about it on the internet here instead.

Third worst thing about it

I have to be honest: I would love Julia Davis to have had a West Country accent in this.  Why not just be exactly like Nighty Night?  It’s basic of me to want this, and there are plenty of funny voices to go around in Sally4ever.  It’s my issue that all I want is a third series of Nighty Night and I’ll just have to live with that.

Anyway, let’s conclude by saying that Sally4ever is one for the fans, and everyone should be a fan of Julia Davis.  But not everyone can take the unique brand of humour.  If you don’t think it’s funny to watch a graphic lesbian sex scene (played for laughs, mind you) that culminates in a soiled sanitary product being flung across a room (with no hands) then maybe you should stay in your lane.  I’m here to celebrate a strong woman in comedy, known for her creativity with language (frothy might be one of her favourite words), her casting of wonderful actors (I’ve not even gone into Pepperdine’s classic turn as nonsense therapist, Belinda) and her ability to capture perfectly our paralysis by manners.  The next time someone’s mugging you off, have a word with yourself, or you’ll end up in a situation you can’t get out of.  JuliaDavis4ever.

The Inbetweeners

Growing up a Brit can sometimes be a bit shit, but it’s also hilarious as a result.  Until The Inbetweeners came along in 2008, no show had captured this accurately.  We British teens were forced to try and translate our lives into American high schools, as that’s all there was available at the time.  The people on screen were too attractive.  They didn’t wear uniforms.  The climate looked reliably sunny.  They were played by people in their thirties.  They didn’t talk like us and so on and so forth.  I should point out this didn’t stop me watching this stuff, but then The Inbetweeners showed up and highlighted the stark contrast between US TV and UK real life: with all its ugly people, school uniforms, drizzle, awkward young people and British banter.  Sure, we only managed three series of six 30-minute episodes (plus two successful films) but that’s really what passes for a season in the UK (rather than 22 hours of mind-boggling plots that cost you the will to live).

This programme still has a special place in all of our hearts.  Not a week goes by in my adult life when someone is described as a wanker for liking something.  They might say they like hummus and get called a hummus wanker, or tell everyone what a great weekend they had in Ibiza and get called an Ibiza wanker.  Nor is an opportunity ever missed to tell someone they are being feisty in the famous structure of “Feisty one, you are.”  It applies to all adjectives – try it next time you cuss someone important at work: “Boring one, you are.”  Or “Tedious one, you are.”  The Inbetweeners’ cultural impact was huge because it represented a culture that nobody had managed to bring to screen before: the age of being in between.

At seventeen, you can just about drive.  You’re ready for adult life, but you’re probably at the same school you’ve been at since the age of eleven, when puberty might just have been a rumour that went around the changing rooms after football.  Now, adolescence is a driving force making you want to do all of the adult things (apart from work nine to five, pay taxes, talk about mortgages and get excited about mattress discussions with colleagues).  But one enormous pillar of adult life is denied to you: the legal right to buy alcohol.  Thus, you are trapped in between adulthood and childhood (and not in that Noel Clarke film, Kidulthood).  And you’re not only trapped there, you’re trapped in Britain.

The Inbetweeners revelled in such ridiculous Britishness that it almost dared itself not to get syndicated abroad (despite over 20 other countries broadcasting this glorious nonsense).  It was based in a sixth form college, after all.  Its humour came from the differences between private schools and state schools.  There was work experience.  There were Home Counties boys venturing into London.  There was detailed knowledge of British law around the sale of alcohol (including mead) to minors.  There was the college fashion show.  There was the trip to a potential university campus.  There was even the motherchuffing Duke of Edinburgh Award.  I hope that Americans went “wait, what?” just as much as we do when we hear words like valedictorian and sophomore.

Britishest of all was the humour of teenage boys.  Nobody seemed to have realised that the way we/they talk to each other is disgusting.  I’ve left the pronoun undetermined as I still do this with most of my male friends.  And most of the female ones.  And colleagues.  Especially colleagues, actually.  Anything could be laughed about.  Any insult could be brushed off.  It was only once things had really gone too far that you could finally see you had crossed the line, though you couldn’t in fact see the line as it was about hundred miles behind you.  Let’s look at some of the most disgusting things that were said and revel in the fact that, no matter what we claim, we’re still amused by potty mouths and toilet humour.  My dad, for example, still believes there is nothing funnier than a fart.  Any passing wind in any form of media (and, sadly, real life) will guarantee a LOL from my father.  Why resist it?  Life’s too hard not to laugh at nonsense:

Jay’s dead hand

Jay hears that if you cut off the blood to your own hand by sitting on it, you can trick yourself into thinking a third party’s hand is tugging you off when you are, in fact, masturbating.  However, it’s not ideal if you need to slam your laptop shut when your family barge in and porn moans are being broadcast at full volume into your room…

Any time Jay talks about female physiology

Up to your nuts in guts just conjures such powerful imagery.

Simon talking dirty

Everything he did was beyond cringe, mostly as it was visually punctuated by the most dated gelled quiff ever seen on TV, but no dirty talk for me has ever surpassed “I’m going to fuck your fucking fanny off, you twat.”

Simon’s London shoes

We’ve all been turned away from a terrible nightclub for wearing trainers, but how many of us have paid a tramp to swap shoes with us?  Simon lost £20 but gained a pair of urine-drenched shoes that got him in, but ensured no girl would come near him.  It reminded me of a time a friend was sick in my trainer overnight on a camping trip and I had to travel back to London from rural Wales the next day with only a plastic bag between my sock and chunks of his half-digested burger and chips.  Yes, I really was an inbetweener.  Incidentally, it was a toss-up between this and Simon’s testicle hanging out at the fashion show.

Will’s first exam

He poos his pants.  Tee hee.

It’s this comedy gold that saw the viewership of The Inbetweeners grow from around 400,000 in the first series to a peak of 3.72m for the third – not bad for e4’s first UK commission.  Clearly, word of mouth spread amongst “fwends” that this wasn’t to be missed.  But the gross-outs were complemented by more subtle observations, such as Simon’s hatred for his parents, even though they were totally chilled about everything he wanted to do, or Jay’s genuinely hurt feelings each time his dad bullied him.  Even now, I cannot resist a re-run if I’m ever left with ten spare minutes before bed time.  I always forget how much I can’t abide the headmaster, Mr Gilbert, but then I’m always happy to be reminded of the music of Kate Nash, whose song Foundations seems to score almost every scene transition in series one.

Ah, sixth form.  Don’t take me back.