DVD Review: South Park - The Complete 12th Season

Unlike other animated sitcoms that have made it to the season 12 milestone, South Park remains in its prime. If anything, the show seems to keep getting better with time and the twelfth season is rather exceptional in that, while some episodes were clearly better than others, there's not a single unworthwhile clunker in the mix.

Topics covered in the twelfth season include timely plotlines surrounding the 2008 presidential election, the writers' strike, the Olympic opening ceremonies in China, High School Musical 3, an upsurge in interest in vampires stemming from the popularity of Twilight, and YouTube sensations like "Chocolate Rain."

South Park has become known for pouncing on hot topics during their peak (due largely to the fact that the show is produced over the course of the week before it airs), but their episode "About Last Night..." took that timeliness to new heights by broadcasting the very next day after the election a full story about Barack Obama and his first actions as president-elect. In a clever Ocean's Eleven spoof, the show reveals the whole election to be a cover for the biggest diamond heist in U.S. history, playfully including McCain and Palin in the plan.

South Park is also known for pulling no punches when it comes to pushing the boundaries of good taste and relishes dealing with content no other broadcast television program dares to touch in a comedic manner. For example, season 12 opens with Cartman going into the hospital for a routine tonsillectomy and ending up contracting the HIV virus. Seeing Kyle (whom Cartman is always pushing around) enjoying Cartman's bad karma catching up to him, a furious Cartman takes some of his own blood and injects it into Kyle while he sleeps. The comedy stems from the fact that when Kyle tells everyone what Cartman did, he gets in the same amount of trouble for tattling on Cartman as Cartman does for deliberately giving him AIDS.

Article Author: Sombrero Grande

This writer is a member of The Masked Movie Snobs, a collective that fights a never-ending battle against bad entertainment.

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