Parker, Trey

South Park - The Complete Third Season

The third time's the, for want of a better word, charm for South Park on DVD. Instead of mere episode intros as on the first two boxed sets, Trey Parker and Matt Stone finally oblige us with actual episode commentary, or, as they call it, "commentary-mini." On this optional audio track, Trey and Matt goof for about five minutes or so at the top of each episode, certifying some as favorites ("Tweek vs. Craig," "Jewbilee," and "Worldwide Recorder Concert," which is described as "a reverse after-school special from hell"), championing others popularly dismissed by South Park's otherwise loyal fans ("Jakovasaurs," "Sexual Harassment Panda"), and provocatively dismissing all of season 2.

The third season was frantically produced simultaneously with the feature film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. This was the season, Trey proclaims, "where South Park turned the corner... and became good (as far as we were concerned)." Among their most inspired conceits is the so-called "Meteor Shower Party" trilogy, three episodes that unfold over the course of one night, each focusing on a different kid. "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery" pays homage to Hanna-Barbera-style animation and Scooby-Doo, recasting Korn as the Mystery Inc gang. "Rainforest Shmainforest," featuring a game Jennifer Aniston, cuts rainforest crusaders down to size. "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" takes its irreverent cue from the album of the same name, and contains an outrageously obscure reference to the 1978 made-for-TV Star Wars Holiday Special. Throughout the season, South Park is, as usual, a gleeful equal-opportunity offender, but the show's true gonzo spirit is truly illustrated in such surreal touches as the employment of live action in "Tweek vs. Craig," the singing of "The Morning After" backwards to save Chef from the spell of "The Succubus," and the Seinfeld-worthy argument over whether the term should be "pirate ghosts" or "ghost pirates" in "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery." --Donald Liebenson

South Park - The Complete First Season

South Park exploded on the pop culture landscape like a dirty bomb in 1997, and the 13 episodes that comprise the groundbreaking first season have lost none of their subversive impact. If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, then South Park is a show about everything, from important moral lessons in compassion and tolerance to good old-fashioned animated character assassination (Kathie Lee Gifford in "Weight Gain 4000" and Barbra Streisand in "Mecha-Streisand"). Like an After School Special gone quite mad, profanity-spewing third-graders Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and the ill-fated Kenny navigate childhood in their mountain town. Nothing in South Park is sacred, and each episode has something to offend, from "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" (featuring George Clooney as the voice of Sparky, the homosexual dog), to the Halloween episode "Pink Eye," in which Cartman dresses up as Adolph Hitler. Best not to even get started on Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Pooh, or the season finale cliffhanger, "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut."

Each episode is preceded by a faux introduction by creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who proclaim every episode to be their favorite. Their incarnations as Rootin'-Tootin' Trey Parker and Pistol-Slingin' Matt Stone indicate that after South Park runs its course, they'd be great hosts of their own children's show, which--and this cannot be stressed strongly enough--South Park is not. Other extras include the South Park boys' appearance on the CableAce awards and "A South Park Thanksgiving," featuring Jay Leno, which aired exclusively on The Tonight Show. A minor annoyance is the slapdash packaging that mislabels the episodes ("Damien," for example, is on disc 3, not 2 as indicated). --Donald Liebenson

South Park - The Complete Fourth Season

In the episode "Chef Goes Nanners," Cartman is left standing alone in the snow after Wendy blithely proclaims her improbable attraction for him to has suddenly vanished. Cartman heaves a heavy sigh, and exits Chaplinesque stage right. But any concerns that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone had gone soft, or that Cartman would undergo a more sympathetic, Louie De Palma-like makeover are abated in nearly every other episode of South Park's pivotal fourth season. From the "downright immature" trashing of Phil Collins (whose "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan had emerged victorious Oscar night over Parker and Stone's "Blame Canada") to an episode in which Cartman becomes the unwitting poster child for NAMBLA, South Park gave its viewers much shock value for its basic cable dollar. This was the season that introduced the show's most unlikely breakout star, the wheelchair-bound Timmy, who, despite being only able to say his own name (or perhaps because of it), carried the pathos in his own holiday special, "Helen Keller! The Musical." This was the season in which Parker and Stone somehow were able to comment with Daily Show immediacy on the Elian Gonzales incident ("Quintuplets 2000") and the presidential election debacle ("Trapper Keeper") within days of the actual events. This was the season in which other "statement shows" skewered the South Carolina confederate flag controversy ("Chef Goes Nanners") and hate-crime legislation ("Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000"). This was also the season in which the South Park kids graduated to the fourth grade, we got a harrowing look inside Cartman's brain ("Helen Keller!"), and estranged lovers Saddam Hussein and Satan were reunited (in a two-parter, no less!).

Episodes not appreciated in their time can now be seen with fresh eyes. "Pip," hosted by Malcolm McDowell, and featuring none of the South Park regulars, is a faithful abridgement of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, monkey robots notwithstanding. As in the season 3 set, Parker and Stone provide brief, "fun-size commentary" that address their censorship skirmishes with Comedy Central and illuminate the inspiration and backstory for each episode. To quote the pro-commercialism holiday episode, "A Very Krappy Christmas," "If we all buy presents, everyone benefits." For South Park fans, this boxed set is an excellent start. --Donald Liebenson

South Park - The Complete Ninth Season

All fourteen episodes from South Park s infamous ninth season are now available for the first time in this exclusive 3-disc collector s set. This season features Kenny s epic battle between heaven and hell uprising of redheads and adventures surrounding a certain closet. For these boys it s all part of growing up in South Park!System Requirements:Run Time: 300 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097368509641 Manufacturer No: 850964

A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere. The tiny mountain town of South Park, Colorado has proven that beyond a doubt for the last eight seasons. Fortunately for fans of this Comedy Central pillar, series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker obviously had no lack of ideas for their ninth season. Over the course of fourteen episodes, Mr. Garrison gets a sex change, Cartman thwarts a hippie music festival that threatens to destroy the town, the boys (Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny) start a talent agency, Kenny leads angelic forces in an epic battle against Satan's minions at the gates of heaven, and the boys become really bad at losing at baseball. And that's just the first half of the season. The most notable episode from this season is definitely the controversial "Trapped in the Closet," where Stan is "recognized" as the reincarnation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and a dejected Tom Cruise locks himself in Stan's closet. Naturally, over the course of the episode, TV reporters get to decry that "Tom Cruise still won't come out of the closet." It's funny enough on its own, but when John Travolta and R. Kelly end up in the closet as well (all singing together "Now I'm trapped in the closet. I'm trapped in the closet too"), that's worth the price of the set on its own.

After nine seasons it's also nice to see that one of the series key running gags, the perpetual cluelessness of the adults, still isn't getting old. It's as if the adult townspeople only know how to behave based on movies they've seen (this season's cinematic targets include Rocky (in "The Losing Edge"), The Day After Tomorrow ("Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow"), and Pet Cemetery ("Marjorine"), and their inevitably clichéd over-reactions still provide many of the show's best moments. The commentaries from Parker and Stone are once again typically short; they usually last only a few minutes into each show before they end it with "Ok, onto the next show now" not even trying to conceal that they really want to get through the recording session as quickly as possible. That might seem lame on other shows, but on South Park--a show where 8-year-olds send a talking killer whale to the moon through the Mexican Space Agency for $200,--somehow it's totally fitting. --Daniel Vancini

Stills from South Park: The Complete Ninth Season (click for larger image)

South Park - The Complete Seventh Season

What began as a construction-paper film short evolved into a veritable pop-culture phenomenon for Trey Parker and Matt Stone's outrageous animated comedy series SOUTH PARK. Centered on the hilarious misadventures of four potty-mouthed grade-schoolers in the perpetually wintry environs of South Park Colorado the series skewers the vagaries of the modern American cultural landscape with politically incorrect humor and satirical plotlines ranging from homophobia and terrorism to boy bands and talking poo. This collection presents every episode from the series' seventh season.System Requirements:Running Time: 374 MInFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097368891449 Manufacturer No: 889144

There is nothing in South Park's seventh season to offend Tom Cruise (nothing about Scientology, at any rate; that will come in season 9). However, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, Rob Reiner, the Queer Eye guys, Christopher Reeve (!), war supporters and anti-war protesters, and Mormons, do not get off so easy. But, "Who cares?" as the townspeople sing in "I'm a Little Bit Country." What matters is that with this particular episode, South Park attained the precious, syndication-ready 100-episode mark! Another milestone: "Raisins," in which Wendy breaks up with Stan, who falls under the influence of the "Goth kids" ("If you want to be one of the non-comformists, all you have to do is dress just like us and listen to the same music we do").

Even by South Park standards, season 7 is pretty hardcore. In "Christian Rock Hard," Cartman is so determined to attain platinum album status before Kyle and his band that he forms a Christian rock group. The band's repertoire makes Tom Lehrer's once-scandalous "Vatican Rag" sound like "Oh, Happy Day." But mostly, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone take Cheney-like potshots at pop-culture notables. In "South Park Is Gay!", we discover what is really behind the "metrosexual" phenomenon and the true identity of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy quartet. In "Butt Out," Rob Reiner is portrayed as a corpulent goo-filled "fascist" willing to the sanction murder (of Cartman) to further his anti-"Big Tobacco" agenda. As you can guess from the title, "Fat Butt and Pancake Head" is a merciless deconstruction of "Bennifer," as Cartman's Jennifer Lopez hand puppet dethrones the real thing, and attracts the amorous attention of Ben Affleck. "All About Mormons" anticipates the Scientology episode, "Trapped in the Closet" (not included here, and if lawyers have anything to say about it, might not be included in a season 9 set, either) with a straight-faced musical dramatization of the Joseph Smith story. "Everyone thought we were making stuff up to be funny," Parker and Stone relate in their mini commentary (optional for each episode). "But we're not. We're not making this stuff up in this show." Which is perhaps why the episode "Cancelled," which posits that Earth exists only as reality-TV fodder for aliens, doesn't seem so farfetched. --Donald Liebenson

South Park - The Complete Second Season

Now that enough time has lapsed, we can all have a good laugh over South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone's amusing little April Fools prank, in which they kicked off the show's second season not with the conclusion to season one's cliffhanger that would reveal the identity of Cartman's father, but with an all-Terrance, all-Phillip, all-farting episode, "Not Without My Anus." The ensuing outcry illustrated just how seriously its devoted fans take South Park. There is little evidence of sophomore slump in this three-disc collection of 18 episodes that continue the coming-of-age trials of third graders Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny. There is considerable shock value just in the episode titles alone, among them "Cojoined Fetus Lady," "Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson," and the infamous "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut." But mostly, the episodes are just--in Cartman's words--hella funny. "Spookyfish" is a creepfest about a killer fish, possessed animals, and alien alter egos (in which the so-called Evil Cartman is much nicer than the real Cartman) presented in Spookyvision, with pictures of Barbra Streisand framing the screen. "Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls" is a hilarious send-up of the Sundance Film Festival and the indie film scene that marks the return of Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, and ends with the burial of Robert Redford in excrement.

As always, hard-earned life lessons provide South Park with fertile territory for skewed and subversive social commentary. In "Chicken Lover," Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is an argument against literacy. "Underwear Gnomes" makes a strong case for corporate takeover of local family business. It is difficult to respect Warner Bros.' "authoritah" with the scant DVD extras. There are no commentaries, but Parker and Stone are present to introduce most of the episodes, each of which they proclaim to be their favorite. But their incarnations as abusive retirement center entertainers and as the hosts of an all-bacon cooking show fall flat. Bring back Rootin'-Tootin' Trey Parker and Pistol-Slingin' Matt Stone from the Season One set! --Donald Liebenson

South Park - The Complete Eighth Season

All fourteen episodes from South Park s out-of-control eighth season are now available for the first time in this exclusive 3-disc collector s set. Stan Kyle Kenny and Cartman find themselves in the middle of hot-button political issues and celebrity shenanigans. Season eight is capped off with a very special Christmas episode done in the way only South Park does Christmas! For these four boys it s all part of growing up in South Park!System Requirements:Runtime: 308 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 097368897946 Manufacturer No: 889794

To quote Bad Day at Black Rock, a man is as big as what'll make him mad. By this criteria, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are giants. Fanaticism of any stripe, steroids, vapid pop culture icons marketed as role models for impressionable youth, and mass merchants encroaching on small town life are just some of the hot button issues tackled in South Park's eighth season. Of course, South Park is not above (or beneath) stooping to conquer, as witness "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset," which climaxes in a "whore-off" featuring--you guessed it--Paris Hilton. Sure, Paris is an easy target, as is Michael Jackson (portrayed in the episode "The Jeffersons" not as a child molester, but as an infantile parent who needs to grow up). But just as a segment of the population tunes in to The Daily Show to get Jon Stewart and company's satirical take on the day's news, so do South Park fans eagerly await Parker and Stone's perspective on the zeitgeist. Which brings us to the season's most infamous episode, "The Passion of the Jew," in which Kyle is devastated by Mel Gibson's brutalizing epic, Cartman is transformed into Gibson's Hitlerian apostle, and an unimpressed Stan and Kenny try in vain to get their money back from Gibson himself, a loony toon with a penchant for torture. And while Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction is old news, South Park's response, "Good Times with Weapons," remains a relevant satire of misplaced parental priorities, not to mention an anime-stylized tour-de-force in which the boys purchase martial arts weapons at a county fair and imagine themselves as ninja warriors.

In one of Stone and Parker's candid mini-commentaries, available as a listening option on each episode, the duo grade this season a B+. Give them extra credit, then, for such seriously (or hilariously) twisted episodes as the one (whose title cannot be printed here) that sends up the film You Got Served, and the instant holiday classic "Woodland Critter Christmas," with its Satan-worshiping forest creatures, and a brilliant surprise ending that echoes Chuck Jones's classic cartoon Duck Amuck, in which the unseen animator tormenting poor Daffy is revealed to be none other than Bugs "Ain't I a stinker?" Bunny. --Donald Liebenson

South Park - The Complete Sixth Season

The quiet little mountain town of South Park, Colorado enters its sixth season as America's weirdest and most dysfunctional town, and if you thought that title was already claimed by Springfield, I have one word for you: Lemmiwinks. If you thought it couldn't get any weirder, this season will prove you wrong. But the good news is that South Park has always been able to maintain a mathematical-like balance of proportionality so impressive it could be charted on a graph: as South Park gets weirder, so it gets funnier (usually). Which makes sense because one of South Park's greatest strengths has always been to reflect the strangest elements of society, which, let's face it, are pretty strange. Targets this season include exploitive daytime TV shows ("Freak Strike"), celebrities gone wild (Russell Crowe fightin' round the world), the Catholic priest sexual-abuse scandals ("Red Hot Catholic Love"), and the meat industry ("Fun With Veal"). Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker even parody the reality of competing with The Simpsons's longevity in "The Simpsons Already Did It," where Butters, gone out of his mind and in his Professor Chaos persona, can't even come up with an original evil scheme to unleash on the citizens of South Park. Fortunately for fans, the quality of the writing is as strong this season as it has been at any point in the show's run, and it's not like the show's going to back off from its trademark gross-out factor at this point. Proof of that can be found in "The Death Camp of Tolerance." In an extreme satire of sex education class, Mr. Slave and Lemmiwinks, the heroic and intensely unfortunate gerbil, make their, umm, debuts. In South Park, this is what qualifies as a normal school day. Taken as a whole, Season Six is one of the show's strongest punches yet to the face of a society that had it coming. --Daniel Vancini

Sit back and enjoy all 17 episodes of the sixth season of the show that makes you laugh your @$$ off, now available for the first time in this exclusive 3-disc collector's edition. This season tackles such issues as child abduction, animal rights and early mammary development and its effects on society. Also, Cartman wears a dress on national television and Butters goes out of his mind. For them, it's all part of growing up in South Park.

South Park - Bigger, Longer & Uncut

Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman sneak into an R-rated movie and it warps their fragile little minds. Soon their indignant parents declare war on Canada and our young heroes are America's last hope to stop Armageddon.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 24-JUN-2003
Media Type: DVD

OK, let's get all the disclaimers out of the way first. Despite its colorful (if crude) animation, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is in no way meant for kids. It is chock full of profanity that might even make Quentin Tarantino blanch and has blasphemous references to God, Satan, Saddam Hussein (who's sleeping with Satan, literally), and Canada. It's rife with scatological humor, suggestive sexual situations, political incorrectness, and gleeful, rampant vulgarity. And it's probably one of the most brilliant satires ever made. The plot: flatulent Canadian gross meisters Terrance and Philip hit the big screen, and the South Park quartet of third graders--Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman--begin repeating their profane one-liners ad infinitum. The parents of South Park, led by Kyle's overbearing mom, form "Mothers Against Canada," blaming their neighbors to the north for their children's corruption and taking Terrance and Philip as war prisoners. It's up to the kids then to rescue their heroes from execution, not mention a brooding Satan, who's planning to take over the world.

To give away any more of the plot would destroy the fun, but this feature-length version of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Comedy Central hit is a dead-on and hilarious send-up of pop culture. And did we mention it's a musical? From the opening production number "Mountain Town" to the cheerful antiprofanity sing-along "It's Easy, MMMKay" to Satan's faux-Disney ballad "Up There," Parker (who wrote or cowrote all the songs) brilliantly shoots down every earnest musical from Beauty and the Beast to Les Misérables. And in advocating free speech and satirizing well-meaning but misguided parental censorship groups (with a special nod to the MPAA), Bigger, Longer & Uncut hits home against adult paranoia and hypocrisy with a vengeance. And the jokes, while indeed vulgar and gross, are hysterical; we can't repeat them here, especially the lyrics to Terrance and Philip's hit song, but you'll be rolling on the floor. Don't worry, though--to paraphrase Cartman, this movie won't warp your fragile little mind. Unless you have something against the First Amendment. --Mark Englehart

South Park - The Passion of the Jew

Where else but on South Park will you find irreverent comedy as scathingly hilarious as "The Passion of the Jew"? Premiering just one month after The Passion of the Christ was released in theaters, this typically outrageous episode tore into Mel Gibson's film with characteristic glee, ruthlessly condemning Gibson's courtship of controversy and depicting Gibson as a raving, greedy, egotistical lunatic (recalling the classic first season episode "Mecha-Streisand") while promoting a fair-minded appreciation of Christ's teachings over the relentless violence of Gibson's film. Perfectly playing off established character conflicts, the episode pits Mel-worshipping Cartman (who embraces Gibson's alleged anti-Semitism to justify his own homespun Nazi revival) against Kyle, who is traumatized by Gibson's film into feeling guilty about his own Jewish heritage. Never ones to flinch from taboo topics or political correctness, series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone outdid themselves with this amazingly rapid response to Gibson's film, and it's destined to rank as an all-time South Park classic. Likewise, the bonus episodes "Christian Rock Hard" (from 2003) and "Red Hot Catholic Love" (from 2002) tackle the commercialism of Christian music (as deviously exploited by Cartman) and the news-making controversy of sexual misconduct among Catholic priests, which somehow manages to incorporate a scatological sub-plot about the marvels of "interorectogestion," answering the age-old question of... well, you'll just have to watch to find out. Suggested for mature viewers only--this is South Park, after all! --Jeff Shannon

Join the "South Park" gang in SOUTH PARK: THE PASSION OF THE JEW as Kyle finally sees The Passion and is forced to admit that Cartman has been right all along. Meanwhile, many of the hardcore fans of the film unite together to carry out the film's message under the leadership of Cartman. In the bonus episode "Christian Rock Hard," Cartman, Butters and Token form a Christian rock band and rise to the top of the Christian rock charts with their own messages of faith. The second bonus episode, "Red Hot Catholic Love," centers around a trip to the Vatican and enduring real-life challenges of a video game from 1982.