DVD Review: South Park: The Complete Seventeenth Season (USA, 2014)

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When you realise South Park is on its eighteenth season, it kind of boggles the mind. Not just because it makes you feel old – but because (at least in my case) you realise that you’ve actually been watching it for the last eighteen years. A show that started out full of little more than fart jokes and killing Kenny – that I would sneak over to friends houses to watch – is not only still on TV but is still funny, and if the recent Lorde episode is to go by – people still give a shit, too. So either South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have grown up with us or we still just have the humour of ten year olds. Either way, I’m enjoying the experience.

This past week, the seventeenth season arrived in Australia on DVD – notably slimmer than its predecessors with one less disc, two instead of three. Yes, the Seventeenth Season of South Park saw a few firsts in the series history. Firstly, it was the first time Matt and Trey changed the way they released episodes of the series since Season 8, from which 7 episodes were released twice a year (March and October). As of last year, the duo moved things to one ten episode block. Meaning we’d get more South Park at once, but would have to wait a lot longer between drinks.

In between the seasons this allowed the creators to travel their Musical production The Book of Mormon around the world and finish work on their long awaited video game The Stick of Truth – which in between season 17 and 18 served as something of a mini-season in itself, for those lucky enough to play it. Indeed, the end of Season 17 serves as an epic precursor to the game – another first for the series. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

One of my favourite things about the DVD releases of South Park is the fact that we get to hear (finally) from Trey and Matt about the release, reaction and creation of each of their episodes via their “Mini-Commentaries”. They make it pretty obvious they hate doing it, so almost never do it for more than five minutes an episode, but for fans it adds a new element to the culturally relevant show and insight into “why they did what they did” and so on. Also, it’s just downright funny. It’s worth the purchase alone. You’ll also get a few deleted scenes, though given how quickly they put these shows together, not much really does end up on the cutting room floor – but there is the odd entertaining scene here and there.

Why I bring up these special features now is because through the commentary, Matt and Trey let us in on what it was like coming back to South Park after their longest break ever: almost a year. And it was clear they found it difficult, with almost too much material to work with from the world of politics, pop culture and general current affairs. But in a season which was a bit hit-and-miss, they started strongly with “Let Go, Let Gov”, which though it seemed topical for the sake of it – making up for lost time as it were – had some excellent moments, from Alec Baldwin submitting his thoughts to the world (and Eric Cartman) and Butter’s DMV religion.

“Informative Murder Porn” followed, which blends two topics together that are otherwise completely unrelated – something Matt and Trey have always been brilliant at doing – in this case the phenomenon of Minecraft and Crime Investigation series that the boys class as “Informative Murder Porn”. The Minecraft animation was brilliant and it helped make the episode one of the best of the season. Things got political again for “World War Zimmerman” which brought World War Z together with Cartman’s epic racism and the scandal involving George Zimmerman. It was an episode that the creators admitted probably wouldn’t be funny if you hadn’t seen World War Z, but honestly struggled even then – but then again, I find episodes focusing on Cartman to get a bit much.

I mentioned that the series enjoyed a lot of firsts. Another of these was the fact that it was the first in the show’s 17 year history to have an episode miss its deadline thanks to a power outage. And everyone by now should know the fact they pretty much finish an episode the same day it goes to air. On that episode, Matt and Trey talk at lengths in the commentary about what they whole experience was like:

“The famous power outage episode. After 240 or so episodes… we actually missed an air date. It really felt sad. Something you’d accomplished for 17 years, you finally didn’t.” They take us through all their feeble attempts to get the show up in time, from getting generators from a local film shoot… but admitted they were so behind they were fucked no matter what they did, and that they were so far behind, more so than other weeks, it actually did them a favour. “We actually do this show so close to (deadline) that if we lose 8 or 10 hours on a Tuesday (the show airs on a Wednesday in the US), we can’t make it”. This was for the episode Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers, and though it was a great episode for everyone who loves the Goth Kids (and the new opening sequence wins out as one of the best ever), the commentary doesn’t go on to talk about its brilliance. Five minutes, time to move on!

“Taming Strange” and “Ginger Cow” were both entertaining, but it was the trilogy of episodes that kicked off with “Black Friday” that the series will be remembered for. The last time they did a trilogy with was with “Imaginationland” episodes back in Season 11, which remain among my favourite of all time (the song they sing to get into Imaginationland remains probably the hardest I’ve ever laughed in the series). The episode ties in the madness of Black Friday sales in America, with the ridiculousness of George R.R. Martin’s series Game of Thrones’ lack of dragons and predominance of penises (the Penis song wasn’t quite Imaginationland though still amazing). And it also served as a precursor for The Stick of Truth video game, which Butters literally promotes at the end of all the madness. It was a great run and a reminder how great Matt and Trey can be when they have the ability to really delve into an idea. It also makes us hope that there’ll be another South Park movie one day. Surely that will be the way they say goodbye to the series?

Though one might have suggested the series should have ended with the climactic finale of “Titties and Dragons”, we still had one episode left – and surprisingly it was a great one. “The Hobbit” saw South Park follow Seth Rogen and James Franco’s lead and parody Kanye’s terrible music video for “Bound 2”, bringing back our favourite gay fish to try and prove to the world that he’s not dating a Hobbit. In case you didn’t realise, they’re talking about Kim Kardashian. An excellent way to bring the series to an end, in typically politically incorrect, celebrity offending manner. It’s when they shine the brightest.

Eighteen years. What an incredible accomplishment. And still being relevant after all that time? That’s a lot more we can say for The Simpsons. Does that make it the greatest animated series of all time? Perhaps time will tell, but I’m leaning towards a “yes” at this stage.

On that note, I’ll leave the last word to Trey and Matt, who had this to say about the episode “Taming Strange”, “Whenever there are Canadians, we still love it… even Seventeen years ago when we thought Terrance and Philip was funny and no one else did, we still think that Canadian shit’s funny”. So have we grown up at all? Probably not.

Review Score: FOUR AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)

South Park: The Complete Seventeenth Season (UNCUT) is available now on DVD in Australia through Paramount Home Entertainment. The Eighteenth season is currently screening on Sundays on SBS2 – a few days after it airs in the US.

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Larry Heath

Founding Editor and Publisher of the AU review. Currently based in Toronto, Canada. You can follow him on Twitter @larry_heath or on Instagram @larryheath.