"More Crap (South Park)", 10-10-2007

It's hard to believe that "South Park" has been on the air for ten years. The style of the humor hasn't changed because the original writers, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, are still writing stories and are still fairly funny.

The reason I don't follow "South Park" that closely is that "South Park" episodes are strictly hit and miss. Either Parker and Stone manage to come up with something almost divinely inspired (for example "Le Petit Tourette", when Cartman decides to fake Tourette's Syndrome, believing it will give him an excuse to curse nonstop), or they go for raunch and fall flat on their faces.

This time, they fell on their face. "More Crap" is an episode that doesn't require much comment. The father of Kyle, Randy March, hasn't gone to the bathroom for three weeks. When he finally manages to pass a bowel movement, he is impressed with its size and decides to show it to the guys at the local bar.

He believes that he might be the world record holder for biggest crap, but to his chagrin (and everyone's relief), the Guinness organization does not keep track of that record. Instead, Mr. March is referred to the European Fecal Standards and Measurements Board in Switzerland, which sadly informs Mr. March that the holder of this dubious record is none other than legendary singer/philanthropist Bono.

March is depressed, and drowns his sorrows at the local bar. His barrmates cheer him up by telling him that he came close to breaking the record, without really even trying. He might be able to beat the record if he....trained for it.

And so it goes. I won't spoil the episode for you if you haven't seen it, but be warned...there is a lot of fecal matter here, and not just in the writing. "South Park", which has never flinched from the gross-out, provides its readers with some very large animated fecal matter, the type that does not dance and save Christmas, so be forewarned.

One fault of "More Crap" is that, not unlike "The Simpsons" and the most recent "Family Guy, the show flags the minute the attention turns away from the major characters. I have to protest that I never really found Randy Marsh all that compelling, world record crap or not. Kenny is much more interesting than Randy Marsh, and he doesn't even speak!

Of course, there are the drive-by shots at pop culture. Along with Bono being roundly mocked, we learn that the measurement of fecal mass is a "Couric" (after Katie Couric) and that Randy gets his "talent" by consistently eating at P. F. Chang's, a franchise Chinese restaurant. Rather than say anything really thought-provoking, I suppose Parker and Stone wanted the world to know how much they disliked Bono, Couric, and P. F. Chang's. "We get it already. Stop trying", as Kyle might say.

The other major fault is the "let's beat the joke to death" philosophy. It's a tired trope of modern comedy, where a bad joke is repeated with multiple variations in the hopes that one will either laugh from a) fatigue, or b) in admiration of the performers' persistence. In a recent episode of "Family Guy" -- "Movin' Out (Brian's Song)", Chris Griffin and another character have a long conversation about films -- a looooooooonnnnnnnng conversation -- that brings the comedy to a screeching halt and makes me want to horsewhip Seth Green to within an inch of his life.

Thus, more jokes about Bono are repeated in an effort to force the viewer into giving up a chuckle. This Bono-bash builds up to a gross out moment that evokes disgust more than it does humor. (Matt and Trey seem absolutely convinced that all guys do is talk about what large bowel movements they've had. I don't think I've ever had that kind of conversation with a dude, and if I did, I wouldn't brag about it.)

There is a running gag where a window pops up at the bottom of the screen reminding the viewers that South Park is an Emmy-winning comedy, which is used at the end to underline the incongruity between what one believes to be an Emmy-winning comedy and the huge load one is seeing on the screen. I suppose that Matt and Trey wanted to remind us that Emmy-winning comedies can occasionally produce a clunker, in this case, a gold-plated clunker weighing several Courics. Hopefully, with this episode out of their...uh...system, they'll do better next time.