South Park: W.T.F.

One thing I've always admired about South Park is how it's capable of running in a completely absurd direction with a plot and sustaining it for the duration of an entire episode. As cultural commentary, this series has a singular angle on the stuff that fills our TV's, movie theaters and iPods. On any other show, it just wouldn't be possible to spend a solid twenty minutes on what is essentially one joke, and usually a pretty esoteric joke at that. This week's episode turned its sights on the world of professional wrestling, a strand of entertainment that is itself so over the top and absurd that it's practically a punchline in itself. South Park's stab was, however, still pretty unique.

It takes all of two minutes of show time for the boys to form their own backyard wrestling league after attending a WWE event in Denver. They invent wild personas and start scripting their fights, but when they sign up for wrestling classes at school they discover, as many a disappointed child has, that real wrestling involves far fewer pyrotechnic displays and a lot more mounting of other young men. The episode decides to be blunt about the wrestling = gay jokes, if only because that's the way actual kids would see it. Thankfully, the school wrestling coach isn't some child molester, he's just the last man on Earth who takes classical Greek-style "wrasslin'" seriously.

The boys promptly quit the school wrestling team and what follows can basically be broken down into a logical equation:

Professional Wrestling is Theater

Theater is Effete

Professional Wrestling is Stupid

Hicks Like Professional Wrestling

Therefore, Hicks are Effete and Stupid

If it weren't for the sheer amount of style the episode puts into the theatrical parallels of the backyard wrestling league, I'd say the sentiment was a little ham-fisted. It was pretty funny watching the boys evolve into makeup-wearing theater queens and the tobacco-chewing audience start to drink red wine at the shows. Only South Park could pull this off and the aesthetic was just perfect.

At this point in the series, it's assumed that most viewers have been watching long enough to appreciate inside jokes. Really, the last few minutes of this episode was more of a cavalcade of self-references than a proper conclusion. Still, I'm never going to get sick of the "they took our jobs!" bit and I appreciated the most recent death of Kenny (en espanol, no less). South Park, like The Simpsons, has really been around too long to do anything new or stunning. It exists for the fans more than anybody.

Despite murdering a kid with a rocket launcher, the downtrodden wrestling coach gets a happy ending when WWE president Vince McMahon offers him a slot in his company. And thus the theater cliche plot is complete. Brava, South Park. Brava.

Best Moment: The last dressing room scene. Cartman popping out in a purple bra and wig net was priceless.

Biggest Laugh: After so many years, "They took his job!" "Dey tur b'dur!" is still hilarious.

Episode Rating: 4/5- It was an unusually loving lampoon episode and I like what they did with it. Not the funniest of the season, but still pretty good.