*1701: Let Go, Let Gov* Post-Air Discussion

[stevesut1]

Nice one.

[Mamont]

Nice way to open a season.

Butters' story was good. Butters' praying to the government and converting Jehovah's Witnesses was priceless.

As for Cartman's part, well, after a while, I was waiting for Kyle to rip the phone from his hand and smash it on the ground.

Definitely! I was expecting a little bit more from Kyle, then to be a passive bystander, even when Cartman accused him of being a NSA agent.

Alec Baldwin part was okay. For some reason I laughed at the scene where he tries to use a fork without thumbs.

I loved the Santa part and the ending.

Also:
"This is the DMV. There will be no joy here."

[Matt E]

To me, this episode was less about the NSA than about tech bloggers. Cartman was playing the role of an early adopter, sort of like Robert Scobol (joining shitter, talking loud on the phone, broadcasting all of his thoughts, etc). The point of the episode wasn't that the NSA is great, but that everyone is concerned about their privacy, but meanwhile posts everything up on Facebook anyway. The loudest anti-NSA voices have, since the beginning of this scandal, been the same people who join shitter and talk loudly on their cellphones. That's why I think this episode wasn't written by a PR guy in Fort Meed.

Overall, this was a good episode. Not stellar, but good. I think we'll have to wait to see whether this season produces any timeless material.

[JamesPup]

I liked the part with Cartman and the Chief going to the guys house to investigate him for tweeting about bombing a memorial, it was just like Dragnet. I could have used more of Cartman working for the NSA and investigating people on car trips, that was my favorite part. I felt like Santa was rushed into the end and I wanted to see Santa be freed. The new intro theme was good but I wanted to see everybody better at the end of it and they are blurred out of vision.

[UhhIDontKnow]

Well Cartman didn't help his own cause, broadcasting his phone calls as if he were a radio DJ. What NSA agent wouldn't be aware of this if he were around Cartman? Cartman worrying over the NSA spying on him without realizing his own part in making it possible.

That's definitely something this episode pointed fun at. People being so offended at the NSA for violating their privacy when they are putting practically everything they think on the internet already - and making their phone calls public with the speakerphones.

First impression was that this was a pretty good episode, need to watch it again to see how it holds up. Feels like a 8/10 type, not a total classic but still very good.

[caspianrex]

Not bad. I liked the concept, and there were definitely several funny lines. ("Hey square, haven't you heard of the Constitution?/ Yeah, and I've also heard of the Declaration of Independence.") And the reveal of Santa hooked up to the supercomputer, as the method of finding out who was a security thought was a nice twist.

I do wonder if maybe Cartman and Butters are becoming too prominent, giving short shrift to some of the other characters. (When was the last time we saw Mr. Mackey, Mr. Garrison, or Principal Victoria?)

[Lyon82]

Nice way to open a season.

Butters' story was good. Butters' praying to the government and converting Jehovah's Witnesses was priceless.

As for Cartman's part, well, after a while, I was waiting for Kyle to rip the phone from his hand and smash it on the ground.

Definitely! I was expecting a little bit more from Kyle, then to be a passive bystander, even when Cartman accused him of being a NSA agent.

I am actually surprised it took this long for them to rip on to the Jehovah's Witnesses as they are likely the most irritating of religious minorities to be found in this country.

And agree with the Kyle stuff being rather unimpressive. Over the last couple years he's almost only existed to be the voice of righteous fury without getting to do anything. In Cartman Finds Love, for instance, Cartman gets his comeuppance with no resolution to what he did to Kyle. In this episode it would have been nice if there had been some action on his part after the conspiracy theories. Heck even an acknowledgement that trying to stop Cartman is futile.

It was an enjoyable episode, although it makes me wonder about this season that they are already pulling the Cartman+Butters= episode card this early in the season. Last season (especially the first half) was rather heavy on the Cartman episodes, so am hoping to see it scaled back if only to see some episodes focusing on the other kids again.

[Unassumption]

Never seen someone talk on speakerphone in public. Is that an LA thing or is it a metaphor for how self-important they think people are?

Comedy needs to exagerate a real situation without inflating it to the point it's no longer recognizable what they're skewering. While they may have failed with the phone stuff (which has an absurd humor to itself) the stuff about how people act online hit the nail on the head.

Since everyone's voiced by the same people, it's hard to tell who a character is by voice alone, so I thought Cartman was calling a recurring secondary character like Clyde at first. Sadly it was yet another random one-shot but that's par for the course at this point and more importantly, all the main boys did get a role in the episode and were in character throughout.

The government as god part was clever (given that's the level of power and knowledge some people imply they have) if not that that funny. Reminded me of the way the government was portrayed in "douche in the urinal." People obey laws because they're afraid of the government so getting people to overestimate their competence helps them a lot, as the second Butters scene shows. Butters bizare behavior shows how bad a job working at the NSA would be and seeing all the strange fetishes people have - I don't think it needed to be shown as explicitly as it was later. Pictures of hell rarely get treated as violently as they are so it's good they

I like random absurd humor that's sometimes in south park, like the 1970s pizza guy or the asian religious people. Making Snowden's life into a Cartman plan was suspiciously easy.

Skewering overly simplistic interpretations of the constitution is easy. Like attacking Bush for being stupid. They probably should've tried to find a smarter way of taking the piss out of that, like they did with Bush, since so many people do it.

Strong intro with Cartman being Cartman, exaggerating his strength and stuff like in the fishsticks episode.

Does anyone care about Alec Baldwin anymore? Oh yeah he has that MSNBC show now, I'd totally forgot about that until this episode reminded me XD

The joke could've been one of those 'repeated every scene' things that loses humor. It didn't get repeated too much though so it wasn't too humorous. They actually had new jokes, 20 minutes in, like the DMV guy! For once they didn't get lazy half way in!

Overall it was a unique position. As with Butt Out, I found the episode whose message I didn't really agree with was one of the funniest.

I agree with Kyle's role being way too small.

Mr Garrison and Barbrady being in the 3D intro saddened me since he's never in the show anymore... until one of them made a surprise appearance!

[Mr. Hat_DX27]

I quite enjoyed the episode. The irony is that these people who bitch about internet privacy are usually the ones who pretty much let anything slip on the social sites. I mean we really have gotten to the point where people actually just tweet what they think.

Basically my way of thinking is: if you really care that much about privacy, the internet is NOT the place for you to be.

But yeah, great episode. Also, lol, Alec Baldwin.

[triplemultiplex]

I do wonder if maybe Cartman and Butters are becoming too prominent, giving short shrift to some of the other characters.

Heh, that seems like an odd thing to say after 10 solid years of Butters/Cartmen stories. If anything, this episode was an outlier since Fatass and Butters got most of the screen time, but they weren't interacting at all.

[Brendle]

What the f*ck happened to South Park?

They should be railing against the NSA.

Instead they kind of took an "oh well, you don't have to worry if you don't do anything wrong" but what they miss is that it's not about what you're doing today but about what you might need to do tomorrow.

If your government mishandled things so badly that it had to "shut down" and you went out to protest how would you like it if the IRS suddenly started an investigation on you? Funny how they have all the money in the world to fund giant information storage machines but don't have any money to feed clothes and educate children.

This is even worse than the 9/11 episode. More people see 9/11 as being an inside job more than ever, why? Because of sh*t like the NSA.

Maybe Comedy Central runs the show completely. Maybe it'll get better when they go own their own.

Of course you don't like this episode or the 9/11 episode. You're the target of the satire in both cases.

In the 9/11 episode, Matt/Trey are mocking idiotic conspiracy theorists who think everything around them is a conspiracy...even conspiracies are a conspiracy. And here you are in this thread, wondering if Comedy Central is pulling their strings, with no evidence to back up your claim.

This episode didn't have a "you don't have to worry if you don't do anything wrong" message. If I'm reading it correctly, the message is that most of the people complaining about their privacy being violated are the same ones that knowingly and willingly publicising every minute detail of their life on social media.

There's also a slight implication that you can't have complete freedom and complete security in a nation at the same time...you have to compromise one to achieve the other.

Good episode. Decent social commentary.

[Big-Will]

There's also a slight implication that you can't have complete freedom and complete security in a nation at the same time...you have to compromise one to achieve the other.

That only works for compromising security for freedom, and they probably looked to ol' Ben for that one:

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

― Benjamin Franklin

[BRMBug]

Jesus, I spent so long writing out this post that I got logged out! Let's try it again.



Okay, I was extremely tired the first go-around. (comment-wise anyway) Allow me to expand on my experience.

At the beginning, I couldn't imagine who in all of creation Kyle could be talking about. Which is kinda sad on my part. (I felt so stupid when fatass came on screen. duh. of course) Maybe I was distracted by the beginning of satisfying my South Park blue-balls. And much like Angus, I was hoping and praying that Kyle would rip that ePhone out of his hands, throw it as far as he could, and really rip Cartman a new wow-hole. However, I just don't think he has it in him.

The Baldwin runner had some great moments. The thumbs thing wasn't one of them. But it wouldn't be South Park if there wasn't a moment of OTT stupidity somewhere in the mix. I think "Make me a pussy sandwich" is my favorite new... euphemism? Although there's nothing too euphemetic about it. It's all right there in your face... as it were. If you will. But I put it right up there with 'sample some of that ass buffet' (as one of my radio guys puts it) of saying you'd "hit that".

Let's see. What else. The Butters Gov't/DMV and Jehovah's Witnesses runner was a giggle. I guess Trey is always getting Asian ladies at his door. I tend to always get Black ones. When I first saw/heard them (the asian ones), I thought "oh lord, what are they (SP) going to do with this one. Luckily it went the way I thought it was with Butters "reversing the whip" on them. It just made that all the better when the three of them were going door to door extolling the virtues of the DMV. I still loved Brother Butters there at the end of the ep having a revival at the DMV. I laughed so damn hard at that.
The newscast at the end was an inevitable conclusion. Just didn't think things would escalate so quickly. Also, the final choice of the "local news station" didn't make a whole lot of sense. There's really no tie in with the government. What about the Social Security department, or hell, even DWP? At least if it was the DWP, the broadcast could end with the TV going blank because the power went off. Oh well, whatever.

[JVM]

Decent showing but not super memorable. The episode really muddled in the middle and I thought the DMV and NSA locations were both visually monotonous and boring, leaving the episode dependent upon the dialogue and humor, and the A-plot's humor was mostly attached to Alec Baldwin, which I didn't find too funny.... so that leaves Butters' plot the stronger one, despite sounding weak on paper.

I liked a lot of the beginning and ending but not much of the middle, strangely enough.

[AgelessFace]

It started extremely funny, I laughed throughout all of Cartman's bitching about the goverment taking away his rights to privacy while clearly not respecting it himself. Kyle's annoyance never fails to be funny, esspecially since it's so freaking easy to relate to. I'm only dissapointed that he didn't break Cartman's phone, Would have been perfect.

The plot becomes pretty pretty boring when Cartman infiltrates the NSA. It all happens a bit too fast, with jokes being coated with plain voices (which I guess was a joke in itself, but everything they said was as boring as their voices), or completley unrelated to the plot- those Baldwin one liners, the "homophobic thumbs" and "Some homosexual in my head" were pretty funny, but I found the other jokes too random and without a point. The Santa bit was a clever punch at the end though.

I couldn't get into Butter's plot that much either until the very end, it relied too much on those annoying asian ladies, and Butters' over innocence just failed to be funny. It was awesome to see Barbrady again though, and Craig. Oh and "This is the DMV there will be no joy here!", nice.

By far the thing I'm most dissapointed of though is the lack of Stan and Kenny aside of backround characters so early in the season. Aren't they usually given at least some minor roles, or at least something to say?