*2010: The End of Serialization As We Know It* Post-Air Thread

[huckleberry1234]

I gotta be honest, I didn't enjoy this season very much overall. Of the three serialized seasons, the only one with a decent balance of continuity and episodes with their own plot is the 19th. If I had to give votes, it would be 4 for season 18, 8.5 for season 19, 6 for this one. And only season 19 has at least one episode that I would mention in my personal list of top episodes (Tweek and Craig).

That's interesting. I'd say Tweek and Craig was one of the worst episodes of SP ever. I couldn't believe it was written by Matt and Trey. It seems like they let some teenage fan make this episode.

Even if 20th season dragged a little and the story got a bit messy at times, it's still very nice and I like it. The final was sweet and adorable and saved the whole season.

[mario88]

It wasn't even a final to be honest... They just had run out of episodes and had to conclude somehow. As for Tweek and craig, it is not one of the funniest episodes of course, but it was the story of the beginning of a friendship.

[kfgg]

I gotta be honest, I didn't enjoy this season very much overall. Of the three serialized seasons, the only one with a decent balance of continuity and episodes with their own plot is the 19th. If I had to give votes, it would be 4 for season 18, 8.5 for season 19, 6 for this one. And only season 19 has at least one episode that I would mention in my personal list of top episodes (Tweek and Craig).

That's interesting. I'd say Tweek and Craig was one of the worst episodes of SP ever. I couldn't believe it was written by Matt and Trey. It seems like they let some teenage fan make this episode.

Even if 20th season dragged a little and the story got a bit messy at times, it's still very nice and I like it. The final was sweet and adorable and saved the whole season.

Trey said in the commentary that Tweek x Craig was probably his favorite of Season 19. I'm not some teenage fan girl, but I agree. It had a lot of elements of Classic South Park. Songs (I love it when they use a song in an episode), and it sorta moved away from the continuation, also brought out some characters that have not been seen in awhile, particularly Tweek.

[VACOOLA]

As I've said elsewhere, a lot of people seem to be completely missing the point of "Tweek x Craig" which, like so many episodes of the last three seasons, can be described as a good idea poorly executed. People keep misinterpreting the simple message behind it because said message ended up buried under the stupid yaoi "love story." Yet it's exactly the same statement on conformity as can be found in "Tweek vs. Craig," except that in "Tweek vs. Craig" the two boys get tricked by their classmates into fighting each other, while in "Tweek x Craig" the same two boys are pressured and bribed by the townspeople, including their own parents, into pretending to be gay. That's about the only difference. The yaoi love story was clearly supposed to be just icing on the cake, but it keeps blindfolding people who take that yaoi bullshit surprisingly seriously, probably because the cake came out a bit overcooked.

Same goes for this entire season, unfortunately. Even if the guys did have some awesome ideas up their sleeve that could have been valmorphanized into a number of decent standalone or multi-part episodes, which I'm sure they did, those ideas almost got lost in the hodgepodge of random disconnected plotlines and soap opera bubbles. That's why I really hope the experiment with serialization is finally over. Granted, they should keep Garrison and Jenner in office, because they are such a nice substitute for those other two who, honestly, make me wanna puke. As for Cartman, he has to go back to his normal perverted intolerant asshole self. It's imperative, considering the Cartman of seasons 19 and 20 was simply painful to watch. If M&T choose to make Heidi his partner in crime, so be it, they won't be the first Bonnie and Clyde in the history of show business. Otherwise she must go back to being just another background character. Heidi has enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame, hasn't she? Perhaps, it's time for other South Park girls to show us what they are capable of.

[Big-Will]

Didn't know a shipping store had public internet or computer. Never seen such a thing. Why didn't he just go to the library? Maybe the lack of webcams or something.

FedEx stores in Los Angeles has computers in them, so you can load up documents and print them out. Public Internet would be new, but that's popping up everywhere now. What was odd for me was Kyle trusting a public computer to keep his Face Time conversations secure.

[triplemultiplex]

To my delight, the finale for season 20 exceeded my expectations. It generated a lot of momentum as the "kill the internet" plan gathered steam. It felt good as more and more familiar characters contributed.
Gerald and Lennart's' argument gave me that taste of meta observation I enjoy so much from South Park. It felt like a conversation straight out of their writer's room.

The few unresolved ends are minor enough to let slide. For example, the fate of Fatass and Heidi can be decided with 5 seconds of dialogue next year if they want.

They went out on a solid joke. It might be the obvious joke to make after this entire season, but it was still a win.

The basis for the fear that Fatass & Butters have about men being farmed by women on Mars has its roots in a very practical strategy for humans colonizing another planet. Because it's so expensive and dangerous to transport human beings that distance and for that length of time, it would be more efficient for all of the initial colonists to be women. They would start the self-sustaining colony using in vitro fertilization from a set of semen samples they brought with them. It would allow the new colony to grow as rapidly as possible while being maximally efficient with the limited resources available at the colony's start. The male population would catch up with the female population over the first few generations.
(Damn, that needs to be a Star Trek episode! Somebody forward this over to the folks working on the new series. Paramount owns South Park and Star Trek, so make it happen!)


Now the critique portion.
Lannart's plan could have worked if he hadn't shot is wad so soon at TrollTrace. By revealing his troll too soon, he gave all those people who were working for him a chance to stop him. They had hours to team up with the imprisoned trolls and help stop the thing from happening. Instead of riding off victorious, Lennart is forced to come back to try and prevent his plan from being thwarted. Classic movie supervillian flub.

The internet works very strangely in the South Park universe. Apparently, all the servers at Google, Twitter, Facebook and so on are easily compromised by the Troll Trace software; an astounding feat to be sure. Then it can be wiped out completely simply by overloading it with traffic. They DDOS'ed the entire internet. Not sure how that erases anything at all. It would just make everything inaccessible. Once the attack on TrollTrace is over, it would all come back.

[JamesPolo]

The episode is now online for anyone that didn't catch it.

I didn’t think Craig’s dad would have online girlfriends. That family is falling apart. Al least now her hairy bush videos are gone from the web.

Was it explicitly stated that he actually had girlfriends? I thought it was just that was viewing porn and looking at dating websites.

(Are there other reasons you say that family is falling apart, or just that one?)

I think it was left unsaid if Mr. Tucker was dating other women but it seemed to feel safe to one up him and just assume he is. I am a big trust person and so I couldn't have that at all but I know I do love porno. Still it seemed like a classic scene where the man is chatting online with other women and looking at porn. I say it is cheating but I know I would have a hard time not having porn. I wouldn't want my wife looking at porn I wasn't allowed to see and I wouldn't tolerate her chatting with men and I wouldn't be chatting with women on her. I think that is cheating as it is too sexual to be doing that at a dating site. I am really possessive of a person so it wouldn't not work out if my girl had a male friend at all or spend a second with a man alone. Sorry I guess I am a dick.

I think the family is falling apart with the parents thinking their kid is gay. That would be stressful on a father and he may want to seek women out to reassess his manhood. I would hate to have a gay son, sorry but that is how I feel. The bush thing too, I think if my wife's hairy vagina was on the web I would be super pissed off yet I know I would want to f*ck her even more and harder. That is it that Mr. Tucker didn't show any sign of getting off over the fact that everyone looked at and some beat off to his wife. Maybe he did give her some extra good times to make up for her embarrassment but we never see that.

[Big-Will]

Thomas was dabbling in online dating. I've done that myself, and I'm still single, heh. I did meet the woman I was dating a couple of times, though. She came to visit from Florida and spent a few days here. About a year or two later she moved out to Orange County, CA., but we didn't meet again. She moved back to Florida and is living happily there. The Tuckers will be fine.

[nwt000]

I would have to give this an episode an 8.4/10, definitely the best season finale since The Hobbit considering the previous two finales were huge letdowns.

[huckleberry1234]

Trey said in the commentary that Tweek x Craig was probably his favorite of Season 19. I'm not some teenage fan girl, but I agree. It had a lot of elements of Classic South Park. Songs (I love it when they use a song in an episode), and it sorta moved away from the continuation, also brought out some characters that have not been seen in awhile, particularly Tweek.

Well if that's true then I'm starting to lose my faith in South Park

I watched Tweek and Craig again, it's not so bad after all. The point is I was really disappointed with 19th season. It seems like they're trying so much to make it meaningful, even missionary, that it become pretentious and barely funny. It lost all the lightness and levity of the old seasons. I watch SP since 2000, maybe I like the oldies mostly for nostalgic reasons (I must be a real memberberry). Also I hate to say it, but the whole thing is getting a little bit too commercial for me (all that loot crates etc.).

Anyway, 20th season was somehow different. I had this strange feeling they are trolling us all the time, and well, that was kind of unique. It wasn't really funny season, just very very odd. That was a crazy new adventure and I enjoyed it sometimes.

[mario88]

Has this been the season with most meta-references? I mean, at times I almost felt like they were reading our posts and kind of replying to them (or maybe somehow poking fun at them, like others have said).

[Big-Will]

Definitely. See the "Serialization" in the title? No one used it until a month ago. Until then we were talking about "continuity," which is basically the same thing, but serialization is like sliced bread - you don't get the whole loaf at once, but a slice at a time.

[nall]

As for Tweek and craig, it is not one of the funniest episodes of course, but it was the story of the beginning of a friendship.

Uhm, they'd already been friends for quite a while (unless you're thinking of Season 3's Tweek vs Craig?), this may moved their relationship into something more than friendly.

into pretending to be gay.

That is questionable.

Had to re-DVR this because of the sudden outage in the middle of the show.

Noticed Ike is into modern obnoxious pop music. They did their research on this one.

Meghan Trainor - Me Too
Taylor Swift - Blank Space
Shawn Mendes - Stitches (Canadian)
Demi Lovato - Confident

E-Mails his family
Tweets his friends

And plays way too many online games.

I personally found Ike's history pretty funny. A lot of that list was put together by new artists who are fresh out of school, for whatever that's worth.

He also apparently enjoys his anime.

[kfgg]

Unrealted but Tweek, Craig went from being totally not gay in The Hobbit (Congrats to Clyde) to this out of nowhere.

I know the people on that side of Tumblr are happy. I cannot blame them. I'm happy for them honestly. That and I think Super Craig and Wonder Tweek in the upcoming game is hysterical and works well.

I'm also glad Heidi, Eric didn't have a full blown breakup.

I'm not a crazed fangirl (the exact opposite) but I've always liked relationships between characters since I was at least 7. Not just South Park. Both straight and gay. Just kinda...I can't explain it. It's inspirational or something.

[mario88]

how on earth can people think tweek and craig are actually gay is beyond me. i'm not referring to the user above me, just talking in general. i mean, i shouldn't be surprised since there are people out there who think cartman and kyle are secretly in love with each other, but geez... i also like to imagine my favorite female characters in lesbo relationships (like, back then, willow and buffy in buffy the vampire slayer), but i know it's just a fantasy of mine.