Entry 30: "Death of a Cartman"

Yo!

In case you missed it, the tenth season of Comedy Central's flagship series (other than their prestigious Stewart/Colbert "news" hour, of course) "South Park" premiered last Wednesday night, boasting simultaneously one of the wackiest, yet not-too-unrealistic, plot lines in recent memory, and one of the funniest uses of Warcraft machinima I've ever seen. Apparently, this episode deals with the emergence of a seemingly unstoppable World of Warcraft player who keeps killing people all over the place (in-game, obviously), ruining things seemingly forever, and even the game's developers, Blizzard Entertainment, are incapable of stopping him, since they can't just load up the master player list on the game server and simply delete his profile and account, neutralizing the threat on the spot, since A) that would be waaaaaay too convenient for them to do and ruin the plot, and B) Trey Parker and Matt Stone(the series' creators/main writers) know better than that. The resulting plot line has everyone's favorite racist, foul-mouthed, big boned festively plump fourth-grader, Eric Cartman, recruiting all his classmates to help take down the one geek to rule them all (wink-wink, J.R.R. Tolkien), or else it'd literally be the End of the World!!! ...............of Warcraft.

As I said, this is hands-down, very high (#2) in my top five machinimas ever, right behind "Red vs. Blue," of course. Mainly because of the surrealness of watching these Warcraft characters getting brutally slaughtered and hearing the kids' voices (Trey & Matt, using voice manipulation software) in place of what they should realistically sound like. Pure audio-visual gold. And I do mean slaughtered, to the point of the kids playing as them (read: "Blizzard's Final Solution") throwing up their poorly animated hands in disgust, and one who recognized the futility of the strike at first blow whipping out a Playboy. Yes, one of the kids gives up and actually breaks out dad's porn in the middle of the desperate final battle to save the world. ........of Warcraft. Honestly, I missed the ending first time around (fell asleep), but that's just why man invented VCRs and reruns, now isn't it?

Later this week, I'll review the tape and catch the no doubt hilariously ridiculous ending, but I'm going through all this rant to simply state that I'll give South Park: "Make Love, Not Warcraft" four out of five stars, with the fifth star reserved for the ending I have yet to see and rate, and of course, my trademark Bottom Line: Why is this show still on-air? Yes, I enjoyed what I saw of this season's launcher, and yes, I do enjoy the show, but if I wanted to see ridiculous barely plausible plot lines and visual gags out the yin-yang, I'd catch some good old-fashioned manatee gags on Family Guy, which I do anyway, so that statement doesn't have a whole lot of "sting" to it, but you get the point. There are some shows that hit the ten-year mark and end prematurely (Stargate SG-1), shows that almost hit the decade point, but for some reason, the network didn't let it happen despite fans' outcry (The X-Files), and shows that had absolutely no business whatsoever dragging on to season ten in the first place (Friends, Frasier, Law & Order, Rugrats). This, to me, is one of those shows. Comedy Central, please just make the sequel to BLaU, and let the show end on a high note: Kenny living. ...........and Butters dying.

.............But that's just me.

See ya next Monday!

-D.