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Sunday, 09 April 2006 |
by D. W. O'Dell
 The bad news for television sitcoms this week was the final nail in Arrested Development’s coffin; the word that even if the series were to be picked up by Showtime, creator Mitch Hurwitz would not continue to work on the show. A spokesman was quoted as saying that Hurwitz believed Arrested Development had “reached its end, creatively” after three seasons (two and a half, really).
The good news is that after nine seasons South Park is definitely NOT at its end, creatively. The series just began its tenth season on Comedy Central with a brilliant, hastily assembled episode that managed to be both savagely brutal and sweetly heartfelt at the same time. No other sitcom on TV could pull off a combination like that.
The genesis of the show was, of course, the recent bizarre by-play between South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and vocal cast member Isaac Hayes, who played Chef on the show. After a highly publicized episode that mocked Scientology, Hayes (a Scientologist) reportedly quit the show because he objected to the show’s “religious bigotry." Parker and Stone responded that Hayes had been happy to cash a paycheck when they were making fun of Christianity, but now that they’d gone after his religion, he suddenly got squeamish.
There was more verbal sparring in the press, and clearly the situation was one that irritated Parker and Stone. Matters escalated when Comedy Central appeared to cave into Scientology demands to pre-empt a repeat of the anti-Scientology episode. However, given that a South Park episode can be produced in 6 days, Parker and Stone saw a chance for immediate revenge and sharpened their knives.
The result was their tenth season premiere, “The Return of Chef!” in which Chef (voiced by using snippets of dialogue from previous shows) returned to South Park after a long absence during which he had joined the secretive “Super Adventure Club,” an obvious stand in for Scientology. However the Club had turned Chef into a pedophile who continually propositioned the children of South Park. The episode ended with Chef catching on fire, falling from a great height, being impaled on a tree branch and then being mauled by a cougar and a grizzly bear. It’s hard to imagine a more “grizzly” death of a TV character (Rosylyn Shays’ fall down an elevator shaft was much, much quicker).
Venting their bile on Scientology by equating the organization with child molesters and NAMBLA (another organization the show has mocked) would have been enough for most other people, but not Parker and Stone. At Chef’s funeral, Kyle points out that Chef had brought a lot of joy and laughter to everyone over the years, so no one should be angry at Chef for becoming a child molester; people should be angry at the “fruity little club” that scrambled his brain. It was a heartfelt tribute to an actor who had probably been the most distinctive voice on their show and who had made a significant contribution to the success of South Park.
This comedic legerdemain is not unusual for South Park. They’ve done episodes defending Wal-Mart and Starbuck’s, supporting the Boy Scout’s right to exclude gays and had furry woodland creatures celebrate Christmas with a “blood orgy.” Their puppet movie Team America: World Police managed to mock both liberals and conservatives. Just when you think they are going to zig to the right, they zag to the left and vice versa. If surprise is the essence of comedy, these guys are king.
Arrested Development may be leaving the airways, Will and Grace is going away, Frasier’s long gone and next season they’ll be no more Joey. But as long as Trey Parker and Matt Stone are working on South Park, there will be half an hour of laughs every week, along with some thoughtful commentary. You just have to be able to sit through the poop jokes, the barf jokes, the fart jokes, the blood orgy jokes . . . . |
