South Park Review- "Jewpacabra"

South Park is slowly moving in the right direction. "Jewpacabra" was the best episode of the 16th season so far, though it was still far from being a classic episode.

In what was not one of Cartman's best plots, he invents the myth of the Jewpacabra, a beast that feeds on blood and has a particular disdain for Christ, all in an attempt to make it so that he would be the only kid at the local easter egg hunt. As expected, there are several Jew jokes throughout the episode, though none that were really all that memorable. The episode also served to spoof the various "bigfoot hunter" type shows that have been plaguing television the last few years.

I've only ever watched one episode of the aforementioned show (I'm not even going to look up it's actual name because no one really cares) and I understood the jokes, but they were still pretty lazy, which unfortunately has been a theme this season. One would think that making fun of the idiots who work on those shows would be a simple matter, but the show manages to take the lazy approach rather than attempt to create something clever. I can't remember a single clever joke from this whole season come to think of it, and most of my laughs have come from either sight gags, or butters hilarious reactions to situations.

While the monster hunting sections of the episode fail pretty miserably, the passover segment was actually well done, especially the shocking sight gags involving the exploding heads of the Egyptian firstborns. The segment with the Pharaoh musing over the frogs, as well as the numerous jabs to how nonsensical God's punishments really are when you sit down and think about them, worked better than anything else I've seen yet.

The most interesting part of the episode however was the very end, where Cartman declares himself a Jew, with no sarcasm or anything following. This could potentially be a brilliant move on Matt and Trey's part, but unfortunately, the two have taken similarly bold moves in the past without capitalizing on them in the episodes that followed.

I am seeing steady improvements though, but I really hope that we get some of that clever South Park satire that we've all come to love next week, because the shallow, lazy jokes are going to fail to impress even the most die hard fans if they're all we see moving forward. There are so many things happening in the world and popular culture right now, it's amazing they haven't been exploited yet (death of Jobs, Google, Trayvon Martin just to name a few). I only hope the future episodes focus on these more controversial issues, because those are the issues that provide the biggest laughs, and the most memorable scenes.



Overall Score:   7.5/10

   -Chris