South Park - "Canada on Strike" - Talkback (Spoilers)

Even though the plot covered both the Writer's Strike, YouTube, and in a way, the Bush administration, it wasn't that great.
The jokes were awesome though.

Did you guys notice that all teh videos that were parodied on Youtube have the "buddy-guy" joke in the comments?
 
That's the weird thing about South Park fans that I like. Years later and I still see people mentioning 'Gobbles' around Helen Keller discussions, 'I do whateveh I want' in regards to spoiled kids on talk shows, or jabs at 'that fruity little club'.

No matter the context, there's always someone who brings it up.

I'll be using the 'buddy-guy-friend' thing, though.
 
I just noticed. In the commercial for the "Canada on Strike" episode, when Kyle tells his friends that he thinks something is wrong with his brother, it shows Stan, Butters, Cartman, AND Kenny sitting on the couch. But in the actual episode, he's not shown at all. I wonder why they removed him?
 
To everyone saying that this is somehow hypocritical with regards to Family Guy and cartoon wars - you're wrong.

The Youtube stars weren't meant to be funny just because "Oh hey look it's that guy from Youtube, that's funny!" like Family Guy would try to do. The joke was that the Youtube stars were there to collect "theoretical" dollars, which goes back to Canada wanting "money from the Internet", which ties into the entire issue of the writers' strike. That's why it's funny - because these people just show up at some random building (what even was the building, it said "D.I.M." or something) and expect to get paid for what they did.

Honestly, how can you not see that? To jump all over them because you think they went against their own message from Cartoon Wars seems very knee-jerk and a poorly thought out reaction. How very "Family Guy" of you all. I expect better from South Park fans.

Not to mention their message about the WGA was apt and as usual, dead-on right.
 
They criticize Family Guy for tossing in random pop culture references to cover up the fact that they've got no real story or point or long established joke; it's just a hodge-podge of pop culture references set to anything. They aren't used in context or to illustrate a point, they're just there to make people go "Oh yeah remember that! Haha!" and chuckle a bit harder with an absurd twist.

South Park itself has ALWAYS used pop culture as a jumping off point. But they always have a reason for including them - that's to illustrate their overall point. In this case Internet fame is most definitely a relative to their topic of internet royalties as relating to the Writer's strike. To commit the same sin they criticize Family Guy for, they'd have to be doing an episode about the Boys getting a job at the local grocery store - then toss in a joke about Chris Crocker and Elton John eating lunch in the Antarctic.
 
I agree that the Family Guy criticism is a stretch, and unnecessary to criticize the scene -- but I do think you're missing the point. The YouTube guys did have a purpose in the episode, but I and others feel that the way they showed what each person is famous for was kind of lazy. They were kind of just repeating the YouTube gags without adding a twist. I think they did this "introduction" so that the episode will still make sense to people 10 years from now, but it really blunted the spontaneous impact that such references are supposed to have, and it also felt more cheap and bandwagon-riding than their pop culture references usually do; so I don't know if they should've gone there at all.

What that has to do with Family Guy, I'm not sure. I think the only real connection you can make is "the jokes weren't done well".
 
No, I wasn't wrong. It doesn't matter about that setup - because Family Guy sets up parodies too in the SAME WAY. It wasn't funny. I don't see how you can tell me I was wrong about something and tell me that it was hilarious when obviously it wasn't. It was a string of references that just kept killing the same jokes over and over until they eventually killed themselves. This is the worst quality of South Park sometimes they'll make episodes with - 4 jokes, 3 times each, for 30 minutes with a mix of these themes:

- Everyone reacting a way Trey and Matt think America would react like
- The boys reacting to something
- one of the boys doing something sexually questionable to the chagrin of others (usually Butters, mostly Butters, screw it, Butters)
- Moral at the end
- Secret organization/Current Event/Reference to something 4 people have seen so it 'seems like' South Park did it first
- References to pop culture that somehow aren't like Family Guy at all (Hey guys don't you see that???????)

This episode had most/all of that. It's formulaic, lazy writing.

And the hell? The WGA thing was wright? Did the episode even have a point to it (besides half-hazardly shoving in a moral at the end as a 'wink wink' to the audience, even though they've done that joke before several times)? It was just Canadians wanting money for no reason, and THAT didn't even work because if SP is going to be relevant, it's going to have to take into account the exchange rate. Why would Canadians want money that's worth less then what they have? It doesn't add up! Sure, it's a cartoon. But South Park has made the mistake of being completely relevant (sometimes it even seems like it's forced) so these little things should be taken into account too, i guess. I will admit that going to an internet building to get money that doesn't exist is hilarious, but it was just slapped in the face with the references that it doesn't even matter.

This episode was terrible. This is coming from a guy that really enjoys at least somewhat pretty much every episode of anything! It's lazy writing. So don't tell me I'm wrong, because I'm not. It's not like it's hard to have a good idea, something at least halfway original.
 
As I said before, I didn't know what any of these references were, with the exception of the Star Wars kid, but I still thought the fight was funny because they introduced all of the characters beforehand.



That's interesting. This isn't the first time the've done something like this. Kenny was shown in a picture of the dam episode from a few seasons ago, but he was absent from the episode.



I'm not sure how their message was dead-on right. They implied that the writers were completely useless and the producer's didn't care if they ever came back to work. I don't see how anyone could possibly believe that to be true. It's true that the networks have reality shows to fill their schedules with, but with the exception of a few hits, the networks' ratings were down during the strike.
 
-BOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Stop mocking the writers just because you weren't allowed to be in the WGA because you barely write

-Family Guy thing was hilarious
-Boo more strike mocking
-BOOOO EVEN MORE STRIKE MOCKING
-Like how the kids say "How can we make money online?" Since they just started the online site w/ free eps
-Butters vid is kinda creepy
-Like the Butters mocking
-Too much strike mocking
-lol the Dutch
-LOL Internet stars
-NUMA NUMA!!
-Dramatic Gopher lol
-Chris Crocker!
-God damn strike mocking
-LOL Internet Star Fight. Panda and Chocolate Rain Guy stuff best
-Ugh, now I get the theroetical money. Oh, and Stan and such are the producers, I hate South Park
-lol Kyle giving a speech that no one gets
-lol dead
-Ugh, *************** You South Park with the strike stuff
-lol how they get rid of the president

Overall: 7/10
Including Strike Mocking: 1/10

Worst ep of the season so far, even worse than the Britney ep
 
This wasn't really a 'message' episode. It just used a recent event to tell a silly story.

Nothing about the YouTube stars arriving in the building and dying was outside of South Park norm. They had to die so the boys would be next in line, that's all. By the way, one random joke like 'I think I just saw Tony Danza' is not the same as having 40 of them in a row that has nothing to do with what's happening in the plot. The YouTube stuff did. Stop stretching.

I can understand not liking an episode, but seriously. At least it wasn't like 'Passion Of The Jew' where they didn't even know what they were doing, here they weren't preaching anything other than that the guy wasn't their friend.
 
One thing that really didn't make sense was the part where they brought in the Dannish, saying "They're the Canadians of Europe." What were the Dannish supposed to represent? The networks didn't bring over any foreign shows to fill their lineups during the strike. I thought maybe the Dannish were representing reality TV or something, but that doesn't really make any sense.
 
Yeah, at first I thought the Danish were representing scab writer who wrote for all the late night talk shows and such, but now I don't know since I didn't keep up with the strike, I was only aware of scabs writing for late night talk shows.

I can't see the Danish representing Reality TV, if anything it should be when they said "We'll just watch American made" stuff, since I just replace Cartman reaction of Family Guy with my reaction towards Reality shows taking up the air space during the strike.
 
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