South Park: Taming Strange Review
After a mediocre Goth episode, Matt and Trey prove doubters wrong by giving us the best episode of the season.
The regular South Park reviewer for Den of Geek US, Chris Longo, takes one week off and Trey and Matt deliver the best episode of the season thus far. Admittedly, after last week’s go round with the Goths, the bar was pretty low. I was beginning to worry that maybe some of the magic was gone, that Trey and Matt copped down to just ten episodes a season because maybe the flare was gone, but then Ike shows up this week with a deep, hormonal voice and all of my worries floated away like a queef in the face of the Head of the Canadian Board of Health. Yes, it seems as if Ike is going through Canadian Puberty, and with it comes a terrible attitude and a slew of curse words. New Ike has no respect for Kyle, calling him gay and drawing a picture of his face with a penis coming from his head just to embarrass Kyle in front of his class. Throughout the course of South Park, Kyle and Ike’s relationship has been one of the few stable familial relationships on the show, sub the whole “kick the baby” business. Naturally, Kyle wants to mend the relationship any way that he can. He does this by watching Yo Gabba Gabba with his brother like they usually do, but instead of getting lost in Dancey Dance, Ike is more interesting in getting some of the character’s “strange”. Ike is particularly fond of Gabba character Foofa, and when Kyle, trying to further bond with his brother, takes Ike to see the live Yo Gabba Gabba Show, Ike takes the opportunity to get on stage and show everyone his “special talent” of taming Foofa’s strange. Ike’s whole puberty characterization is hilarious, and pretty much every line that he drops is pure gold. For the first time this season, all the jokes land. Ike eventually causes a rift between the Gabba crew, causing Foofa to decide she wants to pursue an adult audience and put forth more sex appeal, a la Miley Cyrus. We predicted that South Park would take down the former Disney Star, and they do through the guise of Foofa. She even goes so far as to perform a song about her strange at the VMA’s. It was a creative way of skewering a celebrity target that already has taken way too many shots. In the side plot, Mr. Mackey incorporates a school-wide computer system called Intellilink to make things run smoother, and of course, it does the opposite. No other character, besides maybe Randy, could make this frustration work, but Mackey’s insistence that it’s helping cracks me up, especially every time he accidently plays Glenn Fry’s “The Heat Is On.” Of course Intellilink is also behind Ike’s premature puberty too, in some way, but it’s not quite important. This was a simple, funny episode of South Park that brought the laughs and stayed pretty light on its feet. No big ideas here, just laughs. Hopefully we’ll get more episodes like this throughout the season. The Best of the Rest
- Ike puts in a fat pinch of dip while watching tv with Kyle.
- “Kick the fucking baby! Come on, bro!” – Ike
- Sinead O’Connor even shows up to offer Foofa some advice.
- In a C-plot, the head of the Canadian Board of Health tortures himself to find out why is wife queefed in his face, and it’s all Intellilink’s fault.
- The Canadians were in this episode, so we got plenty of “guy, buddy, friend” jokes. For me, they never get old.
- Tom Brady ends up getting Ike’s constipation medicine, explaining why he’s been taking a crap on field. Go Broncos.
- By the end, Ike’s baby voice is back, but he’s still trolling for Dora’s strange.
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Nick Harley is an entertainment journalist and alumnus of Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Nick also works as a Senior Content Specialist for the…