But I would totally buy “Coon and Friends” action figures and plush toys.
PAD
32 comments on “I Hate to Admit It”
The only one you need is Mint Berry Crunch Boy!
SHABLAGOOOO!
Now that I think about it…Captain Hindsight as well.
Each figure package could also contain one piece of a Build-a-Figure Cthulhu.
Personally, though, I’m waiting for pics of Coon & Friends cosplayers.
If they came with pieces of a Build-a-Figure Cthulhu (and existed) I would buy them as well.
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Theno
That was a great trio of episodes!
Wrap a coil of magnets around the corpse of H.P Lovecraft and you can power a city with the energy generated from him spinning in his grave after the Coon & Friends Trilogy.
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Loved it though. I’m betting that the SOUTH PARK has an avid Lovecraft fan on staff whose workspace is festooned with Mythos bling. (I couldn’t help but notice the copies of ARKHAM HORROR in the cultists’ lair.)
About halfway through “Mysterion Rising” (part two of the trilogy), I found myself thinking, “This was what they should have done for the 200th episode.”
The whole three-parter was just excellent from start to finish.
The Mysterion one is very well-made and durable. Nigh-indestructible, one might say.
.
But it’s always disappearing on me for some reason, and then I end up finding it in my bed………..
The Coon and Friends comics in the show looked pretty cool, too. It was fun seeing these simple characters drawn so well.
I admit some disappointment in the ending of the trilogy (or quadrilogy/tetralogy, if you count the episode “The Coon” from last season). Previous multi-part episodes such as “Imaginationland”, “Go God Go”, “Cartoon Wars”, and “200/201” usually built to some sort of predetermined climax involving a moral lesson. This one seemed somewhat slapped together with a deus ex machina ending.
I did enjoy the trilogy itself, particularly the comic book style storytelling right up until the end.
All that said, I’d buy the action figures too. I’m still waiting for the action figure set of the “Super Best Friends”.
When I saw the (SPOILERS) light descending from the sky, I thought, “Deus Ex Machina” even before he said anything. Then when he said that he was talking to Mint Berry Crunch, I thought, “If it’s going to be a Deus Ex Machina, it might as well be a completely ridiculous one!”
I thoroughly enjoyed this three parter, even more than the Imaginationland one. I get what you’re saying, but I think it had a more subtle moral lesson, as opposed to their usual, “I learned something today.” Mint Berry Crunch was lame but enthusiastic from the beginning, yet he turned out to be the most important one. He believed in himself until he could prove himself to everyone else.
Plus, I liked that the jokes stayed fresh. In the Imaginationland series, the stuff about Cartman and Kyle’s bet got old after awhile and the Imaginationland song was annoying and overdone. This story dumped the BP and Captain Hindsight parts of the story when they were used up and waited until the end to focus heavily on Mint Berry Crunch. That was a great way of keeping me laughing all the way through.
Yeah, my feeling was that the story largely fell apart in the last five minutes. The entire third part took some narrative short cuts because, in point of fact, they had enough story to make it a four parter (or at least a 45 minute episode) but probably felt (correctly) that four solid weeks of this was just too much. In hindsight, I think that–
.
Oh, DAMMIT! Now I’m doing it.
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What the hëll DID happen to Captain Hindsight? That sure went nowhere.
.
On the other hand, you have to be impressed that they basically took a gag with Kenny from the end of the NAMBLA episode and built a whole storyline out of it.
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And yes, definitely “Super Best Friends” action figures. I wonder how the Muhammed figure would sell? (I notice that the image of it is on Wikipedia and apparently no one’s threatened to blow it up, so that’s something…)
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PAD
I liked how they took what looked like a one-off character from “The Coon”, and melded it to Kenny’s storyline, not only revealing Mysterion’s ability in a way that I thought was a brilliant revelation, but explored Kenny and his place on the show. (Sure, there’s the fact that at the end of that episode he was brunette and gave up superheroics to be arrested by the cops, but those are the easiest things in the story to explain.)
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What I find interesting is that the only one who’s explicitly and consciously aware of Kenny’s habit of dying and resurrecting is Cartman: Even though Kenny stated that his friends are never aware of this, Cartman flat-out said, “He dies all the time!” at the end of “Cartmanland”, the episode in which he bought an amusement park with the inheritance money left to him by his grandmother.
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It’s also interesting that we’ve seen three different ways in which he comes back: In one episode, he just blinks back into existence next to his friends. At the end of the NAMBLA episode, his mom has to give birth to him in a hospital, and at the end of this one, she just pops him out and sticks him in his bed.
.
Imagine the possibilities that future episodes could explore with all this. 🙂
Yeah, I also really liked how they worked Kenny’s deaths into some kind of real continuity. The show started out as incredibly continuity free, with the town getting destroyed every episode and Kenny’s deaths. The show has really grown beyond that over the years. It’s kind of fitting that they had a superhero theme to this episode, because a lot of comics have had to come up with serious ways of explaining silly things that happened early in a character’s history.
.
The best thing about the reveal of Kenny’s “power” was that the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. There was an episode where one of the boys (I think Stan?) was upset about someone dying and Kenny said, “It’s not *that* sad.” When Stan got sadder and sadder, saying he’d never lost a friend before, Kenny got pìššëd øff and swore at him, then walked away. I believe a piano fell on him a moment later. Anyway, once I remembered that (and the very early Christmas episode where Kenny didn’t die and celebrated it at the end) I realized that Kenny has known all along.
Oh, and the episode where Kenny’s mom gave birth to him also my mind. At the end of that they named the new baby Kenny, then Kenny’s dad said something like, “How many times have we done this?” and his mom said, “53.” I had completely forgotten about that until it happened again in this episode. They really did a good job of tying together the clues from over the years.
.
Luigi, what if this *isn’t* a different way for Kenny to come back from the end of the Nambla episode? What if he actually was going to have a little brother, but then his death interfered and he replaced his unborn brother, then grew up overnight again?
Of course, one of the great things about Kenny as Mysterion is that after season after season of Kenny’s voice being muffled, and being voiced by Mike Judge in the movie, we now get to hear him speaking “normally” — in the low, dramatic voice (over)used by Batman, Rorschach, et al.
And Lovecraft did have a good sense of humor — remember when he and Robert Bloch took turns killing each other off in stories? — so I don’t think he’d mind Cthulhu appearing all that much.
Another thing that the revelation of Kenny’s self-awareness explains is his lunatic hedonism and his frequent disregard for his own welfare.
.
Being undying really has the potential of making a person jaded.
When Cartman sat on Chtulu’s belly the first time, I wondered if they really were referencing “My Neighbor Totoro” but the song finally convinced me. I hope enough Miyazaki fans also watch South Park.
As opposed to this episode where they were referencing an old Warner Brothers cartoon “Feed the Kitty,” with C’thulu taking the place of bulldog Mark Antony and Cartman as the kitten (a cartoon also referenced in “Monsters, Inc,” for what that’s worth.)
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PAD
oooooh, now that you mention it, that is a hëll of a lot closer.
I didn’t record it but I’ll keep an eye out. what’s an alternative for the scene where C’thulu and Cartman are flying hand in hand? That song was also what suggested Totoro to me, but it’s probably from something else also.
“Feed the Kitty”
I was busting my brain trying to remember the name. I recognized the scene immediately. Classic.
The flying scenes made me think “Neverending Story,” because that had Atreyu flying with the Wish Dragon. That movie had already been planted in my head by the scene where Cartman is trying to hold onto C’thulu and keep from being blow away, kind of like Atreyu trying not to be blown away by the giant turtle.
.
However, I haven’t seen Totoro, so I don’t know if that’s a closer fit.
ooooh, now that you mention it, that is a hëll of a lot closer.
.
No, it was both. “Totoro” was what they were riffing in the previous episode, and “Feed the Kitty” was in the most recent episode.
.
PAD
However, I haven’t seen Totoro, so I don’t know if that’s a closer fit.
.
Oh, it was definitely Totoro last week, right down to the music choice.
.
PAD
I have seen the cartoon it was referencing…but the title means something totally different at a strip club =p
They did finish up the Captain Hindsight. They pulled a Superman 2 and he used the ray on him to remove his powers. The reporter was Hindsight’s secret identity making the report.
If this had actually been a movie, I would have expected Captain Hindsight and BP to have a presence in the third act. However, I think wrapping things up with those characters in the second episode worked well for a three parter.
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The main joke with Captain Hindsight was that he was completely useless, so I didn’t mind that the end of his story wasn’t terribly exciting. He didn’t really have an impact on things, so the lack of him shouldn’t have any impact either.
Yeah, except that they generally write a tighter story than that. Typically everything that’s introduced in previous episodes all ties in. Not only did CH not tie-in, but in point of fact he could have been removed from the entire three parter without any impact. That’s atypical for Trey Parker. My suspicion is that Parker doesn’t outline; that he just kind of writes instinctively. That’s no knock on him; I do the same thing. So do Harlan Ellison and Stephen King. Whatever gets the job done.
.
But the risk is that sometimes the story can get away from you, particularly if you’re dealing with a means of telling it that has a finite amount of room. I think that happened here. Everything from the deus ex machina conclusion (which was, admittedly, dámņëd funny, especially when you thought that he was talking to Kenny and it turned out, y’know, not) to the comic book narrative-style that summarized about ten minutes worth of story in thirty seconds (Writing 101: Show, don’t tell) to the complete absence of a new character who was prominent in the first two parts…all of that screams at me that they were shooting it as Parker was writing it, and when he got to the third part the first two were already locked and he was basically screwed. So he took shortcuts in order to cram it into three parts. I’m not faulting him for it; it happens. As long as the viewer is entertained, that’s what matters. But I tend to deconstruct stories from a writing POV, and that was my perception of it.
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PAD
PAD: Not only did CH not tie-in, but in point of fact he could have been removed from the entire three parter without any impact.
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It didn’t feel that way to me. Cartman’s actions against Captain Hindsight were what drove the other kids to kick him out of the group. That’s a major impact that drove everything that happened between Cartman and C’thulu. Once Cartman was kicked out in the second episode, then CH had served his purpose.
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PAD: to the comic book narrative-style that summarized about ten minutes worth of story in thirty seconds
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The “show don’t tell” rule doesn’t apply to the “previously on” segments that come at the beginning of multipart episodes. I thought that this type of summarizing was much better than the stale reshowing of clips from previous episodes. The other times they used that device wasn’t to move over plot quickly, it was to show a skewed point of view of the character. They “showed” us Mint Berry Crunch’s justifications for why he ran away from C’Thulu, which was a lot funnier than just showing 3 seconds a little boy running away.
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I agree that the story seemed to be written in instinctively, as you describe it. I had the same reaction to the Deus Ex Machina that you did. I was just glad that they didn’t keep dragging in CH and the DP President to the point that the jokes stopped being funny, like the Imaginationland episode did with Cartman chasing Kyle for the bet. So I think there was a trade-off in story consistency vs. focusing on the strongest jokes.
The reporter WAS Hindsight? I totally missed that. Okay, forget it then.
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PAD
Cartman’s actions against Captain Hindsight were what drove the other kids to kick him out of the group.
.
It’s Cartman. If the goal was to find a reason for the other kids to kick him out of the group, they sure didn’t need to introduce a whole new character for that. The fact that the kids hang out with him at ALL remains one of the great puzzlements of the series.
. The “show don’t tell” rule doesn’t apply to the “previously on” segments that come at the beginning of multipart episodes. I thought that this type of summarizing was much better than the stale reshowing of clips from previous episodes. The other times they used that device wasn’t to move over plot quickly, it was to show a skewed point of view of the character.
.
I wasn’t actually referring to either of those, but to the fact that much of the climax was (pardon the word choice) crunched into MBC’s narrative. To my mind, the previous introductions of the comic book-styled summaries was mainly to justify its use at the end so they could blow through a lot of stuff and squeeze the story into the half hour.
.
PAD
The Mint Berry Crunch comics didn’t feel like compression to me. They just felt like a joke about old style comic book origins.
.
As for Cartman, you’re right, they didn’t have to create a whole new character to give the kids a reason to kick Cartman out. They also didn’t have to *not* create a whole new character. It seems like a valid choice either way. Since they’ve already given us a hundred variations of the kids getting mad at Cartman in other episodes, I think it’s okay that they created a new character (and told a few jokes with him) as a different way of accomplishing that goal. Most importantly, whether or not we think there’s another way they could have served this purpose, Captain Hindsight certainly had a purpose.
• 
The only one you need is Mint Berry Crunch Boy!
SHABLAGOOOO!
Now that I think about it…Captain Hindsight as well.
Each figure package could also contain one piece of a Build-a-Figure Cthulhu.
Personally, though, I’m waiting for pics of Coon & Friends cosplayers.
If they came with pieces of a Build-a-Figure Cthulhu (and existed) I would buy them as well.
.
Theno
That was a great trio of episodes!
Wrap a coil of magnets around the corpse of H.P Lovecraft and you can power a city with the energy generated from him spinning in his grave after the Coon & Friends Trilogy.
.
Loved it though. I’m betting that the SOUTH PARK has an avid Lovecraft fan on staff whose workspace is festooned with Mythos bling. (I couldn’t help but notice the copies of ARKHAM HORROR in the cultists’ lair.)
About halfway through “Mysterion Rising” (part two of the trilogy), I found myself thinking, “This was what they should have done for the 200th episode.”
The whole three-parter was just excellent from start to finish.
The Mysterion one is very well-made and durable. Nigh-indestructible, one might say.
.
But it’s always disappearing on me for some reason, and then I end up finding it in my bed………..
The Coon and Friends comics in the show looked pretty cool, too. It was fun seeing these simple characters drawn so well.
I admit some disappointment in the ending of the trilogy (or quadrilogy/tetralogy, if you count the episode “The Coon” from last season). Previous multi-part episodes such as “Imaginationland”, “Go God Go”, “Cartoon Wars”, and “200/201” usually built to some sort of predetermined climax involving a moral lesson. This one seemed somewhat slapped together with a deus ex machina ending.
I did enjoy the trilogy itself, particularly the comic book style storytelling right up until the end.
All that said, I’d buy the action figures too. I’m still waiting for the action figure set of the “Super Best Friends”.
When I saw the (SPOILERS) light descending from the sky, I thought, “Deus Ex Machina” even before he said anything. Then when he said that he was talking to Mint Berry Crunch, I thought, “If it’s going to be a Deus Ex Machina, it might as well be a completely ridiculous one!”
I thoroughly enjoyed this three parter, even more than the Imaginationland one. I get what you’re saying, but I think it had a more subtle moral lesson, as opposed to their usual, “I learned something today.” Mint Berry Crunch was lame but enthusiastic from the beginning, yet he turned out to be the most important one. He believed in himself until he could prove himself to everyone else.
Plus, I liked that the jokes stayed fresh. In the Imaginationland series, the stuff about Cartman and Kyle’s bet got old after awhile and the Imaginationland song was annoying and overdone. This story dumped the BP and Captain Hindsight parts of the story when they were used up and waited until the end to focus heavily on Mint Berry Crunch. That was a great way of keeping me laughing all the way through.
Yeah, my feeling was that the story largely fell apart in the last five minutes. The entire third part took some narrative short cuts because, in point of fact, they had enough story to make it a four parter (or at least a 45 minute episode) but probably felt (correctly) that four solid weeks of this was just too much. In hindsight, I think that–
.
Oh, DAMMIT! Now I’m doing it.
.
What the hëll DID happen to Captain Hindsight? That sure went nowhere.
.
On the other hand, you have to be impressed that they basically took a gag with Kenny from the end of the NAMBLA episode and built a whole storyline out of it.
.
And yes, definitely “Super Best Friends” action figures. I wonder how the Muhammed figure would sell? (I notice that the image of it is on Wikipedia and apparently no one’s threatened to blow it up, so that’s something…)
.
PAD
I liked how they took what looked like a one-off character from “The Coon”, and melded it to Kenny’s storyline, not only revealing Mysterion’s ability in a way that I thought was a brilliant revelation, but explored Kenny and his place on the show. (Sure, there’s the fact that at the end of that episode he was brunette and gave up superheroics to be arrested by the cops, but those are the easiest things in the story to explain.)
.
What I find interesting is that the only one who’s explicitly and consciously aware of Kenny’s habit of dying and resurrecting is Cartman: Even though Kenny stated that his friends are never aware of this, Cartman flat-out said, “He dies all the time!” at the end of “Cartmanland”, the episode in which he bought an amusement park with the inheritance money left to him by his grandmother.
.
It’s also interesting that we’ve seen three different ways in which he comes back: In one episode, he just blinks back into existence next to his friends. At the end of the NAMBLA episode, his mom has to give birth to him in a hospital, and at the end of this one, she just pops him out and sticks him in his bed.
.
Imagine the possibilities that future episodes could explore with all this. 🙂
Yeah, I also really liked how they worked Kenny’s deaths into some kind of real continuity. The show started out as incredibly continuity free, with the town getting destroyed every episode and Kenny’s deaths. The show has really grown beyond that over the years. It’s kind of fitting that they had a superhero theme to this episode, because a lot of comics have had to come up with serious ways of explaining silly things that happened early in a character’s history.
.
The best thing about the reveal of Kenny’s “power” was that the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. There was an episode where one of the boys (I think Stan?) was upset about someone dying and Kenny said, “It’s not *that* sad.” When Stan got sadder and sadder, saying he’d never lost a friend before, Kenny got pìššëd øff and swore at him, then walked away. I believe a piano fell on him a moment later. Anyway, once I remembered that (and the very early Christmas episode where Kenny didn’t die and celebrated it at the end) I realized that Kenny has known all along.
Oh, and the episode where Kenny’s mom gave birth to him also my mind. At the end of that they named the new baby Kenny, then Kenny’s dad said something like, “How many times have we done this?” and his mom said, “53.” I had completely forgotten about that until it happened again in this episode. They really did a good job of tying together the clues from over the years.
.
Luigi, what if this *isn’t* a different way for Kenny to come back from the end of the Nambla episode? What if he actually was going to have a little brother, but then his death interfered and he replaced his unborn brother, then grew up overnight again?
Of course, one of the great things about Kenny as Mysterion is that after season after season of Kenny’s voice being muffled, and being voiced by Mike Judge in the movie, we now get to hear him speaking “normally” — in the low, dramatic voice (over)used by Batman, Rorschach, et al.
And Lovecraft did have a good sense of humor — remember when he and Robert Bloch took turns killing each other off in stories? — so I don’t think he’d mind Cthulhu appearing all that much.
Another thing that the revelation of Kenny’s self-awareness explains is his lunatic hedonism and his frequent disregard for his own welfare.
.
Being undying really has the potential of making a person jaded.
When Cartman sat on Chtulu’s belly the first time, I wondered if they really were referencing “My Neighbor Totoro” but the song finally convinced me. I hope enough Miyazaki fans also watch South Park.
As opposed to this episode where they were referencing an old Warner Brothers cartoon “Feed the Kitty,” with C’thulu taking the place of bulldog Mark Antony and Cartman as the kitten (a cartoon also referenced in “Monsters, Inc,” for what that’s worth.)
.
PAD
oooooh, now that you mention it, that is a hëll of a lot closer.
I didn’t record it but I’ll keep an eye out. what’s an alternative for the scene where C’thulu and Cartman are flying hand in hand? That song was also what suggested Totoro to me, but it’s probably from something else also.
“Feed the Kitty”
I was busting my brain trying to remember the name. I recognized the scene immediately. Classic.
The flying scenes made me think “Neverending Story,” because that had Atreyu flying with the Wish Dragon. That movie had already been planted in my head by the scene where Cartman is trying to hold onto C’thulu and keep from being blow away, kind of like Atreyu trying not to be blown away by the giant turtle.
.
However, I haven’t seen Totoro, so I don’t know if that’s a closer fit.
ooooh, now that you mention it, that is a hëll of a lot closer.
.
No, it was both. “Totoro” was what they were riffing in the previous episode, and “Feed the Kitty” was in the most recent episode.
.
PAD
However, I haven’t seen Totoro, so I don’t know if that’s a closer fit.
.
Oh, it was definitely Totoro last week, right down to the music choice.
.
PAD
I have seen the cartoon it was referencing…but the title means something totally different at a strip club =p
They did finish up the Captain Hindsight. They pulled a Superman 2 and he used the ray on him to remove his powers. The reporter was Hindsight’s secret identity making the report.
If this had actually been a movie, I would have expected Captain Hindsight and BP to have a presence in the third act. However, I think wrapping things up with those characters in the second episode worked well for a three parter.
.
The main joke with Captain Hindsight was that he was completely useless, so I didn’t mind that the end of his story wasn’t terribly exciting. He didn’t really have an impact on things, so the lack of him shouldn’t have any impact either.
Yeah, except that they generally write a tighter story than that. Typically everything that’s introduced in previous episodes all ties in. Not only did CH not tie-in, but in point of fact he could have been removed from the entire three parter without any impact. That’s atypical for Trey Parker. My suspicion is that Parker doesn’t outline; that he just kind of writes instinctively. That’s no knock on him; I do the same thing. So do Harlan Ellison and Stephen King. Whatever gets the job done.
.
But the risk is that sometimes the story can get away from you, particularly if you’re dealing with a means of telling it that has a finite amount of room. I think that happened here. Everything from the deus ex machina conclusion (which was, admittedly, dámņëd funny, especially when you thought that he was talking to Kenny and it turned out, y’know, not) to the comic book narrative-style that summarized about ten minutes worth of story in thirty seconds (Writing 101: Show, don’t tell) to the complete absence of a new character who was prominent in the first two parts…all of that screams at me that they were shooting it as Parker was writing it, and when he got to the third part the first two were already locked and he was basically screwed. So he took shortcuts in order to cram it into three parts. I’m not faulting him for it; it happens. As long as the viewer is entertained, that’s what matters. But I tend to deconstruct stories from a writing POV, and that was my perception of it.
.
PAD
PAD: Not only did CH not tie-in, but in point of fact he could have been removed from the entire three parter without any impact.
.
It didn’t feel that way to me. Cartman’s actions against Captain Hindsight were what drove the other kids to kick him out of the group. That’s a major impact that drove everything that happened between Cartman and C’thulu. Once Cartman was kicked out in the second episode, then CH had served his purpose.
.
PAD: to the comic book narrative-style that summarized about ten minutes worth of story in thirty seconds
.
The “show don’t tell” rule doesn’t apply to the “previously on” segments that come at the beginning of multipart episodes. I thought that this type of summarizing was much better than the stale reshowing of clips from previous episodes. The other times they used that device wasn’t to move over plot quickly, it was to show a skewed point of view of the character. They “showed” us Mint Berry Crunch’s justifications for why he ran away from C’Thulu, which was a lot funnier than just showing 3 seconds a little boy running away.
.
I agree that the story seemed to be written in instinctively, as you describe it. I had the same reaction to the Deus Ex Machina that you did. I was just glad that they didn’t keep dragging in CH and the DP President to the point that the jokes stopped being funny, like the Imaginationland episode did with Cartman chasing Kyle for the bet. So I think there was a trade-off in story consistency vs. focusing on the strongest jokes.
The reporter WAS Hindsight? I totally missed that. Okay, forget it then.
.
PAD
Cartman’s actions against Captain Hindsight were what drove the other kids to kick him out of the group.
.
It’s Cartman. If the goal was to find a reason for the other kids to kick him out of the group, they sure didn’t need to introduce a whole new character for that. The fact that the kids hang out with him at ALL remains one of the great puzzlements of the series.
.
The “show don’t tell” rule doesn’t apply to the “previously on” segments that come at the beginning of multipart episodes. I thought that this type of summarizing was much better than the stale reshowing of clips from previous episodes. The other times they used that device wasn’t to move over plot quickly, it was to show a skewed point of view of the character.
.
I wasn’t actually referring to either of those, but to the fact that much of the climax was (pardon the word choice) crunched into MBC’s narrative. To my mind, the previous introductions of the comic book-styled summaries was mainly to justify its use at the end so they could blow through a lot of stuff and squeeze the story into the half hour.
.
PAD
The Mint Berry Crunch comics didn’t feel like compression to me. They just felt like a joke about old style comic book origins.
.
As for Cartman, you’re right, they didn’t have to create a whole new character to give the kids a reason to kick Cartman out. They also didn’t have to *not* create a whole new character. It seems like a valid choice either way. Since they’ve already given us a hundred variations of the kids getting mad at Cartman in other episodes, I think it’s okay that they created a new character (and told a few jokes with him) as a different way of accomplishing that goal. Most importantly, whether or not we think there’s another way they could have served this purpose, Captain Hindsight certainly had a purpose.
I can get behind this