10 Thoughts On… South Park Episode 16-03: Faith Hilling

10 Thoughts, Top Story

South Park is back with the third episode of the first part of season 16. It appears to be a political episode so let’s get to it!

1. The episode starts with a Republican debate featuring Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. It features real quotes of the candidates behind their animated characters.

2. The boys are in the audience and planning to crash the event somehow – turns out they are going to “Faith Hill” which is running up on stage then pulling your shirt in the chest to mimic boobs, then taking a picture.

3. The episode shifts from an early political commentary into more of a general one, with the focus turning to Internet memes. The boys make the front page of the paper for their stunt, but instead it’s mocked. From the newspaper:
Headline: Faith Hilling so 2,000 late
Public reaction was that the stunt pulled off by five elementary school students was not only dangerous and disruptive but also completely passé.
“Faith Hilling is pretty style” said republican candidate Newt Gingrich, “if they had crashed the debate by Taylor Swifting, THAT would have been impressive.

4. In response to the dangers of “Internet meming”, the boys are shown an awesome health class PSA video, which the teacher claims will look very old. And the styles were all out of the 80s on the kids with their hair and clothes, but they were also using iPhones, and at the end the video was dated 2010.

5. The video started a show-long gag of memes directly leading to kids and later adults being hit by trains and killed. However, the train always is very far away and the person makes no effort to move – it was hilarious every time.

6. Things turn crazy when it’s revealed that cats have begun to put bread on their heads and posting pictures of themselves on the internet. A professor determines them to be evolving. Later, a scientist tries to communicate with a cat and concludes that the cat population has declared war on humans in some kind of insane non-sequitor because it doesn’t go anywhere.

7. In a second health class, the boys are scared by the professor, who has Butters put a loaded gun into his mouth, but is later called away. In typical fashion, Butters keeps the gun in his mouth throughout the episode deep into the night, as he was never officially told to remove the gun.

8. The boys stick to Faith Hilling long after it has run its course, and one by one they realize they must give in to Taylor Swifting – which is pulling your pants down and dragging your butt on the ground like a dog. It evolves further to involve other crazy things, purportedly started by cats.

9. When Cartman and Kyle, the last remaining boys to support Faith Hilling, do it in front of Planned Parenthood, first a younger boy doesnt recognize the action and his father explains its before his time. Then a doctor runs out and asks if the boys have a time machine because some of his patients could use one! I love these random and offensive parts just thrown into episodes like this.

10. The episode ends back at another Republican debate, but a cat has replaced Ron Paul. As the candidate soundbites all run together, the boys are shown preparing to Cat Bread Taylor Swift Johnson the debate. But when Cartman gets on stage, he refuses, instead Faith Hilling and singing a mocking rendition of her Super Bowl entrance song.

Overall: Another awesome episode of South Park, with a wide mix of offensive and pop culture commentary and outrageous sight gags. The end statement seemed to indicate some kind of bitterness of Matt & Trey to critics saying recent shows have had no message, although the message of this episode seems to indicate they think the Republican Debates have been a farce and meming is stupid. So there ya go.

Jonathan Widro is the owner and founder of Inside Pulse. Over a decade ago he burst onto the scene with a pro-WCW reporting style that earned him the nickname WCWidro. Check him out on Twitter for mostly inane non sequiturs