South Park, "Informative Murder Porn"

Believe it or not, I’ve never played the popular, apparently extremely addictive computer game Minecraft. But even if I had, I’m not so sure it would have made this episode any better.

That’s disappointing, because the issue addressed—the idea that kids become violent from exposure to violent media—had potential. Only in this case, it was the kids of South Park blocking violent TV shows from the adults (once again, the classic “South Park reversal" I always talk about), specifically the crime reenactment shows of Investigation Discovery (the episode’s title being the show’s label for such programming).

But everything derails when an okay throwaway joke about Minecraft (the parent-blocking feature is guarded not by a password but a question about the game, which no adult can answer at first) grows into a major element. The show has juggled and combined several unrelated things successfully before, but not this time. The joke isn’t funny, the way it’s integrated into the plot makes no sense even by the show’s sometimes surreal standards, and if there was supposed to be any point, I couldn’t discern even a molecule of it.

In the non-Minecraft moments, the satire is pretty clear. It’s obvious Trey Parker and Matt Stone feel it’s a load of garbage to assume violent entertainment makes youngsters into killers any more than serious “documentary” crime shows effect mature adults’ behavior (even the title is almost a rebuttal to the label of “torture porn,” a genre that's also aroused controversy). One line aimed pretty directly at the idea of cable choice would have gotten a fist pump out of me if I weren’t so bored. Unfortunately, bored I was, as the episode is almost all soapbox. The only real gag that comes to mind is a running one depicting cable company workers as nipple-stroking sadists. It wasn’t very funny from moment one.

Worse yet, the satire seems stale. At this point, the idea that violent media makes violent people seems to have lost steam. The latest Grand Theft Auto, once the worst nightmare of parents everywhere, has been met with more awe than outrage. This episode would have been more biting had it aired a decade ago when this debate was still being had, or back in the show’s earliest days when itself caused public outcry. Seeing it now is like watching an older episode, where you get the joke if you remember the events parodied, but if not, it means nothing to you. But even if you do get this joke, the episode around it falls apart completely before the midpoint, and just slowly ekes about until the half-hour's up.