South Park, "Ginger Cow"

This episode has a pretty lofty target for commentary: the religious conflict in the Middle East. But the satire has all the effectiveness of stepping to the plate against a Major League pitcher with a toothpick. Which is to say, none whatsoever.

It all starts when the title creature (a cow with a red afro and freckle-like spots) appears in South Park. It’s really a trick pulled by Cartman, but Christians, Muslims, and Jews around the world take it as a sign, and end all conflict over Israel. Kyle knows the truth and becomes something of a depraved martyr (looking, intentional or not, a lot like the David Blaine cultists in the still-banned episode “Super Best Friends”) to keep it a secret.

Before I go on, I have a small confession to make: I’ve never really been a fan of the episode “Ginger Kids” or the running joke in the series that stemmed from it. I know, the joke seems to have transcended the program and entered the mainstream (you could call it a meme, but I’d argue it entered pop culture before memes really exploded online), but I just never really thought it was all that funny. But the whole Ginger Cow prophecy is actually clever and funny, both as a plot device and an extension of the joke. However, it appears they came up with this plot point and couldn’t find anywhere to really go with it.

The episode’s recurring dirty gag—a fart joke that’s crude enough but kind of tame by the standards of the last few seasons—fails to work as an effective piece of satire. And yes, the show can make great allegory out of the sexual and scatological on its best days. But this wasn’t one of those days.

One scene in which the three major religions negotiate how they can kill each other had me thinking the episode was going to make some statement on the recent debate over what weapons can be used in Syria. Turns out I was thinking too hard; after that scene, all the three faiths do is attend a Van Halen concert, which feels a lot like Trey Parker and Matt Stone ran out of ideas and just threw in some songs they heard on the radio so the episode would make its deadline. I kept waiting and waiting for some great, stinging plot twist to come from all this. The ending we got was ironic and somewhat amusing compared to the rest of the episode, though still rather toothless.

Said fart joke was funny for a little while, at least (it helps that one scene features Mr. Mackey, who for whatever reason always gets me). And having Kyle translate Israeli rabbis (who are actually speaking English in heavy accents) was one of those moments where the show gets so politically incorrect that you can’t help but laugh, despite feeling a little bad about it. But overall, a few light chuckles is all we got here. It’s too bad this episode wasn’t the one that got delayed; maybe with another week, they could have fleshed out a much better narrative to go along with the Ginger Cow idea.