South Park, "Cock Magic"

This episode at first appears to be not what you think from the title. But, eventually, it becomes exactly what you were thinking. It's so bad that I’m actually angry at myself for laughing at one part; surely, I'm better than this! The show can certainly do better, too.

The title actually refers to an underground sport the boys get involved with that's like cockfighting, except instead of killing each other, roosters are forced to play the card game Magic: The Gathering. The show has made allegory out of stupider scenarios, but there’s none to be had here. The episode settles for pretty obvious and lazy double entendres. Eventually, Randy, the show’s go-to character for everyman idiocy, even acts out the most obvious one, over and over. At best—and this is being very, very generous—it’s like a small gag from a better episode stretched out to fill 30 minutes. In fact, it plays like a typical random, less-funny-when-it’s-acted-out gag from—Brace yourself!—Family Guy, despite South Park’s established contempt for the Fox cartoon.

But that scene with Randy at the birthday party had me howling, in spite of having nothing good to say about the rest of the episode. Maybe it’s because it took me back to the show’s best years around the turn of the millennium, before it was such an issue-focused show, or at least when it only tackled issues as fodder for the most vulgar, line-crossing, and hilarious humor on TV. This one wasn’t anywhere close to as good as any of those classic episodes, but it connected with the immature teenager in me.

That aside, this episode offers nothing. Not only nothing in the way of humor, but not even much of a narrative or reason for even animating the thing. It screams of either desperation or laziness. At the very least they could have stolen from The Simpsons again; that show filled time with nothing and created a classic gag.