South Park, "PC Principal Final Justice"

I was afraid this was going to happen. I was invested in the continuing storyline this season to a degree I was not last year, and genuinely interested to see how it would close out. But once again, it kind of missed the landing, though for different reasons than last year.

Last season had a pretty loose thread connecting all its episodes, trying something new but playing it relatively safe. The mistake of the two-part finale was to sloppily try to tie them all together. This year had a much more (but not completely) cohesive storyline, with every new episode extending the narrative instead of simply referencing the previous week. And all the different subjects and subplots fit together rather well.

The problem with this finale is that none of the plot was really left at this point. The entire conspiracy involving sentient ads and PC Principal turned out to have been completely fleshed out in the previous weeks. There were no new compelling twists or surprises, save for one final turn involving the town’s Whole Foods which made no sense (honestly, if there’s one weak point in the season’s narrative, it’s that I never got what the show was trying to say with the whole Whole Foods thing). It all just sort of ends.

It also made the mistake of bringing in a new topic so late in the game: guns, as if to be timely in light of current events. The tense armed conversations between the characters was admittedly a very funny recurring gag, one that could have made its own whole episode. But added in at this 11^th hour, it didn’t really fit, or add much to the overall narrative. It seems like a waste of a good idea.

There were some other funny parts, mostly from Jimmy’s nemesis Nathan and his prostitute underling (don’t ask). However, the humor is rather immaterial in the end because, frankly, I was more in it for the narrative payoff than to laugh. Such is an unexpected turns of events: last year and the first part of this year, I found myself rather lamenting that the show was trying to be more ambitious and ceasing to be the simple R-rated cartoon it used to be. Yet here, at the end of the season, the opposite is the case.

I guess you can call that praise for the show’s new season-long style. Really, the main flaw of this season seems to be that they simply muffed the ending, not that the continuing narrative and interconnectedness didn’t work. And how many season or even series finales can you think of that didn’t leave you satisfied even though the season itself was good? I still kind of wish to one day see the simpler dirty toon with which I fell in love again, but the show may have successfully transitioned into the next phase of its existence.

Don’t be too hopeful just yet, though. Despite winning the praise of the anti-P.C. crowd this season, this one ends with PC Principal turning out to be less in the wrong than it seemed. It also strikes a rather melancholy note, similar to the season's first episode, hinting that the town of South Park will reluctantly embrace political correctness out of necessity…

But, I don’t think the show will really do that (as I said before, even at its most offensive, this show is tolerated and even beloved). What I do hope is that we’ve seen the last of PC Principal. I’m sick of him.

Star Wars rewatch: The Empire Strikes Back

 **SPOILERS HEREIN**

The Empire Strikes Back is close to a perfect film. So perfect that it doesn’t even matter that it has some pretty glaring flaws. 

WHAT!?!, I can hear the superfans raging. How dare you insinuate there’s anything wrong with Empire! It is impeccable! It is immaculate! It is sacred! I won’t argue against its greatness, but it still has some pretty obvious errors that are right in front of the viewer’s face should they choose to think about them for even a second.

For instance, why would the Rebels put the shield generator protecting their base on Hoth outside of the shield (a question that also comes up in several video games, such as one of my childhood favorites Rogue Squadron)? Alright, so this lapse in logic has been rectified via the Expanded Universe. But then, why didn’t the Imperials impound the Millennium Falcon on Cloud City instead of just turning off the hyperdrive, thus enabling it to escape following a little tinkering from R2-D2 (Kenny Baker)? Okay, maybe they’re just lazy or incompetent (an explanation bolstered by the old joke about how Stormtroopers are all terrible shots). One thing that can’t be denied, however, is that the movie’s sense of time is all screwed up. Either Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is an exceptionally fast Jedi pupil, learning the basics of the Force in a matter of days on Dagobah, or Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) were stuck in that asteroid slug for months and months, and yet never even put on a fresh set of clothes (well, the two of them that wear clothes, anyway).

But, it matters not. Small mistakes, inconsistencies, or plot holes are mostly irrelevant in works of make-believe, especially more fantastical ones like Star Wars. People only dwell on such things, I think, when they don’t like the work as a whole; such foibles are easy to overlook if a film (or work in any other medium) is good in the aspects that matter. And Empire is far greater than simply “good.”

The picture is a step up from Star Wars in every respect. On a purely aesthetic level, the sets are much more detailed and dynamic. Not that those in Star Wars were bad, but some of them look like they could have been built on a studio set or backlot. In Empire, all of them look like we’re seeing a real environment, be it the frozen Echo Base on Hoth, the glitz and gutters of Cloud City, or especially the living swamps of Dagobah (yeah, I almost forgot that it wasn't a real swamp, too). As for the special effects, while Star Wars was still a thrilling technical achievement, there are admittedly some shots among the space battles that look rather static. No so in Empire. The Battle of Hoth feels the closest to real combat of any moment in the saga (the Death Star trench run is still the trilogy’s top action sequence in my opinion, but this is a damn close second), and the chases through the asteroid field are breathtaking. These are all the more impressive with the knowledge that they were created without a bit of CGI.

And as for John Williams' "Imperial March," which debuts in this film, I say the following without a shred of hyperbole: it's the 20^th century's answer to Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."

The bigger, greater production spectacle, however, isn’t the best thing about the movie. Rather, it’s the exact opposite, the littler things. Like the moments where Luke’s fears and feelings are stripped bare during his training with Yoda (Frank Oz), alternately haunting and inspiring. Or the spilling-over romantic tension between Han and Leia. There’s a real, passionate emotional intimacy to these scenes. In Star Wars, the audience had a great time with these characters, but it’s this movie where they come to love them like they’re real people.

It is this that makes third act story turns likes Lando Calrissian’s (Billy Dee Williams) betrayal and Han’s carbonite imprisonment so heartbreaking. It also gives Lando, Leia, and Chewie’s escape from Cloud City, at least as well-staged as the Death Star shootouts in Star Wars, a much greater tension. And as for Luke losing his hand and Darth Vader’s (David Prowse) “I am your father.” revelation, it cuts as deep as a plot twist can. The Rebels’ overwhelming defeat in the snow battle earlier in the picture isn’t half as devastating as this iconic scene. The entire last half-hour or so is emotionally draining in the best, most satisfying way a movie can be.

Indeed, it’s fair to say Darth Vader’s reputation as one of cinema’s greatest villains stems mostly from this picture. Think about it: In Star Wars, he was little more than a colorful masked bad guy you’d find in any Gold or Silver Age comic book, and arguably more of a secondary villain to Peter Cushing. Here, he’s absolutely evil, and terrifying. I, for one, freaked out a bit at his habit of force-choking his underlings to death when I was a child, and to this day it remains a chilling trait.

While the film secured the dark lord’s legacy, it also gave us an instantly iconic new character in Yoda. He’s the single greatest creature creation in the whole saga for the same reason his swampy home planet is such a great set: we never once think what we're seeing is fake. His expressive features and tiny movements give him the illusion of life that eluded most creations of puppetry in the pre-CGI era. It’s simply masterful work from Frank Oz, making the little green sensei look like a real living, breathing alien being and a full character on equal footing with Mark Hamill in the scenes they share. Higher footing, even, as the puppet exudes a stronger authority than even the great Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

Empire isn’t just the best Star Wars picture (at least so far, but The Force Awakens will practically have to be the best move ever if it’s going to top this) and among the best sequels ever made; it’s arguably an important point in the evolution of the modern comic book movie.

Let’s take a little trip back to 1980: It was the latter half of comics’ Bronze Age. The medium featured smarter, elaborate stories with more grown-up appeal, writing which would usher in the Modern Age a few years later. However, the onscreen comic productions of the time like the Christopher Reeve Superman movies and The Incredible Hulk with Lou Ferrigno were lagging behind, more reminiscent of the lighter, sillier, and increasingly distant Silver Age. Star Wars may not have been directly  based on any comic book, but it was very rooted in old-school comics and children’s serials, and the first film reflected that.

But three short years later came Empire, treating the same material with a seriousness and deep reverence that was fairly new to comics and practically unheard-of in any comic book film up to that time. It’s hard to gauge how directly the movie influenced the genre; I don’t doubt Tim Burton’s Batman at the end of the decade and all the “grownup” comic movies and shows that followed would have still been made if Star Wars had no sequels. But it’s arguably fair to say Empire was one of the first screen works to bring a mature sophistication to “comic book” fare.

Regardless of its importance in the history of the comic book movie, or the history of all film, The Empire Strikes Back is an incredible motion picture. Flaws and all.

South Park, "Truth and Advertising"

I suppose it was inevitable that we’d get an episode like this now that South Park’s storylines stretch over the entire season. This one’s pure filler, the type of connective tissue you’d see in a continuing drama series between the episodes with major plot points that everyone remembers.

Is it any good? That depends on how you look at it.

Last episode’s revelation about advertisements taking human form was spelled out, and the fact that there’s some sort of conspiracy involving PC Principal and ilk was established. None of this really moved the narrative forward, however, and merely set things firmly in place for big stuff in next week’s season finale. The only real new development is that the ongoing gentrification plotline came to its logical conclusion of pricing the South Park residents out of their own town.

That sounds sharp for a split second, but think about it for a moment and it’s a pretty obvious point. Similarly, the running smash cut—in which the characters get distracted by pop-ups and suddenly appear in the businesses of the ads with which they’re bombarded—is a decent gag, and an apt encapsulation of the struggle to maintain an attention span in these always-connected days. But while it might have been fairly cutting edge a decade or so ago, today, it’s an observation that’s been made many times before.

So, the satire was a bit stale and mediocre this time around. As for the non-satire humor, I laughed lightly at one moment with the britches farmer, and one entry on a list of gentrified name gags (which I’m too ashamed of laughing at to point out) made me guiltily snicker. But overall, this wasn’t the funniest episode, either.

To its credit, though, it did its job as buildup. I’m genuinely interested to see where this plotline concludes. I just hope that spending this week fueling our anticipation doesn’t backfire on the show.

Star Wars rewatch: Star Wars

NOTE: For this rewatch, I viewed the original unaltered versions of the Star Wars trilogy. There will be no discussion of the changes made to the films in the Special Editions or any later releases.

 

**SPOILERS HEREIN**

In a way, it’s easy to forget how good the original Star Wars is. 

I know, the very thought sounds absurd. It’s only the biggest movie of all time, nearly everything about it so thoroughly ingrained in our cultural vernacular. But perhaps fans who, like me, delved frequently into the now-defunct Expanded Universe know where I’m coming from. So much has sprouted from this one film that it almost seems like a small sapling in a dense forest of mythology (not to mention the tons and tons of merchandise of all kinds). Even in the context of just the movies, its own sequels feature much more significant events, both for the main characters and the larger galactic conflict, that arguably overshadow what’s in this movie.

For these reasons, the initial film always feels new and fresh upon revisiting, and also disconnected by itself. It’s less concerned with planting seeds for future stories than whatever perils lie down the next Death Star corridor. Such makes it practically a relic in this age of long-term franchise building (to which even this series isn’t immune). Yet on the contrary, it has an outside-of-time quality that very few films achieve, as enjoyable today as the first time you saw it in the theater (or, in my case, on a scratchy VHS from Blockbuster). What elevates it so isn’t its timeless archetypes, cherished characters, or childhood nostalgia, though all certainly contribute to its beloved status. But underneath all of that, it still works after nearly four decades because it’s a tremendously well-made picture in every aspect.

For one, it's a masterpiece of editing. Every action sequence is a tightly-packed, flawlessly constructed gem of different shots, angles, and effects. Before the movie kicks into gear in the second act, each scene of exposition still has a forward momentum, succinctly but clearly laying down the situation for viewers without dragging (a skill that would elude some further Star Wars films). The whole thing is practically a master course in pacing.

It’s also a masterwork of sounds. John Williams’ score is more than just iconic; the music instills energy, adrenaline, and emotion into every scene as much as the editing I just mentioned. Credit is also due to Ben Burtt for creating an array of sound effects so vivid and real (which, also, are flawlessly edited into the mix). Think about it: how many sounds from that galaxy far, far away are as instantly familiar as the things we hear in our daily lives? At the very least, they’re as recognizable as the music.

And of course, the special effects are still so impressive, even though standard CGI passed them up a long time ago. Actually, it’s more convincing than digital effects in a way. Even with the best CGI, we know when we’re seeing a computer creation, as it’s almost always unnaturally shiny and fluorescent. These old-fashioned hand-built models take up space, get dirty, and reflect natural light. True, a few shots here and there are static and obvious, but the majority are convincing and thrilling (and again, the editing keeps the so-so shots short and the action moving).

But, for all the spectacular sensory experience, it wouldn’t be the classic that it is without its characters. Sure, the three main leads are clearly a little green and inexperienced, but that just makes them more real and relatable. As Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill is believable as a regular dreamer we’ve all felt like at some point in our youth. Though he handles himself better than most viewers probably would in the face of danger, he never loses his everyman quality. Harrison Ford’s near-humorous attempt to imbue Han Solo with an anti-heroism actually works in the character’s favor. It’s clear from the start it’s all a façade, that he’s really got a good heart and is on our side. As Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher admittedly doesn’t veer too far out of the footsteps of the damsel in distress archetype, but at least she’s got personality, and gets to share in the smart-alecky banter and participate in the action once she’s rescued. And C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) provide the right amount of comic relief without overstaying their welcome or getting in the way. No one thinks twice about it now because the bickering droids are sci-fi icons, but it’s a testament to the work of the actors, as well as the costume and effects designers, that they made expressionless, technically non-living objects (one of whom only beeps, no less) into fully developed and beloved characters.

Excellent, too, are the two Brit greats in supporting roles. Alec Guinness gives a legitimacy to the whole narrative as Obi-Wan Kenobi simply by his presence and the conviction in his delivery (he was quite the actor because you can’t tell a bit from his performance that he hated the picture). And yeah, Darth Vader (David Prowse) is cool and certainly more famous, but he’s more of a henchman here to the real bad guy: Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin. The horror legend is at his scene-chewing best, personifying a mannered and sinister Imperial aesthetic (both of the Empire in the Star Wars saga and the then-not-too-distant colonial powers I’m sure the character brought to mind in some viewers).

Beginning the moment the Millennium Falcon blasts out of Mos Eisley, the film crescendos with every new Stormtrooper encounter and Death Star chase or shootout, each one more exciting than the last. But the Death Star trench run at the end is something else, maybe the greatest action sequence ever constructed. The music is certainly the best piece in the entire saga (yes, better than even the main theme or the "Imperial March"), comprising every possible emotional high and low. It’s here the fantastic editing (I hate to beat a dead horse, but Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch, and Marcia Lucas did such a damn fine job) shines brightest, turning the chaos of explosions and special effects shots into a coherent and thrilling ride. More than just wowing the viewer with its flash, however, shots of the fighters’ cockpits add an intimate dramatic tension to the whole assault. Luke being the hero, much of this focus is on Hamill, whose arc as Force prodigy X-Wing pilot is highly exciting and emotionally satisfying. However, praise is due to all the Rebel pilot players. Particularly notable is Drewe Henley as Garven Dreis, the doomed Red Leader. One of the great underrated performances in the whole franchise, Henley’s icy determination unraveling moment-by-moment is captivating. His restrained intensity is so palpable that when he misses the Death Star exhaust port, then gets shot down, there’s a devastating pathos that’s almost equal to the victorious ecstasy when Luke succeeds in saving the day. I hope Dreis gets his due in Rogue One next year, or another spinoff after that (same goes for Denis Lawson’s Wedge Antilles, a major character in the EU but always second fiddle on film).

The film’s production and technical brilliance is much, much greater than that in the old sci-fi adventure serials that inspired it. But it’s a lot closer to those works (or the full serial mode of George Lucas’ Indiana Jones series the following decade) than any of its deeper-plotted sequels, prequels, or written spinoffs, in tone and plain old great fun. The greatest moment in the Star Wars saga was still yet to come (we’ll get to that next week), but for sheer breathless, wall-to-wall enjoyment, nothing yet released in the series (and few works outside of it) tops the 1977 original.

Creed

Mock the series all you want for often straying into hokey schmaltz and not throwing in the towel after nearly 40 years and now seven movies. But there’s no denying the Rocky formula works. Maybe a little too well. It’s so effective that it’s defined the uplifting underdog genre almost completely. Short of going the completely downbeat and unsentimental Raging Bull route, just about every fight film inevitably draws comparison to the series and gets stuck in its shadow. 

Creed certainly tries to break away, despite continuing the Rocky mythology and featuring Sylvester Stallone’s most famous character. There are only snippets from the famous theme, the film instead opting for a more hip-hop-infused soundtrack. Director Ryan Coogler eschews the series’ cheesy montage style for a naturalistic and unadorned aesthetic (similar to his fantastic, tragic Fruitvale Station), even during his own montages. It’s a cogent take on the material, no doubt, but it’s still the same material underneath it all. While that doesn’t suck a bit of enjoyment from the whole thing, this movie’s decidedly not the mold-breaker it's trying to be.

The film stars Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson, the illegitimate son of Carl Weathers’ deceased champ Apollo Creed. Taken in from the juvenile system and raised by Apollo’s widow (Phylicia Rashad), “Donnie” has a regular job in finance and a presumably decent existence. But in spite of this, the young man possesses the need to fight, taking part in underground boxing matches in Mexico in his free time. With no one else taking his pursuit seriously, he travels from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to convince the retired, lonely Rocky Balboa to train him.

Jordan has a strong charisma, convincing as a physical specimen and hinting at a determined rage that drives him. Unfortunately, the movie never takes the step into grittier or moodier territory, despite looking like it will several times. It’s like the picture’s playing it safe, avoiding too far a deviation from the mass appeal feel-good path instead of challenging the audience. The lack of more intense story turns isn’t bad, but it frankly makes a few scenes where Jordan’s anger boils over seem out of place and a little forced.

He’s much better, however, with one of the hallmarks of the franchise's best entries. Before the series turned into a montage and cliché factory (and its own formula became cliché) in the 1980s, the earliest installments took plenty of time away from the ring and the gyms. Following the characters in their daily lives, these scenes showed that they’re real people, not invincible Hollywood heroes (even though Rocky Balboa would eventually become just that). This made the outcomes even more inspiring because it underlined the underdog element. Creed features such scenes, as Rocky, Donnie, and his musician neighbor played by Tessa Thompson form a little family unit. Here, Jordan is a natural, sweet, funny, and vulnerable depending on the moment.

It’s also here that Stallone shines in his best role in a while. Far from the heroic, chiseled warrior from the old movies (or even the great-for-his-age shape of Rocky Balboa nine years ago), this Rocky is a man broken by both physical trauma and his losses in life, only his spirit and pride holding him together. And try as he might, he’s not good at hiding his anguish. It’s a masterful display of subtlety, transmitting heavy emotions with simple physicality or mumbly mashes of monologue, the latter of which are played much less for humor than they were before. As with Jordan, this element of the film never quite goes as far as it could (this is Rocky, after all, so it's probably foolish to expect anything but a happy ending), but it’s nonetheless quite affecting.

So, it’s an average Rocky movie. But then again, it is a Rocky movie. I mean, have you seen any of these things? Even when they’re bad (and the series sank pretty low with IV and V), it’s simply not possible to sit through a whole one of them without getting caught up in everything. Even if you don’t want to admit it outwardly, you know you’re cheering on the inside during the fights.

In fact, that’s one area where Creed is above average, with two bouts that are standouts in the series. One is a splendid long take that gets us inches from the fighters while also managing to catch every element in the area, from the corner men to the crowd reaction. And the main event, pitting Jordan against real boxer Tony Bellew, condenses a 12-round fight into a manageable movie sequence without resorting to a tired montage. Rather, it’s superbly cut and edited as a continuous and thrilling battle, never missing a beat between rounds or when it’s time for the given inspirational moment, and not once giving viewers the feeling that even a single punch has been skipped over. Both fights are terrific, and also more realistic and bloody than anything previously seen in any Rocky. If only the rest of the picture had that same grit.

Star Wars rewatch: Revenge of the Sith

**SPOILERS HEREIN**

There are two scenes in this movie that are absolutely great. In the nearly seven-hour running time of the whole prequel trilogy, there’s a grand total of two sequences that are truly well done and memorable, both in the third entry and comprising about five minutes of total screen time. That's way too little and way too late to redeem the three pictures, but I'll give credit where's it's due. Both of them are awesome.

One is the opening flyby, which starts like the original trilogy with a slow-moving starship, before two Jedi fighters fly into frame, and a pumped-up militarized version of John Williams’ Force theme starts blaring. The unbroken take zooming through a space battle nearly first-person-style, just sound effects and the epic music on the soundtrack, gets our adrenaline pumping and makes us think maybe, just maybe, we’re finally in for a good movie. Unfortunately, after a minute or so, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) open their mouths, and instead of the prequels’ answer to the battles of Yavin and Endor, we instead get some dopey ping pong ball droid action and a mediocre rescue mission aboard Count Dooku’s (Christopher Lee) ship. But damn, is that flyby impressive. If J.J. Abrams is smart, The Force Awakens will copy the opening, music and all, only replacing the Jedi fighters with the Millennium Falcon followed by a squadron of X-Wings flying into battle. Even the most jaded and skeptical fans will be won over for all time.

The other is the Order 66 scene, where the Jedi are massacred on the various front lines across the galaxy. It’s a darker and more brutal scene than anything in Star Wars since Luke Skywalker lost his hand in the bowels of Cloud City. It’s all in the music, as Williams’ piece (one of the best in the prequel trilogy) evokes utter tragedy, and the image of Yoda (Frank Oz) staggering at the disturbance in the Force is almost powerful. Had this sequence been the climax of a good movie, it would have been absolutely heartbreaking. Alas, it’s just one great scene in a film, and trilogy, that’s not, and a regretful reminder of what we all once hoped the prequels would be.

The rest of Revenge of the Sith has all the same flaws as its two predecessors: terrible dialogue, flat acting, lifeless exposition, catastrophically bad romance, and unimaginative, piecemeal action. The narrative plays out less like an organic story than just a checklist of everything that needs to happen to set up the original trilogy. As a result, there’s no flow or consistency to the picture, and nearly every plot resolution is so fleeting and quickly left behind that none carry any dramatic weight or importance.

On top of everything already on that list—Count Dooku, the Cone Wars, the Jedi purge, the overthrow of the Republic, Anakin becoming Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia’s birth, and Obi-Wan and Yoda’s exile—the film adds another plot point and new villain: General Grievous (Matthew Wood). In the argument that George Lucas cared more about Star Wars as a moneymaking franchise than telling a quality story, this character’s a strong piece of evidence. Any casual fan who hadn’t been following the Expanded Universe or supplementary cartoons prior to the picture’s release would have seen his name in the opening crawl and had no idea who he is or what he looks like. He was also clearly designed to appeal to toy-hungry kids: in addition to having a name like a cartoon villain, he even looks like a giant plastic figure.

Even the showdown between Obi-Wan and Anakin that leaves the latter dismembered, toasted, and in need of his famous armor—the moment we've been waiting all trilogy to see, the event only spoken of in fleeting whispers up to that point and which every fan envisioned as the most epic fight imaginable—is underwhelming. Sure, the swordplay is impressive enough, but it goes on so long, becoming more and more ridiculous as the volcanic terrain gets worse and worse. If that doesn’t take you out of the scene, the awful dialogue that punctuates the action sure does (and even by the standards of the prequels, it’s particularly atrocious). And it ends on such a horrendously stupid note; apparently, regardless of your opponent’s skills as a swordsman, a weak swing of the lightsaber is all you need to render them limbless if you have “the high ground” (never mind the fact that Darth Maul clearly had the high ground on Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace). But above all, after two and three-quarter movies of offputtingly bad characterization, it's nearly impossible to muster any emotional investment in the duel or either participants' fates.

Worst of all, the film doesn’t pay the slightest bit of fan service by introducing the iconic Darth Vader armor in an applause moment. No, it’s instead part of a weepy, somber sequence that fails to elicit any sort of feeling but tedium. Many think the infamous “No!” the dark lord bellows like a cartoon character ruins the moment (and it’s still inexcusable; what the hell were they thinking?), but it’s actually a moot complaint because the scene wasn’t the great moment it was supposed to be, anyway.

There’s little emotional reaction to be had watching Revenge of the Sith, or even much sense of satisfaction. No, the prevailing feeling is relief that it’s over, and with it the prequel trilogy. So instead of dwelling any further on the prequels, let’s just enjoy that feeling and pretend The Force Awakens is the first Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi came out in 1983.

South Park, "Sponsored Content"

Tonight wasn’t the moment of truth for this season’s continuing narrative experiment, but it looks like that moment will be coming soon.

This one has Jimmy and PC Principal butting heads over Jimmy’s editorial sense at the school newspaper. That might have been an entertaining plot in itself. But from that simple premise, the episode builds on last week’s ending to reveal that everything this season has been part of some nefarious conspiracy involving online and embedded advertising. Also involved are the ousted Principal Victoria and the now Trump-like Mr. Garrison. And Caitlyn Jenner and Hillary Clinton are in the mix, too, apparently.

From here, the season can go either way. All the various subjects without much solid connection invites the thought of another messy conclusion like last year. On the other hand, this year’s interconnectedness has been an improvement over last year (regardless of the quality of the individual episodes). Last year’s episodes were connected by a rather loose thread before hastily trying (and failing) to tie them all together in the season finale. This year, each new episode has continued and expanded upon the main storyline to a degree. Since it’s seemingly already approaching the season's endgame on this third-to-last episode of the year, perhaps they’re also giving themselves the time they need to craft a strong finish. And the ending turn this week’s plot takes is rather interesting.

The episode was more narrative connective tissue than anything else, like the in-between episodes that bridge the ones everyone remembers in a great dramatic series. Sadly, despite the presence of Jimmy’s nemesis Nathan, we didn’t get any of the awful but very funny misfortunes to which he’s often subjected (though it offers some mean barbs at Jenner as consolation). But Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s view that well-meaning gentle and protective attitudes toward the disabled are ultimately condescending and insulting, a consistent theme in all the Jimmy and Timmy-centric episodes in the sow’s history, is as strong as ever. Come to think of it, the fact that this still seems like an edgy point to make suggests they're kind of right about oversensitivity in today’s world.