The Boys Get Real With Zipling

South Park, S16E06

Stan and the rest decided to go ziplining, so that they could end their spring break with something new and exciting.  To their dismay, zipling was the most boring thing ever, and they spend the rest of the day trying to escape other tour groups and boring activities.  They were eventually saved by Mr. Hankey.

I liked the mock-reality show vibe of this story because it made fun of some of those shows that start with "I Should Have" etc.  It made their trip seem like such a life-threatening disaster (although for kids of that age, being stuck doing an activity all day they hated with annoying people would be).  I thought from the beginning when they were showing clips of them shouting out in terror that the conflict might have been from some kind of malfunction with the zipline.  The fact that they didn't meet my expectations made the satire work really well for me.

What was also interesting was that they kept showing the inter-workings of the boys' bodies during certain moments of annoyance, boredom, and digestion.  It was gross, though, to see what was going on in Cartman's stomach.  I cringed when we had to see things like crap building up in his intestines going all the way out of his butthole.  Crapping his pants is bad enough without us having to see the whole process.  Still, I liked the over-dramatization. 

One of the best jokes was the long-winded guy in the tour groups who kept saying "long story short," but then continued to ramble on forever about something.  They made a good point about the majority of people who use that expression don't actually make their story any shorter.  I guess these windbags must realize their story is going on too long and say that, but in the end don't know how to edit themselves.

My favorite part of the episode was when they got on the boat and it turned to live-action versions of the boys.  It was adorable and funny!  Usually when cartoons do that sort of thing it's pretty damn annoying, but I guess either the South Park kids are just funny whether 2D or 3D or they just selected really great actors to play the parts of the boys.  It was cute watching Cartman and Kyle argue and yell at each other when Kenny died, and even funnier when Stan had to come clean, and they turned their hateful words toward him. The only thing I didn't like looking at much was when Cartman crapped off the side of the boat like a fountain and them all with cold sores (I hope) around their mouths.  Still, it was good overall.  I was actually disappointed they had to go back into cartoon form for a minute, but then again, I didn't want to see anymore of the real version of Mr. Hankey.  It's bad enough just seeing cartoon poop.

Great episode.  I love when they can make heart-wrenching drama from something that shouldn't amount more to anything than a bad day they wasted on doing something stupid.  I doubt they will ever do some live-action scenes again (as they don't seem like the type to repeat themselves very often), but I still want to hope they might incorporate them in some other story along the road.  Really proves that this show can still be funny even if it's portrayed in non-cartoon format.