The Ungroundable

South Park has been ragged on a lot this season, and most of the time I defend it, but his second half of the season both started and ended very weakly. We started the second half of the season with that awful Cartman/Butters crotch shooting gag, and we end the season with Butters pretending to be a vampire. I would be one to advocate going back to the show's roots every once in a while and just having a random funny episode not about current events, but this was too random. Twilight may be a popular movie, but this episode will not be remembered as a series classic, but instead more of a lame attempt at finishing off a season with a handful of stinkers (This being one of them).

Butters begins noticing that many of the students at South Park Elementary are becoming vampires. He wants to join in also, and after a trip to Hot Topic, Butters is also one of the living dead, and along with that, his parents can't ground him. The goth kids aren't too happy with preppy kids claiming to be vampires just because of Twilight, and they feel their culture is being stolen.

Nothing about this episode was very funny. The best gag was probably that Butters' dad alphabetizes the food pantry, and if something goes out of place doesn't think to check the label. Other than that, there were just some amusing scenes, but none of that stood out. This episode felt extremely random, and in no way was the situation relate-able nor funny. There must be no news to parody, because if a vampire themed episode due to the release of Twilight is the best Trey Parker can come up with, then all I can do is hope he tries a little harder for the thirteenth season.

My rating: * 1/2 out of ****. 30 mins. TVMA

This is definitely one of the better episodes of this season. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy South Park's crazy episodes that lampoon current events and tear everything happening in the media to little pieces. But this episode slows that down a little bit (at least compared to the rest of this season) and lets some character oriented comedy happen.

The last 2 episodes are pretty good examples of South Park doing their character oriented humor. This episode brings back the Goth kids and helps to expand who they are. This episode also has plenty of great Butters moments.

This episode does have it's social commentary, but it is not as overpowering as "About Last Night".

I think it's great that Matt and Trey are spoofing on current events. I didn't think the episode was dry or humorless at all. Twilight is very popular in our current media right now and I love it when they spoof on current fads like that. IE: "You got Served", "Scientology", "Paris Hilton", "Pokemon", etc...I'v recently got into their show a little over a year ago and I do know that they have done some episodes that were a little too random and the whole episode itself was never pulled off to its full potential but I'm still shocked that I never bothered getting into the show much earlier. Overall, it's a wonderful cartoon and I love how their not afraid the censor themselves with any topic. No one is left untouched no matter how taboo the subject matter may be. I can't wait to see what they have stored for their upcoming 13th season.

This was definitely one of the best episodes on the season. It maybe didn't have jokes that make you laugh out loud, per se, but in overall this a very enjoyable viewing pleasure. I like the goth kids - and the emos and the vampires are cool too. I like the design of the characters alone; how they look. And the goth kids definitely are an interesting bunch to watch.