Re: Jersey Shore Season 3
They don't use underlying messages anymore.
They just make their points as blatantly as possible in the most ridiculous way possible. They usually throw in some sort of summation that uses common sense to point out how silly everything is, but that is near the very end.
I liked SP more when they just didn't beat the joke/message to death. Like the Lucas/Spielberg rape episode. We get it, they changed their movies. Four or five rape scenes are not going to make that point any more than one would have, and they stopped being funny after the second or so. "Oh let's use famous movie rape scenes to talk about movies getting raped," is not a bad idea. Actually, it's really funny. But when almost every joke in the episode is based on that one premise, shit gets old. If anything, it just feels lazy.
I like what SP does, and I am glad they came along to shake up the TV business. But when they try to make intellectual arguments, then hide behind the "It's just a cartoon!" excuse if they ever get called on it, they need to just stop. If you can't own up to the content you are creating, then do something else.
Like this shit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/busin ... hpark.htmlOh let's satirize Inception! Oh wait, we couldn't find a single theater showing the movie, or find a dvd copy EVEN THOUGH we are part of both the tv and film industries. So instead, they try to use satires of the movie to make their own satire. They were trying to poke-fun at the complexities of the movie, but did absolutely nothing to try and ... you know ... understand them.
"When Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone could not find a movie theater showing “Inception,” and were unable to get a DVD of the film (or find a watchable version on BitTorrent), they turned to other parodies of the film on the Web, and found the CollegeHumor video.
“We thought their joke was that a lot of those lines were actually in the movie,” Mr. Stone said, “and they were banging them against each other, and showing that the ‘Inception’ characters didn’t even know ‘Inception.’ That was a mistake, and it was an honest mistake.” "
It is not an honest mistake. You thought the lines were in the movie? Know what would clear that up? Seeing the fucking movie.
That is nothing but lazy. Fuck they even admit,
"The creators of “South Park,” the animated Comedy Central series, apologized on Friday to the creators of a Web comedy video satirizing the summer blockbuster “Inception,” saying that they had used dialogue from a video on the Web site CollegeHumor.com.
“
It’s just because we do the show in six days, and we’re stupid and we just threw it together,” Matt Stone, who created “South Park” with Trey Parker, said Friday in a telephone interview. “But in the end, there are some lines that we had to call and apologize for.”
Just threw it together?
This is a fucking weekly series, if you couldn't just wait to watch the movie, then choose another subject and wait until you do see the movie. Admitting you just threw it together based on other peoples satires/work is embarrassing.
The show is funny, and Stone and Parker created something truly awesome. They just don't put the same effort into the show anymore, and it shows.
I mean, they created great memorable characters. They have shifted the way profanity and vulgarity is handled on TV. They turned a 22 minute show into a feature length film that didn't suck.
I think they just need a fresh project. They pretty much admit now that they just slap this shit together, maybe a new show would get them excited again? I'd love to see them do something else, and really putting effort into it.
A lot of people like to complain that the newer stuff often has an underlying message. Why is that such a bad thing? It's usually a pretty intelligent one, presented hilariously (IMO). There's too much mindlessness on TV (Jersey Shore), so it's welcome in my books.