South Park – “Faith Hilling” Review

I have to say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed what Matt Stone and Trey Parker have been doing with South Park recently. As Matthew Rhodes noted in his review of the previous episode, “Cash for Gold,” it really seems as if they are taking a more ruthless, no-holds-barred approach to the topics that they’ve been satirizing, and this week’s episode is no different. This time though, the creators are taking their absurdity to a topic which I’m quite surprised has never been focused on by them before: Memes. We’ve all seen them at some point or another while mindlessly perusing the internet during a period of boredom: LOLcats, Bachelor Frog, Philosoraptor, Courage Wolf, and Scumbag Steve, just to name a few. Then you have the other spectrum of memes – the more idiotic side – where people pose for the camera in ridiculous situations with equally ridiculous poses. Well, this week’s episode focused on the latter, and honestly, it could have been so much better.

The episode follows the boys as they deal with the constantly changing popularity of various internet memes. After Cartman “Faith Hills” (a play on Tebowing) the crowd at a CNN Republican debate (the use of actual sound bites from the candidates was particularly hilarious because they were completely out of context on everything), the boys learn that people have moved on to the next big meme fad: “Taylor Swifting,” which is exactly like a dog butt-scooting across a carpet. The boys though, are adamant about sticking with “Faith Hilling”, while everyone else is moving on to the other memes. Because of this craze, the school takes action and brings in a university professor of memes to talk to the kids about the dangers of them.

The class is shown an instructional video much to the tune of those car accident videos they show in driving school, which was probably the most hilarious part of the episode. In attempting to get pictures of their poses, the teens in the video keep getting killed by oncoming trains. This continues throughout the episode as well, with multiple reporters getting crushed while trying to see how many times they can say “Oh Long Johnson” before moving out of the way. Although, after getting into a fight with some of the other kids in town and hospitalizing them, the professor comes back and has a most fantastic moment with Butters. While going on an angry rant, the professor hands Butters a loaded gun and screams at him to stick the barrel in his mouth. The professor is then suddenly called away and doesn’t tell Butters to stop, so of course he’s just going to sit at his desk for the rest of the episode with a loaded gun in his mouth.

Now, this brings us to the major letdown of the episode. The professor is called away to examine cat memes that have been popping up online. He concludes that the cats are evolving to a level of human intelligence, and gives examples of meme evolution that dates back to ancient Egypt (The Egyptian paintings purportedly portrayed them “Donkey Dicking”). In an attempt to communicate with the cat leader, who is just a video meme from YouTube, the ambassador of people has a conversion that leads him to the ridiculous conclusion that the cats cannot live with humans, and that “the streets will run red with the blood of their children.” They could have turned this joke into a fantastic high point of comedy for the episode, but instead it just turns into a stale joke that really doesn’t lead anywhere. The cat leader becomes a member of the Republican debate and spouts the same out-of-context nonsense that the presidential candidates where doing, but then it just returns to the focus of the boy’s issues with quickly changing memes. I was hoping to see a cat takeover of some kind, or some other absolutely absurd moment, such as the Sir John Harrington appearance from the end of this season’s first episode, but that unfortunately didn’t happen.

Luckily, the episode was able to hold up a certain level of hilarity, despite its jumbled story. The recurring meme of the train killing people was just fantastic, and served as a pointed reminder of just how stupid many of the internet’s constantly changing memes are. And honestly I can’t see how anyone didn’t lose it when, after Cartman and Kyle begin to get tired of “Faith Hilling” outside of the Planned Parenthood, those d-bag  kids drive by and yell, “Go back to the 90s, f*ggots!”. Of course, the moments of Butters with the gun in his mouth were great as well, especially when he begins to fall asleep on it. Overall, this was a good episode, but when you’re dealing with memes on one of the greatest satirical comedies ever made, you’re going to set the bar of expectations really high.

7 out of 10