Comedy Central "A History Channel Thanksgiving"

 

“A History Channel Thanksgiving”  

If nothing else, we can rest easy knowing that Eric Cartman didn’t unwittingly destroy the wormhole to Plymouth when he shot Polly Prissy Pants last week. Amen for small miracles. Tonight’s South Park spent absolutely no time dwelling on the events of last week, favoring instead an attack on The History Channel, apophenia, and Natalie Portman’s vagina. (Just like a few of you predicted in last week’s comments. You all are incredible.) Things started slow, but picked up in the second half of the episode. When people think back on this season, this won’t be an episode that will immediately spring to mind by any stretch. But as far as silly episodes written and drawn by people who have seen a shitload of Thor recently, this wasn’t bad.

Events kick off tonight when the boys get assigned a school project related to Thanksgiving. Rather than actually do the required research, Cartman suggests they just watch a few hours of The History Channel in order to get the needed information in a quick manner. What follows is a parody of that channel’s recent foray into quasi-history programming, such as “MonsterQuest.” But rather than accuse The History Channel of acting in bad faith, tonight’s episode suggests they are just eager, albeit incredibly stupid, students of history themselves. They literally don’t know anything, and so they soak up any crackpot theory in an attempt to fill in their own gaps of knowledge. That’s both a kinder and crueler assessment of the History Channel brass than simply accusing them of actively appealing to the lowest common denominator. In essence, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are saying, “Look, these people are too stupid to know what the word ‘denominator’ even means.”

The History Channel executives get wind of the boys’ report (lovingly done in crayon) and start incorporating their views into another special. What follows is a feedback loop in which 1) the kids parrot back information learned from The History Channel, and then 2) the executives take it as new information that confirms they are actually something. In this case, that “something” is an alien-infested inaugural Thanksgiving dinner. Kyle spouts mounds of bullshit in the hopes of opening everyone’s eyes to the historical inaccuracies on display, but all he does is provide great talking head footage for the channel.

Read the rest here.

Funny Episode -- pokes fun at the History Channel Show "Ancient Aliens"