Season 15 - Episode 11 / 12
Comedy Central (US)
When South Park went on its customary mid-season hiatus in June with the superlative "You're Getting Old", it was questionable whether the show would come back the same - with some even wondering if it would come back at all. Three pretty decent episodes followed on the show's October return, but nothing could have prepared us for this. "Broadway Bro Down" is fucking brilliant, and easily in the top five episodes that this veteran show has produced. Think back to the classic episodes Trey Parker and Matt Stone have turned out since 1997 and you'll realise just how good I feel this episode was.
It's a Randy episode, as many of the best episodes are, which focuses on Broadway musicals. After hearing from a colleague about the amazing blowjob he got after taking his wife to see "Wicked" in Denver (the parody songs from the South Park Version of "Wicked" by the way, were remarkable) Randy decides to take Sharon to the show. At the show, he finds out that all Broadway writers insert "subtext" into their songs in order for the women in the audience to want to perform oral sex on their men. It's a ridiculously silly concept that leads to Randy and Sharon going to New York for a holiday to see as many shows as possible and Randy writing his own musical - where he completely misunderstands the concept of subtext!
Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Elton John are sent up beautifully as football and hockey loving jocks, and there's a remarkable reference to the cataclysmic failure that was the Spider-Man musical. Simply put, "Broadway Bro Down" is one of the finest half hours of television that's aired this year.
The follow up episode, "1%" was always going to struggle in comparison, but managed to be a bloody good episode in its own right. Cartman has single-handedly managed to bring the entire school's Presidential Fitness Test average to the worst in the country, and the rest of the kids are less than happy about it. This brings around a frankly ridiculous "class war" - which turns out to be between the fourth grade and fifth grade classes - and a disturbing plot where Cartman's stuffed animals are being "murdered" one by one, completely showing the unhinged nature of everyone's favourite obese little kid - he completely lost the plot here, absolutely brillaintly.
"1%" cannot compare to "Broadway Bro Down" - and indeed only appears in the same review as I was running late on the episodes, but is agreat stand alone episode in it's own right. The season looks as if it's picked up again, and god knows what they're going to send up next.
Broadway Bro Down: *****
1%: ****
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