“Next thing you know, Jersey party at Sizzler.” – Steve “Last Call”
Just when I thought South Park couldn’t shock me anymore, I found myself muttering, “Uh oh…” near the end of “It’s a Jersey Thing.”
There was a great deal of humor in this episode, too (though a lot of the jokes were a little obvious), but it’s going to be remembered for its last few scenes more so for than its parody of various New Jersey-related reality shows.
Normally, I can’t stand the trend of South Park making fun of reality television. For one, my love of Jersey Shore is well known. And making fun of Keeping Up with the Kardashians or Whale Wars or Ghost Hunters is just easy. It’s come to a point where I wonder if there is a list of every reality show on a wall in Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s office and that they just stare hungrily at the titles that don’t have a check mark next to them.
Shows like The Real Housewives of New Jersey are already parodies of themselves, right? And really, a majority of the Garden State jokes in “It’s a Jersey Thing” weren’t actually jokes at all. They were just animated retellings of actual incidents and behaviors on those shows, albeit exaggerated ones. Seeing a cartoon version of Mike “The Situation” flashing his abs is more a wink to viewers of Jersey Shore than actual comedy writing. On the other hand, having Snooki portrayed as a Gollum-like monster is pretty funny.
But while the Jersey stuff was more miss than hit, South Park fell back on a trope they have used extensively in the past, but nearly always to a great deal of success: the disaster movie parody.
Luckily, the magic that led to such great episodes as “Die, Hippie, Die” and “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow” was alive and well here, too. Having Jersey residents act as an invading hair gel-enhanced army was just ridiculous enough to work.
Except the ridiculousness didn’t stop there. No, when Randy (who, let’s face it, is the best character on the show not named Butters) was unable to secure assistance from ally nation to ward of the Jersey threat, he turned to his enemy instead: Al Qaeda.
And when the townspeople ran out of ammo after capping dozens of Pauly D lookalikes, guess who did show up to help. Why Al Qaeda terrorists, of course… flying jet airlines on suicide missions into the advancing Jersey army. And that’s the very moment where I muttered, “Oh sweet Jesus.”
And it almost got worse, too. Randy and the rest of South Park celebrated Osama bin Laden with a loving ceremony at city hall. Randy even hugged him! I was actually getting pretty close to my stop in Offendedville, when the final shot brought me to the antecedent station, Laugh Town. Just as bin Laden was really starting to enjoy the celebration in his honor, a SWAT team guy ziplines down from the ceiling and caps the terrorist in the head. And just like that, Parker and Stone have proven as always that they should (almost always) be trusted.
A few lingering thoughts about “It’s a Jersey Thing”:
- Another common film genre parody that South Park uses are horror films, represented here by Kye’s werewolf-like transformation into Kyley-B.
- Randy used some pretty nifty karate moves while torturing The Situation.
- “Is that why there’s crap on my doorstep every morning?” – Kyle
- “You can take the fetus out of Jersey, but you can’t take Jersey out of the fetus.” – Sheila
- “I know that America isn’t your favorite place in the world, but gosh darn it, we need your help.” – Randy
Some stats and info about South Park, “It’s A Jersey Thing”
TV SHOW – South Park
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 14, Episode 9
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – Comedy Central
GENRE – Comedy, Animated Shows
CREATED BY – Trey Parker, Matt Stone
This review was originally published on TV Geek Army.