By Robert Scucci
| Published
South Park’s most recent episode, “Turkey Trot,” revisited one of my favorite gags in the series, and that’s the live-action commercial pumping the town up for the annual 5K funded by Saudi Arabia. As much as I’ve criticized the series since Season 27 launched this past July, I’m thrilled that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are putting in such a stupid amount of work into these live-action sequences that used to dominate the early seasons.
Given that we’ve been waiting two to three weeks between new episodes during this run, I’ve been combing through the back catalog to revisit some of my favorite live-action moments. These bits are funny on their own, but they’re even better when you think about the sheer amount of effort it takes to hire actors on a tight production schedule, get a crew involved, and shoot material that could have easily been animated instead.
Toy Commercials Always Land
Though it’s not my personal favorite live-action South Park sequence, it’s worth celebrating Season 1’s “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo,” not just for introducing the fan-favorite character, but for giving us an actual in-episode commercial for the Mr. Hankey Construction Set. Functioning like a Mr. Potato Head doll, the kit comes with everything you need to make your own Mr. Hankey. Well, almost everything. It also includes a small net so kids can fish their own “model base” out of the toilet to decorate accordingly.
The same formula is used, and in my opinion, perfected, with Season 3’s “Chinpokomon,” which brings us two fresh commercials that are easily the best part of the episode.
When the boys get swept up in the Chinpokomon craze, the South Park adults try to redirect their attention with two new toys: Wild Wacky Action Bike and Alabama Man. The bits are hilarious on their own, but it’s the commitment that makes them legendary.
Parker and Stone, who played together in the band DVDA, recorded theme songs for both products in what I can only imagine was a chaotic scramble to write, record, mix, and master within an already brutal production schedule. Whenever Parker and Stone decide they want to sling some sort of product within South Park’s fiction, they go all in, even when the lyrics are absolutely ridiculous.
Live-Action Always Adds A Surreal Element To South Park
Season 3 also delivered “Tweek vs. Craig,” an episode that focuses heavily on woodshop instructor Richard Adler. Through a series of flashbacks, Richard remembers his girlfriend, Pam, before her untimely death in a plane explosion, followed by a drowning. He’s fraught with grief throughout the episode, which fuels his nicotine gum addiction. The halo of white and reverb added to these sequences creates one of the dumbest and funniest ways to add unnecessary emotional depth to a character that the show would otherwise never explore.
Jumping ahead to Season 16, South Park brings the boys to life in a big way in “I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining.” Here, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, and Stan appear in a live-action sequence, suggesting this is how they see themselves in a moment of crisis, even though they clearly exist in a cartoon. Parker and Stone couldn’t have picked better actors to portray them, especially since they look exhausted and fed up after stealing a boat and ending up stranded with no food, no water, and only Diet Double Dew to keep them alive until help arrives.
A similar gag shows up in Season 18, at the end of “Grounded Vindaloop.” Stan gets stuck in a virtual reality nightmare while using an Oculus Rift, only to finally take it off when the simulation ends. The reveal shows the audience what everyone in South Park sees, and once again production had to shift from animation to live-action just to land a single throwaway joke suggesting the show has terrible animation and graphics.
Glad They’re Bringing It Back
As disappointed as I am with South Park’s current run, I’m grateful that “Turkey Trot” reminded me of some of the live-action sequences that helped define the series in its earlier seasons. From Cherokee Hair Tampons to Season 5’s “Towelie,” which sold Towelie towels featuring Towelie’s likeness, there’s no shortage of classic gags that are not only fun to revisit but still land just as hard today as they did decades ago. Hopefully, we’ll see more incredible and incredibly stupid live-action sequences in upcoming seasons, because that alone is enough reason to stick around.
South Park is streaming on Paramount+.
