The Series:

South Park, more than a decade since it debuted, is still a surprisingly popular show and with this ninth season, the show got more controversial than ever before. Once again, the show is crass and offensive to a whole lot of people, and of course the animation remains primitive. But you know what? It's still funny as Hell and it has obviously found a loyal enough audience to keep it going despite those factors. Comedy Central has now given us the complete ninth season of the show on DVD to enjoy over and over again without commercial interruptions.

You'd think by this point in time, series creator's Trey Parker and Matt Stone would have started running out of ideas but the fact that the show is so easy to make and so quick to produce in terms of how it is animated allows them to keep the show topical. South Park, more than any other comedy series save for something like The Daily Show or Saturday Night Live, is able to tackle modern events and as such, you'll sometimes see subjects in the show ranging from political debates to celebrity gossip nonsense (the obvious one this time around being the Trapped In The Closet episode). It's all taken on with a no holds barred attitude and what's beautiful about the series is that the creative team behind it simply do not care who they offend. As such, it's a gutsy and crass series, but just try not to laugh at some of the episodes in this set.

The fourteen episodes contained in this three disc set are as follows:

Disc One:

Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina: Mr. Garrison has always been rather effeminate but he finally takes the plunge and goes in for a sex change operation (though his face remains the same – watch out for actual clips of a real sex change operation spliced in here!). Mrs. Garrison begins to explore her new life as a woman and tries to pick up various men in the town. While this is going on, Kyle has to come to terms with the fact that Jews are not good at basketball. Rather than accept this, he goes to the same doctor that made Mr. Garrison into Mrs. Garrison and has him turn him into a black man. Kyle's dad follows suit and gets turned into a dolphin.

Die, Hippie, Die: Hippies have started appearing in random places around the town, forming drum circles and trying to promote peace, love and poor hygiene. The town isn't too excited about this and soon the problem gets worse. There's only one person that South Park can turn to, and that's Eric Cartman. The hippies decide that South Park is going to be the location where they hold 'Hippie Jam Fest 2005' but Cartman figures he can use this mass gathering to his advantage by jacking into the sound system and playing Slayer's Raining Blood to make them go away once and for all.

Wing: Token wins a singing contest at the school and so Kyle, Stan, Eric and Kenny decide to represent him and become his talent agents so that they can get ten percent of the two hundred dollars he'll win if he makes it to the championship. Soon, however, Token is whisked away by a real agent from Los Angeles. Things look bad for the Super Awesome Talent Agency until the owner of City Wok comes to the boys in hopes that they'll represent his wife, Wing (voiced by the real Wing), and they wind up taking her to LA to appear on American Idol. Eventually Sylvester Stallone hires wing to perform at his kid's wedding, but soon the Triads come in and kidnap her forcing the boys to storm their headquarters where a firefight breaks out. This episode is insane.

Best Friends Forever: Cartman wants a PSP, and he wants it badly. His mom drives him to the store and he sees that Kenny is at the front of the line. When he can't get to the front of the line himself, Kenny gets a PSP and Cartman does not. Kenny reaches level sixty on his favorite game, Heaven & Hell, and is then run over by a truck driver, also engrossed in his PSP. Kenny goes to Heaven and finds out that the PSP was created by God in hopes of finding the right person to command an army of angels against Satan's invading forces – that person is Kenny, as he's the only one to ever get to level sixty. Unfortunately for God, Kenny's corpse gets brought back to life and he heads back to Earth, though he's more or less a vegetable. Meanwhile, Cartman is trying to get Kenny's PSP willed to him, claiming that he and Kenny were BFF – best friends forever.

The Losing Edge: The only thing exciting about the baseball games that the boys have been playing in Little League lately are the fights that Randy keeps getting into with other parents. The boys, sick of baseball, decide to try and lose on purpose but some of the other teams are better at trying to lose than they are. Meanwhile, Randy keeps getting into fights until he finds out that the ultimate trash talking father is going to be at the boys' next game. Randy gets scared while the boys bring in Kyle's cousin, also named Kyle, to play on their team because he's horrible. Eventually, Randy shows up late at the game and he and the ultimate trash talking father get into it and a fight spills onto the field and Randy winds up getting the South Park team disqualified and saving the kids from a summer full of baseball.

Disc Two:

The Death Of Eric Cartman: At Stan's house the kids are having fried chicken for dinner. Cartman eats all the skin off of the chicken, making it unappealing to the rest of the boys. They get annoyed at him and decide to ignore him the next morning at the bus stop, and Cartman starts to believe that he's died and is now a ghost. The boys get the rest of the school to ignore Cartman who now believes that the only one who can see him is Butters, because he wasn't at school that day to learn that everyone else was ignoring him. Cartman decides he is trapped on Earth in spirit form so that he can make amends for all the wrong he did so he and Butters go around to try and correct his mistakes and deliver gift baskets to people that Cartman has wronged. Butters' parents think that he's gone insane. When three escaped prisoners hold people hostage, Cartman decides that this is his chance to do some good and seeing as no one can see him, he figures he can walk right in and scare the bad guys away, saving the day.

Erection Day: Things get tough for Jimmy when he starts getting erections at random intervals in class. He's worried that these random erections will keep him from winning the school talent show so he talks to his parents who hire 'Dr. Pal' to talk to him about his problem. Butters tells Jimmy that in order to make his erection go away he has to put it in a vagina and so Jimmy tries to hire a prostitute named Nutgobbler to help him out. Jimmy, not knowing any better, wines and dines Nutgobbler causing her pimp to think that Jimmy is a rival moving in on his property. A chase ensues while the talent show starts and the Goth kids get off to an early lead with Cartman and his readings from Scarface also proving to be a hot contender. Jimmy has to take care of the pimp and his problem in time to get back to the talent show if he wants to beat the competition.

Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow: Stan and Eric are playing in a boat that Cartman says is owned by his Uncle Roy. They start the boat and crash it into a beaver dam which then floods the nearby town of Beaverton. The media goes nuts with the news but no one seems interested in helping the victims, only in placing the blame on who was responsible for it happening in the first place. Eventually, people figure that global warming was the cause, and that two days after tomorrow a huge catastrophe is sure to strike the area and so they hole up in the community center. Meanwhile, Stan and the boys, feeling horribly guilty, decides to go help the people in Beaverton who are still stuck but their boat hits an oil refinery and sets everything on fire. The boys get stranded in Beaverton and Cartman demands that Kyle hand over his Jew Gold before he'll let him on the roof. Soon the army moves in to help, and their scientists disprove the Global Warming theory in favor of blaming the crab people.

Marjorine: Cartman tells the boys that the girls have got a secret device that lets them see into the future. The boys figure they should probably steal this from them and so they launch a plan to fake Butters' death and then to dress him up as a girl named Marjorine and infiltrate an upcoming slumber party. Butters' parents flip out over their son's death while Cartman impersonates Marjorine's mother over the phone. Marjorine finally gets to the slumber party while Butters' dad buries what he believes to be his son's body in an old Indian burial ground so that he'll come back to life. Marjorine gets the device and gives it to the other kids so that they can analyze it, then heads home where his parents won't let him in because they figure he's a zombie. Eventually they let him in and lock him up in the basement and feed him corpses while Kenny blows up the secret device for the good of mankind.

Follow That Egg: Mrs. Garrison decides to teach the kids how to be good parents by pairing them up, one boy and one girl, and giving them an egg to look after as a couple would a baby. Stan really wants to pair up with Wendy but is instead paired with Bebe while Wendy teams up with Kyle. Meanwhile, Mrs. Garrison decides to pay Mr. Slave a visit and finds out that he's moved on and is going to be marrying his new partner, Big Gay Al. Mrs. Garrison is outraged and decides to protest the same sex marriage bill and he builds up a crowd of like-minded protestors to accompany him. To help convince the governor that same sex marriage won't work, Garrison pairs up Stan and Kyle and Wendy and Bebe. The governor decides to compromise on the gay marriage bill and allow two men to partner up and get the same rights as a married couple without the name, instead they'll be called butt buddies. Meanwhile, Mrs. Garrison hires an assassin to take care of the egg, determined to use his scientific study to prove his point while Stan gets angry figuring that Wendy is in love with Kyle.

Disc Three:

Ginger Kids: Cartman gives a presentation to his class on Ginger Kids, those children with red hair, pale white skin and freckles. He tells the class that they suffer from a disease called Gingervitis and that they don't have any souls and must stay out of the sunlight. He claims Kyle, who has no freckles but plenty of red hair, is a Daywalker, one of those people who scope things out for the Ginger Kids. Kyle, upset that Cartman is instilling hatred in his fellow classmates, decides to break into Cartman's bedroom at night and dye his hair red and paint freckles on his face. When Cartman wakes up and finds that he's become a Ginger Kid himself, he rallies the other Ginger Kids to rise up against non-Gingers and all the kids wind up trapped in cages, the Ginger's intent on lowering them into molten lava.

Trapped In The Closet: Kenny, Kyle and Cartman go off to play Laser Tag and leave Stan, who doesn't want to spend any money so he can save for a bike, on his own. Stan wanders into a Scientology center and takes a free personality test where they declare him to be suffering from depression. They tell him they'll cure him for $240.00 and Stan has to weigh whether or not he wants to get his new bike or cure the depression he never knew he had. He opts for the later and soon the Scientologists discover that his Thetan Meter Levels are extremely high, indicating that he is on the same level as L. Ron Hubbard and therefore he must be a prophet. When word gets out to the Scientology community, Tom Cruise and John Travolta arrive. Stan winds up leading the Scientologists until his father locks him in the closet to keep him away from them. Tom Cruise soon locks himself in the closet with Stan, hoping to get in good with the prophet. R. Kelly soon shows up and sings about being trapped in the closet. Everyone tries to get Tom Cruise to come out of the closet but he will not do it, even Nicole Kidman can't convince him to do it. Inevitably, John Travolta winds up in there too, as does R. Kelly and finally Stan has enough and reveals the truth to the crowd that has gathered outside of his home. All the famous Scientologists threaten to sue him.

Free Willzyx: The boys go to an aquarium park in Denver to check out Shamboo, the killer whale. After the show, Kyle sticks around to look at the whale and the guys in the sound booth decide to play a prank on him. They use the PA system to make Kyle think the whale is talking to him, and they tell him that he's actually an alien from the moon named Willzyx and that he needs to go back to the moon to be with his family. Soon the other boys are believing the same story and they hatch a plan to kidnap the whale and bring him to Mexico where members of the Mexican space program (M.A.S.A.!) are going to tie Willzyx to a rocket and launch him into space. Meanwhile, the authorities from the aquarium are looking for the whale and getting into arguments with members of the Animal Liberation Front.

Bloody Mary: The boys are learning the importance of discipline from their Karate teacher when Stan's dad shows up drunk to drive the kids home. He's arrested on the way and is forced into an Alcoholics Anonymous program where he comes to terms with his drinking and accepts that it's a sickness, rather than a problem. As Randy's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and dependant on his pseudo-religious crutch, the news reports that a statue of the Virgin Mary that bleeds out of her ass and which can perform miracles give him new hope. Meanwhile, Stan is trying to figure out what the Alcoholics Anonymous people did to his father. Randy makes his way to the front of the line and believes that the bleeding statue has cured him, but soon the Pope shows up and states that the statue is actually not a miracle and Randy and the others from his group go hit the bar leaving Stan to try and get his dad back on the right track using what he learned in his Karate lessons.

While some episodes are better than others, season nine is, by and large, a very consistently funny batch of cartoons. The celebrity skewering is particularly ballsy and the jabs the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and the media frenzy that accompanied it also quite poignant. Parker and Stone take shots at people of every race, creed and religion and prove to be equal opportunity offenders but also tend to end the more barbed episodes on a somewhat positive note which sometimes actually makes you think (the Bloody Mary episode is a good example of this, what with Stan teach his father the merits of self discipline). The animation is crude, the jokes are often gross and dirty and the entire concept is pretty juvenile but South Park is still a genuinely funny and, at times, surprisingly intelligent show.

The DVD

Video:

Well, we all know that the series' animation is pretty primitive so that does limit how good the series can ever really look but these DVDs do a fine job of brining the episodes to your home theater. The colors look nice and bright, the reds are solid and don't bleed and the black levels are pretty strong. There are no problems at all with print damage or grain issues (no surprise there) and edge enhancement and line shimmering is kept to a minimum. Mpeg compression artifacts aren't a problem at all, and the level of detail present throughout playback is as good as one can really expect given the style in which the series is animated. All in all, these transfers are quite nice.