Comedy Central Home Video presents

South Park: The Complete Twelfth Season (Blu-ray) (2008)

“I don’t get it Kenny, why did you buy razors and shaving cream.”- Kyle Broflovski (Matt Stone)

Stars: Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Director: various

MPAA Rating: Not Rated for (adult language and situations)
Run Time: 05h:11m:39s
Release Date: 2009-03-10
Genre: television

Style Grade	Substance Grade	Image Transfer Grade	Audio Transfer Grade	Extras Grade
A	A	A+	A	B

 

DVD Review

While it seems like only yesterday that we were meeting the denizens of South Park for the first time, it’s really been a whopping 12 years since the first episode of the show premiered on Comedy Central. The show continues going strong, still pushing the limits of good taste and lampooning anything and everything in today’s pop culture landscape. After 11 great DVD box sets, the show makes its HD debut on the new South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season (Blu-ray) release. Once again, Comedy Central DVD has done a wonderful job bringing their bread-and-butter series to our homes in the best way possible.

Season 12 begins with Tonsil Trouble, where Cartman faces the common childhood procedure of tonsil removal. Everything does not go according to plan, though, and Cartman is accidentally given blood tainted with the AIDS virus. Since AIDS isn’t as much of a focus as it used to be, Cartman has problems raising money for his new cause, but when all else fails, the boys turn to the only man who can help, Magic Johnson. In Britney’s New Look we find one of the crudest, yet best and funniest installments of this season. Britney Spears is on South Park televisions 24/7, even preempting presidential election coverage, but when she loses it and shoots herself, the resulting new direction that her career takes has to be seen to be believed.

Next, in Major Boobage, we get a great tribute to the cult classic film, Heavy Metal. Mr. Mackey has just given the students a presentation on the dangers of getting high, but for some reason he goes a step further and tells them about the potency of cat urine. Naturally, Cartman tests this out on his kitty, which sprays Kenny and sends him on a drug-induced trip to a fantasy world featuring the woman of his dreams. Canada on Strike is another of the show’s rips on our neighbors to the north, and in Eek, A Penis! Cartman takes over as teacher while Mrs. Garrison is gone, and the results are amazing.

Over Logging focuses on our total reliance and addiction to the internet, as the Marsh’s can’t cope with a sudden lack of online access. When they discover that internet access is down across the country, it’s off to Silicon Valley to get to the bottom of this crisis. In Super Fun Time, Cartman forces Butters to join him in sneaking away from a class trip to Pioneer Village and engage in some real fun at the “Super Phun Thyme” entertainment center, while in The China Problem, Cartman copes with nightmares about China taking over the world by forming the “American Liberation Front” to stop this inevitable Chinese invasion. More importantly, though, Kyle can’t deal with his own nightmares about how George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg raped one of the best movie characters of all time in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Arguably the best episode of the season, Breast Cancer Show Ever features the ultimate showdown between Wendy and Cartman. After having more than enough of his relentless mockery, Wendy challenges Cartman to an after-school fight, but it’s not until after he accepts that he realizes that if he actually loses to her, he’ll be the laughing stock of the school. Pandemic and Pandemic 2: The Startling is a fun two-part Cloverfield parody that features the funniest “monsters” I’ve ever seen, while About Last Night is the show’s take on the recent election win by President Obama. This episode is a huge disappointment though, as it is virtually devoid of laughs. South Park finally takes its shots at the High School Musical franchise in Elementary School Musical, and the results are side-splitting. The twelfth season concludes with The Ungroundable, which goes after the recent vampire craze, a fitting way to finish up another great batch of episodes in a brilliant series.

Rating for Style: A
Rating for Substance: A

 

Image Transfer

	One
Aspect Ratio	1.78:1 - Widescreen
Original Aspect Ratio	yes
Anamorphic	yes

Image Transfer Review: Each show is presented in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio and is presented in high definition. We see amazing image detail that we’ve never seen before, with characters’ clothes and specific items on a wall being the new visual discoveries. The show’s bright, vivid color palette benefits the most from these transfers, with brilliant reds and greens practically bursting off the screen. The total lack of blemishes is another of these transfers’ perks.

Image Transfer Grade: A+
 

Audio Transfer

	Language	Remote Access
Dolby Digital TruHD	English	yes

Audio Transfer Review: The audio is available in both Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital 5.1, and if you have the capability to hear the lossless track, it’s easily the one to choose. The greatness can be heard immediately, as the opening theme song has a depth that we’ve never heard during one of the show’s TV broadcasts. A wonderful bass presence is a constant throughout the set, but it never interferes with the flawless dialogue clarity.

Audio Transfer Grade: A 

Disc Extras

Animated menu with music
Scene Access with 70 cues and remote access
2 Documentaries
1 Featurette(s)
Packaging: Cardboard Tri-Fold
Picture Disc
3 Discs
1-Sided disc(s)
Layers: dual

Extra Extras:

1. Mini-Commentaries – By Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Extras Review: A nice extras collection is spread out over the three discs, with Disc 1 containing Behind the Scenes of Major Boobage. This 13-minute piece includes interviews with animation producer Eric Stough, art director/producer Adrien Beard, and co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, along with a look at storyboards and concept art.

Six Days to South Park is a great, 82-minute look at exactly what it takes to produce an episode, and focuses on the amazingly short amount of time it takes to do it.

Behind the Scenes: About Last Night is a 22-minute look at how the creative team made this episode at the last minute, due to the presidential election results.

Each episode also features a mini-commentary by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, during which they give us as many fun bits of information as they can in a limited bit of time.

Extras Grade: B
 

Final Comments

Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny are at it again in South Park: The Complete Twelfth Season. The boys Blu-ray debut is more of the same that we’ve come to expect from the show’s previous DVD box sets, but the bonuses are the great HD transfers, wonderful Dolby TrueHD audio, and impressive extras that take the show to another level on home video.

Chuck Aliaga 2009-03-09