4/4/2005: Tube: South Park, Best Friends Forever
Once again, "South Park" has had the last word, and the best word.
This week creators Trey Parker & Matt Stone and company took on the Terri Schiavo situation, cutting through all the politico-religious bullshit with a vengeance, and surpassing all the pundits and talking heads who've weighed in on the issue in the past several weeks.
Of course in "Best Friends Forever" it's Kenny who ends up in a "persistent vegetative state" and of course it's Cartman who finds a way to profit from the life or death decision. In this case, he wants to inherit Kenny's Play Station Portable.
In typical "South Park" style there are laughs and layers of pop culture references along with spot-on reflections of the Schiavo news stories, but as they did with their brilliant episode about September 11, the "South Park" guys handle the ethics questions sensitively, and point them right where they belong instead of toward everyone's self-serving special interests as the media did. And they remind us what a travesty it was, and what a disservice to that once-vibrant young woman, to have had her image continuously thrust upon the world in her unresponsive and brain-dead state. Whatever she would have wanted, that certainly wouldn't have been her choice.
It's amazing that "South Park" continues to be so original and timely in its ninth season, but it does, and "Best Friends Forever" is one of their finest episodes. Thanks once again, Trey & Matt.
