“Pandemic 2 – The Startling” is the first bad story arc I’ve seen from South Park.  The arcs try to utilize long-form parodies that can’t be contained within one South Park episode, but two episodes parodying a year-old monster movie?  ”Pandemic” barely merited one episode, yet guinea pigs cavort around in bunny, dinosaur and bee costumes here.  It’s like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch come to animated life.

“Pandemic 2 – The Startling” repeats itself ad nauseam for twenty-odd minutes.  Craig feels the need to explain why Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny get into dangerous situations all the time.  That’s great, he’s explaining the South Park formula, very “meta.”  Trouble is, he’s not funny.

Craig even has to point out which shows South Park is referencing when the boys enter the Guinea Valley, a “Land of the Giants Lost World.”  Craig’s role in “Pandemic 2 – The Startling” is a lazy attempt at self-referential humour.  If “Pandemic 2″ is meant to raise Craig to secondary-character status, the experiment fails.  He’s the voice and middle finger of reason, but he works best in small doses.

Randy’s subplot isn’t much better.  He’s still holding the video camera.  His wife Sharon gets angrier at him the more he gets shots of the guinea creatures.  Randy talks about being startled a lot and tells his daughter Shelley to wave at the camera.  Nothing about this is hilarious, but the joke keeps on going like a Peter Griffin/giant rooster fight.  It’s never a good sign when I can compare South Park unfavourably to Family Guy.

The guineasaurus rex, guinea bees, guinea pirate etc. are just guinea pigs in costumes.  South Park contrives a bullshit explanation for this, in that things grow huge in Peru’s Guinea Valley.  There’s also stuff about an ancient Incan prophecy, pan flutists keeping the guinea pigs at bay, Craig saving the world etc.  I feel the same way as Craig does throughout the episode.  I just don’t care.

“Pandemic 2 – The Startling” is a disappointing episode.  It takes a good sight gag and literally stretches it to the breaking point.  This isn’t the worst episode of the season as “Pandemic 2″ can never reach the lows set by “Canada on Strike,” but what was the point of this episode?  Was it that funny to dress guinea pigs up in costumes?  Trey Parker and Matt Stone can do anything they want, but that doesn’t mean I’m forced to watch their every burp and fart.

South Park really caught fire last month.  ”The China Probrem” was the first classic of the season, and “Breast Cancer Show Ever” saw Cartman at his most devious and cowardly.  ”Pandemic” isn’t as good as the previous two episodes, but it beats anything coming out of the first half of the twelfth season.

South Park has been experimenting with arcs the past three seasons.  There was season 10′s “Go God Go,” where Cartman became Buck Rogers while waiting for his Nintendo Wii.  ”Imaginationland” was season 11′s arc, the highlight of a fairly weak season.  ”Pandemic” is the arc this year, and I don’t know what to make of it just yet.

The main plot – Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman decide to form a Peruvian flute band to make easy money, using Craig as the money mark – is workmanlike.  The standard South Park plot progression applies – the boys stumble onto something bigger, crazy crap happens and Cartman makes racial slurs.  The A-story sucks, aside from the boys and Craig playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” poorly and still making money.

Craig’s South Park role is usually relegated to him flipping the bird, and he’s a non-factor in an episode designed especially for him.  It’s nice for South Park to use Craig as a detached observer, but there’s a reason why he’s ancillary.  Replacing Craig with Clyde, Dog Poo or any of the other background characters would not change the story one bit.

Randy Marsh’s infatuation with his videocamera makes for a solid B-story.  While a bit obvious, the B-story succeeds as Randy’s not doing anything with a videocamera that anyone else wouldn’t do.  He describes what he’s filming and doesn’t turn the videocamera off for a second.  It’s a “guy thing.”

Randy’s story ties in well with the camcorder-horror-film parody at the end of “Pandemic.”  I find the giant live-action guinea pigs funny.  Cloverfield is the most direct film being parodied, which is lame as South Park doesn’t usually do parodies that long-range, but whatever.

South Park hasn’t worked live-action that fluidly into the show before, unless the guinea pig pictures are just extremely well-animated.  Either way, it’s an improvement over taking five pictures of Mel Gibson’s head and cycling through some facial expressions.  This season has been South Park‘s most ambitious from an animation standpoint, if only for this and the fact that “Major Boobage” paid proper homage to Heavy Metal.

In the end, “Pandemic” amounts to little more than a teaser for the next episode.  I honestly wonder why there’s a nine-day waiting period for South Park in Canada, as information about “Pandemic 2 – The Startling” was out two days before “Pandemic” aired in Canada.  As long as South Park doesn’t put out crap like “Canada On Strike” and “Over Logging,” I don’t care.

Woo!  Tripping the Rift Season Three box art!  One of Chode’s tentacles is cupping Six’s right breast and TVShowsonDVD.com is asking whether that’s deliberate.  No, it’s not.  Tripping the Rift is also more hilarious than ten Mystery Science Theaters 3000!  I’m not at all being sarcastic!

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Here’s the official press release for Super Dave’s Super Stunt Spectacular Volume One.  GAT Productions is handling PR for this title.  I wonder if this compilation will have a Tilden Rent-a-Car mention.

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Variety article about consolidation in the global entertainment industry.  It mentions Alliance Films and Entertainment One.  Entertainment One owns Koch and Séville Pictures, and Variety specifically mentions E1′s desire for more TV and DVD content.

E1 recently announced a “reverse takeover” of DHX Media.  Hooray, the prospect of Chop Socky Chooks on DVD!  I’ll go vomit now.

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Giant Tiger recently announced $19.99 and $29.99 box set sales, which usually include Canadian TV-on-DVD titles.  The sale ends November 5, although box sets come in from time to time.  Don’t worry if you miss a sale – they occur frequently.

What I saw at the Campbellford, Ontario store on November 1:

$19.99
The Forest Rangers Season One Volume Two: Episodes 21-40
The Greatest Canadian

$29.99
Corner Gas Season Two
Corner Gas Season Five
The Outer Limits (new series) Season Four

The fact that Giant Tiger had the fifth season of Corner Gas stunned the hell out of me.  Usually Giant Tiger doesn’t get DVDs that recent, since the fifth-season set hasn’t been out a month.

The fourth season of the new Outer Limits series isn’t listed on amazon.ca, which is nuts.  There are also six-episode single-disc Outer Limits compilations, but those discs can be safely ignored.

If anyone sees a Canadian TV-on-DVD set being sold at the Giant Tiger, post the show name and sticker price in the comments section of this blog entry.  Canadian TV-on-DVD sets often retail for $10-$20.  Sometimes they’re even relegated to the $6.88 pile or worse.  It’s annoying sifting through ten copies of Stranger Than Fiction and twenty copies of The Others just to get to something interesting.

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Finally, for those who shop at amazon.ca, I have an aStore dedicated to Canadian TV-on-DVD.  Someone has to go through the morass that is amazon.ca.  It’s like amazon.com, only shambolic and poorly organized.  In other words, it’s like the Canadian entertainment industry.

The New Adventures of Beans Baxter was a spy spoof/domestic sitcom parody/teen comedy.  It was a hyphenate before such things became trendy and popular.  Watching this episode, I realized that films like Agent Cody Banks and Spy Kids have been mining the same comedic territory as Beans Baxter with far greater financial success.  Cartoon behemoth Kim Possible is just a post-modern Beans Baxter with emphasis placed on a cool cheerleader.  Beans Baxter was ahead of its time.

Sometimes I find Make or Break TV‘s research lacking.  The show makes out like Savage Steve Holland made his name with One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead.  His and Bill Kopp’s work was an integral part of Press Your Luck, and that came before Better Off Dead.  Also, why wasn’t Eek! the Cat mentioned?  That is by far Savage Steve Holland’s greatest success.

Another point of contention: the Canadian dollar wasn’t worth US$0.65 back in 1987.  It hovered around US$0.75 for most of the year, according to this site.  Make or Break TV has never been as bad with its research as Whatever Happened To…?, but enough with the generalizations, please.

The New Adventures of Beans Baxter looks fun.  One can see how low-budget the show is, but Beans Baxter‘s weirdness transcends its budget.  Kurtwood Smith and Elinor Donahue are inspired cast choices.  Smith in particular is great at comic menace, as eight seasons of That ’70s Show make perfectly clear.

I actually laughed when Savage Steve Holland talked about Beans Baxter‘s guest stars.  Kitten Natividad!  G. Gordon Liddy!  Dee Snider!  Who wouldn’t want to watch a show with guest stars like that?

A lot of people, as it turns out.  Fox was a new network in 1987, and Beans Baxter was only on the network due to Fox not having a lot of product.  Werewolf, Women in Prison and Duet briefly shared a Saturday with Beans Baxter, while Sunday had The Tracey Ullman Show, Married…With Children and 21 Jump Street.  Saturday was an afterthought to Fox.

The Make or Break TV announcer dismissively calls Werewolf, Women in Prison and Duet forgettable, although Werewolf had its fans and Women in Prison had a unique premise.  Sure, they weren’t Married…With Children or 21 Jump Street, but those shows were part of the Fox I miss.  I’ll give Duet to MoBTV, but at least Duet lasted more than the one season.

As an aside, there aren’t any shows I know of featuring women werewolves in prison.  Don’t tell me that show wouldn’t be exciting.  Hell, it would be more realistic and less outlandish than Prison Break.

If anything hindered Beans Baxter‘s success, it was Savage Steve Holland.  He was the executive producer, director and head writer.  The show was made for a family audience, yet had Wendy O. Williams in a recurring role.  It’s hard for any show to be both edgy and family-friendly.  Of course, Eek! the Cat had dyslexia jokes and featured the voice talents of Tawny Kitaen, so I’m just going to give the point to Holland.

In one of the odder permutations of his career, Savage Steve Holland has become a Disney Channel stalwart.  He’s directed the Disney TV-movies Shredderman Rules and Stuck in the Suburbs, as well as episodes of Even Stevens and Lizzie McGuire.  Holland has also directed episodes of V.I.P. and Shasta McNasty.

Holland has dabbled in proper films lately, directing National Lampoon’s Ratko: The Dictator’s Son and Legally Blondes.  It would be nice to see Holland make a comeback, as he’s been doing straight-to-video fare for far too long.  In lieu of a proper ending, here are some Whammies from Press Your Luck.