The Comedy Network now receives South Park episodes two days after the show’s initial American airing.  As a longtime South Park fan, I’m happy.  I’d be happier if the major ISPs in this country didn’t automatically redirect me from Comedy Central’s webpage to The Comedy Network’s, but then I’d be walking into a morass of questions like “how will the CRTC handle new media?”  As soon as it figures out how to handle regional television and cable channels switching their mandates on a whim, let me know.

“The Ring” suffers from a bad case of déjà vu.  Mr. Hankey is South Park‘s own-brand Mickey Mouse, as “Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls” makes clear.  High School Musical had already been made fun of by South Park four months previous to “The Ring.”

Kenny’s dying of syphilis as a result of girlfriend Tammy Warner’s fatal blowjob is reminiscent of “Kenny Dies” and “Spontaneous Combustion,” as Kenny is given a proper funeral.  ”The Ring” is even similar to “Christian Rock Hard.”  Replace secular lyrics in Christian songs with the purity ring’s role in selling sex to minors, it’s the same concept.  Never mind “Simpsons Already Did It,” South Park is cannibalizing its own ideas at this point.

Despite this, “The Ring” is a fairly spot-on thirteenth season premiere.  ”Elementary School Musical” was essentially “High School Musical is gay” brought to a moderately funny extreme.  ”The Ring” goes after the selling of a semi-religious item, the purity ring, to a secular audience.

The Walt Disney Company is also given a skewering.  Mickey Mouse is revealed as a greedy corporate bastard.  Using the character in this fashion is obvious, but South Park keeps the Mouse surprisingly on-model.  Mickey punctuates his sentences with his trademark laugh, a surprisingly funny verbal tic.

The last time Mickey was this funny, it was during a Saturday TV Funhouse cartoon.  Mickey’s never funny in his own cartoons.  Then again, no one is, not even Goofy.

Other Walt Disney Company-related items are also lampooned.  After Kenny wears his potentially blowjob-nullifying purity ring, he becomes boring enough to want to watch Grey’s Anatomy.  The Jonas Brothers also sing about Netflix, a great place for Disney Channel’s more homogenized offal, as an alternative to sex.

“The Ring” works as it’s not about how The Jonas Brothers and Disney suck.  How The Jonas Brothers are portrayed in the episode versus what they’re really like is irrelevant.  What is relevant is how commercial interests can take something like The Jonas Brothers’ evangelical beliefs and use it as a selling point to shift units.  Mickey Mouse is the only character in the episode openly disdainful of Christianity (“they believe in a talking dead guy!”), but that’s because he’s actually a Norse demon.  Or something.  Ha ha.

Overall, “The Ring” makes for a strong South Park season premiere.  It’s a better debut for its season than “Tonsil Trouble” was for the twelfth.  I’ll go so far as to say it’s the best season premiere since season ten’s “The Return of Chef.”  ”The Ring” is familiar in spots, but it’s above-average for South Park.  I can’t wait to see how South Park makes fun of The Princess and the Frog.

Hell, I’d like to see if South Park acknowledges Robot Chicken‘s existence and/or the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer brouhaha.  Those topics would make for fun episodes.

By the way, Mickey as depicted in South Park would not have come from Valhalla.  He would most likely have come from Múspellsheimr, the realm of fire.  I’m reading too much into a throwaway gag near the end of “The Ring,” but it’s still lazy writing.

I’m also not fond of South Park ending the episode on an over-referenced G.I. Joe line.  Discredited tropes always make for painful television.  Now you know, and screwing the pooch is half the battle!

South Park is a bit late with its High School Musical parody.  Twilight is more trendy right now, and South Park just made fun of it last week.  I wonder why South Park didn’t take care of High School Musical two years ago, before the cancer became terminal.

Third-grader Bridon Gueermo (pronounced, uh, “queermo”) is forced to sing and dance by his father, but would rather play basketball.  To keep his son in line, Bridon’s father slaps him.  Mr. Gueermo, it should be noted, is an effeminate musical theatre fan.  Child abuse alone makes “Elementary School Musical” more realistic than High School Musical could ever be.

At first, Stan and the boys resist co-opting the High School Musical trend.  Stan, afraid of losing longtime girlfriend Wendy Testaburger to Bridon, jumps on the song-and-dance bandwagon.  Meanwhile, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny have become so unpopular that they start hanging around with lisping diabetic Scott Malkinson.  Mr. Gueermo is slap-happy until Bridon decides to man up and punch his father in the face.  Again, this is more realistic than High School Musical.

Bridon’s father essentially makes “Elementary School Musical.”  The man is a parody of the abusive-father-figure archetype, and he earns the biggest laughs in the episode.  Although Mr. Gueermo’s role is predictable, he makes up for this with nicely over-the-top movements.  The posters for A Chorus Line and Phantom of the Opera are a nice touch.

Scott Malkinson’s debut also has its moments.  Malkinson is instantly more entertaining than Craig Tucker, and Craig’s been around forever.  Malkinson’s lisp, diabetes and sensitive nature feed into Cartman’s mimickry of anything he says.  This character could become another Jimmy or Butters if handled right.

High School Musical deserves to be made fun of.  I’ve never seen the film or its sequels, but I’m as confused as Parker and Stone about the series’ popularity.  Even not knowing what the fuss is about, “Elementary School Musical” could have been funnier.  The Bridon subplot is a too-obvious inversion of High School Musical.  Even Cartman can’t save “Elementary School Musical” from mediocrity.

“Elementary School Musical” is eerily similar to last season’s “Guitar Queer-o.”  Both episodes revolve around a variation of “this trend is literally gay.”  Neither episode is more than sporadically funny.  The only difference between “Guitar Queer-o” and “Elementary School Musical” is that “Guitar Queer-o” was not as well-received when it aired last season.  Using the word “queer” is not shorthand for “instantly funny.”

High School Musical is almost too easy a target for South Park.  Mad Men and 30 Rock are higher fruit and need to be taken down a peg, especially in regards to Tina Fey.  I’m not one to suggest things for South Park to make fun of, but can the show lay off the low-hanging fruit for a while?  South Park‘s fad-skewering episodes can’t be “Chinpokomon” all the time.

South Park has a much faster turnaround time than most series.  Less than 24 hours after Barack Obama and John McCain gave their post-election speeches, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone worked the speeches into “About Last Night…”  What’s more amazing is that the death of Obama’s grandmother is worked into the show without that coming across as a cheap joke.

The main plot deals with the aftermath of the battle between Barack Obama and John McCain for the American presidency.  Turns out they are working the angle (always workin’ the angles) to gain access to the Presidential escape tunnel under the White House.  Said tunnel is right underneath the Smithsonian, where the Hope Diamond is located.  A long-form heist film parody ensues.  Boom, baby!

The main plot sucks.  Sarah Palin’s playing the idiot to throw people off?  Obama’s grandmother and wife being in on the heist?  ”About Last Night…” doesn’t feel like South Park somehow.  One would figure that Ocean’s Eleven would be satirically eviscerated, but it isn’t.  Reverential treatment doesn’t fit South Park‘s modus operandi.  Even “Major Boobage” distilled Heavy Metal to the one thing people liked about that film.

As usual, the B-story saves “About Last Night…” from mediocrity.  Stan’s father Randy Marsh gets drunk, loses his pants, tells his boss off and makes fun of McCain supporters.  Some of these supporters, like Butters’ father Stephen Stotch, hide in a bunker as McCain’s loss means the end of society to them.  Kyle’s brother Ike Broflovski, another McCain supporter, jumps off a first-story window ledge…or is he just workin’ the angles?

“About Last Night…” isn’t nearly as bad as season eight’s “Douche and Turd.”  The problem with “Douche and Turd” is that it isn’t specific to the 2004 United States election, basically dumbing things down to “illusion of choice.”  The message in “About Last Night…” is clear by comparison – even in hotly contested elections, electing/not electing an official isn’t the end of the world.

“About Last Night…” is a slightly disappointing episode of South Park based on the subject matter.  It’s an average-to-above-average episode overall.  Compared to “Pandemic 2 – The Startling,” this episode looks like Wayne Gretzky in his prime.  Randy Marsh is just funnier when he’s drunk.

“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.