South Park: Sexual Healing Review

Posted by Justin Weinblatt on 03.21.2010

South Park returns for its 14th season, and takes on Tiger Woods. Can Trey and Matt still deliver the goods?

South Park: Sexual Healing Review

Starting now, 411Mania will have weekly reviews for Season 14 of South Park. Due to some errrr administrative difficulties, I'm a bit late this week, but be on the lookout Wednesday nights from now on! Without further adieu here's the review for "Sexual Healing".

South Park is nothing if not topical, and South Park's season debut focuses on Tiger Woods' recent troubles. Right off the bat, viewers are treated to a South Park rendition of the Woods family's fateful Thanksgiving. We soon see that this is part of EA Sports' Tiger Woods' 2010, a recurring gag that provides strong laughs throughout the episode.


I'd buy that game.

Tiger Woods makes several appearances, but is not really the focus of the episode. The focus is on the rest of the male community, which is baffled over the sexual appetites of Tiger and other wealthy men, since normal men have no sexual desire for anyone but their wives. The government starts a program to discover the source of the problem. In the process, they test all school children for signs of sex addiction, using the super accurate nice lady with a handkerchief test (I could explain it, but that would kill the humor if you haven’t seen it yet). It is discovered that Kyle, Kenny, and Butters are sex addicts, and need help.

Most of the jokes running throughout the episode work well. The various scenes from Tiger Woods' 2010 are all very funny. Throughout the episode, Butter tries to unravel the mystery of the bush, which is exactly as hilarious as it sounds. “What is it? What does it mean? Why would there be a bush right there? Is it a live bush? Are there berries?” Vintage Butters.

The moral of the story, of course, is that Tiger's behavior is not that surprising, and many men would fall to the same temptations, in a similar situation. We only feign shock to pretend that we are better. It's a funny and valid point, which Trey and Matt make early on in the episode. Then they make that point again... and again... and then once more for good measure. By the end of the episode you fell like you’re being beaten over the head. In one scene they demonstrate this point by giving a monkey a great deal of money. As you would expect, the monkey begins having sex with many female monkeys. As much as I love monkey’s having sex (I have a season pass to the zoo for a reason), the joke can be seen from a mile away, and at that point the joke had officially jumped the shark.

Towards the end of the episode, things spiral into the bizarre, which is something South Park does very well most times. Unfortunately, this is not one of those times. The sex addicted children, (only Butters and Kyle, since Kenny has met with an unfortunate accident) attend a therapy session for sex addicts. This brings together various celebrities who have had sex scandals, such as David Letterman, Bill Clinton, and Ben Ben Roethlisberger. There are a couple of funny lines from the various sex addicts, but the whole scene amounts to little more than name dropping. Hey these people are famous, and have had sex scandals, and we’re pointing it out! Funny right? It feels like a cheap ploy for laughs, and I expect better from South Park.

At the bequest of President Obama, another unnecessary addition, the boys and sex addicts go to independence hall to do battle with a fictive, invisible, magical alien, who is the "source" of the sex addiction. It’s amusing to see how devoted the men of the United States are to their lie. In case you still didn't get the point of the episode, we have it spelled out in typical "you know, I learned something today" style, by a random SWAT team member. Of course he must be silenced, lest the secret of male sexual desire be unearthed.

The whole last third of the episode is very chaotic. Not chaotic in a good way, like for instance the Easter episode a few seasons ago, but chaotic in a, "we didn't know where we were going with this", kind of way. A scene used from the promos, showing Tiger Woods apologizing while Cartman stands behind him, is oddly missing. It’s a shame because Cartman seems like he could have been used really well in this episode, instead of being featured in a cameo role. I get the feeling that this episode was rewritten shortly before it aired. Matt and Trey are skilled enough to improvise and make it work, but not skilled enough to create a true classic on the fly. There are still a lot of great jokes, but the two separate plots never come together the way they should.

The 411: In the end, this was a decent season premiere for South Park. When a scandal hits, we often get lost in the frenzy, and need a reminder to keep things in perspective. Although the story flails a bit towards the end, there are a ton of great scenes and jokes throughout. Butters' antics are almost worth the price of admission alone, and the various Tiger Woods scenes are great. While this episode wasn't a classic by any means, it shows that Trey and Matt have plenty of gas in the tank. If you missed it, I recommend checking out SouthParkZone.com.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]