THE SOPHISTICATED ANIMATION ALMOST MADE ME MISTAKE IT FOR A DOCUMENTARY

I’m don’t watch it religiously, but sometimes nobody does it better than South Park. Tonight’s episode, “The Passion of the Jew” was better than any column or commentary I’ve read or heard and it was funny as hell. If you missed it, try to catch one of the reruns.

In short, Cartman starts harrassing Kyle about being a Jew and having killed Christ. He’s seen The Passion 35 times and goads Kyle into seeing it. Kyle is thoroughly traumatized by the filme, believing it completely, and experiences intense Jewish guilt over the Jews role in killing Jesus. This encourages Cartman to pray to his poster of Mel Gibson and start a fan club. He gets a large group of devoted Christians and fans of the film to unknowingly follow him as he tries to implement his “final solution.” Of course, these adult fans of the film are depicted as stupid and simple-minded. None of them pick-up on Cartman’s Nazi uniform, German chanting or talks of “cleansing.”

Separately, Stan and Kenny go see the film and decide that it sucks so much, they want their money back. (They convince themselves it’s important to hold bad filmmakers responsible; Stan tells Kenny, “This is just like when we got our money back for BASEketball.” The only thing better than the South Park guys riffing on others is when they ridicule themselves.) The box office guy tells them Mel Gibson is the only guy who can refund their money so they take the bus to LA and Gibson’s mansion to ask for their $18. I can’t even describe what happens from then, other than Mel Gibson being depicted as a bit of a lunatic. But it’s definitely worth watching, and it will go down as one of their absolute best movie satires.