South Park: Post COVID and The Return of COVID - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

South Park: Post COVID and The Return of COVID



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Final Score:



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Movie
These last 2 specials produced for the Paramount+ network are kind of controversial in some ways, as they are sometimes attributed as the 3rd and 4th episode of the truncated Season 24, and other times argued as their own special thing. Either way, these dual hour long episodes act as a final act to the whole COVID 19 arc of the last season or so, and while sometimes funny, feels stretched and thin at times. Satire is strong, acting is fine, but for some reason Trey and Matt seem to be only firing on 3 out of the 4 cylinders for this go around.

Post COVID
This episodes shoots us 40 years into the future, where COVID 19 is JUST winding down and letting humanity get back to a semblance of normalcy. However, Stan gets a cryptic message from Kyle to come back to South Park, as he’s got some serious news. Turns out that Kenny has just died (yeah, that gag is still going on), and due to the fact that Kenny turned out to be some genius scientist, he may have found out what caused COVID 19 in the first place, and possibly had a way to stop it via time travel. Now it’s up to the boys….errr… middle aged men to find a way to complete Kenny’s work and go back in time and fix things before it turns the future into a wasteland of mediocrity

Post Covid: The Return of COVID.
After find out a key clue to the mystery that Kenny had unlocked, the adults find a way to complete Kenny’s experiment and actually travel back in time and hopefully fix things. The work isn’t exactly easy though, especially with a new Delta Variant+ coming up, and the whole of South Park being locked down while the government figures out which one of the town denizens isn’t vaccinated yet.

Ehhh, I was really frustrated with this duo of episodes. There were some great moments through it (such as Jimmy the Woke comedian, Butters being arrested for selling NFTs), but overall this special set just fell flat. It felt like Matt and Trey just didn’t have a whole lot to go with, and instead of really ripping into both sides of the real life Pandemic world, they were content with simply making a few gags, and trying the old Kumbaya schtick at the end. The crudity is also really tamped down this time. Not to mention they actually make a really cool twist with Cartman’s character, and then completely undo it at the end just for a cheap laugh. I’m usually a HUGE South Park fan, but the COVID 19 specials just didn’t connect like I’d hoped.




Rating:

Rated TV-MA by the MPAA




Video:

Well, broken record time here. But as with most long running TV shows, Paramount has given us a very stable and very predictable level of quality with the Blu-ray set. The show is very simplistic with it’s (now) digitally animated universe, and the Blu-ray itself shows little to no issues. Colors and bright and sharp, and digital clarity is spot on. The basic animation style used isn’t known for stunning detail, but everything in the show is rendered nicely with good black levels and excellent detail levels. The show is a bit monochromatic with it’s basic primary construction paper colors being the main look, but it’s done nicely and without major artifacting. The single disc release holds a bitrate in the teesns, but being that this is a VERY low resource intensive style of animation, it's not shocking that it manages to look great nonetheless.








Audio:

The 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track is par for the course here, with a largely front heavy mix that does well with dialog and general hubbub of South Park, and the surrounds getting more activity when the time machine goes off, or during the musical score. It's not going to blow you away, but South Park has never been anything but a technically solid mix that does everything well enough. It's got some bass punch when needed, and overall is a very impressive mix for a stupidly low budget animated TV show.





Extras:

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Final Score: ​

South Park has slowly changed over the years and sometimes it’s not for the better. Most of the time it has evolved with the time, layering us with some pretty witty satire on social events, but for some reason the Post COVID and Return of COVID specials seem to miss the mark more often that I’d like. There’s still plenty of humor, but the specials feel a bit weak, with nary a hint of the vicious satire and punch that the show is known for. It’s not bad, but the little in between specials between the 24th and 25h seasons had a hard time adapting the whole post COVID scenario and didn’t feel AS entertaining as I would have liked (though I loved Butters selling NFTs in the future bit). Decent show, solid Blu-ray, more of a rental though unless you have to collect ALL the South Park material.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, April Stewart
Creator: Matt Stone, Matt Stone, Brian Graden
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1, English DD 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Paramount
Rated: TV-MA
Runtime: 121 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: December 6th, 2022

Recommendation: Rental​