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It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Gang Turns Black (2017)
Excellent episode that appears to be among the gang's most polarizing
I've seen every episode of this excellent show, and I think this episode ranks among the best. It's also one of the episodes with the most buzz around it in recent memory, having to do with its controversial subject matter. A lot of the professional reviewers have come out in favor of it, but the audience opinion seems to be rather polarized.
The good thing is that the episode tackles a difficult subject in a relatively inoffensive way. I admit I had some trepidation when I first saw the name of the episode "The Gang Turns Black." I should have known by now to have more faith in these guys, 12 seasons in, to push the envelope without being pigheaded or offensive just for the sake of causing offense.
The device of the gang appearing as Black people to everyone besides themselves was such a great way to depict this body-switching storyline. Even better was how different in appearance they were, particularly Frank (a tall-ish young adult man), Dennis (a decidedly very chubby dude) and, best of all, Charlie (a young child). There were a lot of great shots done through mirrors or split-second visuals of them as they appear to other people. One of the highlights was Charlie baring his darkest secrets in the police station, telling things to a social worker that would absolutely cause concern. We got to see both how messed-up Charlie's life is and make some observations as to the difficult state in which many Black children may find themselves.
What a fair number of reviewers seem to have an issue with is the singing throughout this episode. I think it fit very well with the idea and it took some of the sting out of some rather dark observations. It was best utilized in the final scene ("our home" "White home" "just say home!"), which would have been almost too terrifying and devastating had there not been music to soften it a little bit. However, the music did not detract from the race-based observations. And the lessons "the gang" learned by the end were very topical, well-rounded observations about the state of our world today.
Very well done.
Saturday Night Live: Dave Chappelle/A Tribe Called Quest (2016)
Dave Chappelle's Welcome Return
I rarely write reviews on here, but I think this episode needs a positive review to replace the negative four-star review.
Dave Chappelle hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time and brought a lot of his trademark humor from his classic sketch comedy show, Chappelle's Show, to his hosting gig. I was worried Dave would be under-utilized like some other hosts, but this was not the case: The show served him very well. Chappelle opened with a monologue that I suspect was lifted from or at least very inspired by his recent standup routines, but it was funny and big-hearted at the same time. It was great to see a sketch that packed a ton of Chappelle's Show references into it (Walking Dead sketch), as well as another sketch that thoroughly broke the fourth wall in a similar way to many of Chappelle's classic sketches (Jheri's Place).
Add in an absolutely excellent Weekend Update (with some of the best jokes I've heard from Colin and Michael) and an absolutely absurd ten-to-one sketch, and you have an all-around excellent episode on par with Larry David's episode from last year, another great first- time hosting gig.
South Park: #HappyHolograms (2014)
Far from the best, but not among the worst either.
Wow, a lot of people really have a problem with this one. While it's almost certainly the worst Christmas episode of the show, it's far from the worst overall. In my opinion, this episode was messy, but had a number of funny parts throughout. With all of the holograms, the CartmanBrah, PewDiePie, etc., it was very cluttered. But honestly the messiness was part of the fun, especially since they liberally made fun of themselves and how little sense the episode was making toward the end. The use of tweets as a meta-commentary on the episode was the best part--lots of great "blink or you'll miss them jokes" in there.
I definitely didn't love this episode. It was far from perfect--but so are a lot of South Park episodes. It has the same problems that a lot of (tomorrow is a) latter-day South Park episodes have been having, which is just trying to stuff too many ideas into one episode, to the point where certain jokes they could explore more are cut short and are just explored at a cursory level. And while I'm sure Matt and Trey's heads are in the right place, the cops' jokes are in that uncomfortable "too soon" realm--but that can often be where South Park's humor lives, and I'm aware that almost nothing has been off-limits for the show before.
I just am not getting how apparently so many people are finding this to be the "worst episode ever" and say they'll never watch the show again. This seems to be akin to the reaction to Matt and Trey's April Fools Joke from 16 years ago--it's almost absurd to me that people cared SO much about finding out who Cartman's father was, they failed to see the humor in Matt and Trey playing a meta-joke on them, on APRIL FOOLS DAY of all things. Similarly, I can't understand how so many fans of the show are failing to see the humor here. Obviously they don't look up to PewDiePie as some sort of savior; it's an ironic, tongue-in-cheek joke like...oh, I don't know, several thousand jokes from this series. I feel like they knew what they were doing, too, that a lot of their fan base would be (THANKS FOR THE CENSORSHIP, IMDb) annoyed. Hey, they've messed with their viewers a number of times before. And maybe they just find the guy funny--is there something really so WRONG about that? It's of course rare for them to have a guest star on the show and it hasn't happened in many years. It sure was an interesting choice.
I don't know, I just figured South Park fans were more easy-going, kick-back-and-laugh-at-the-world type people. That is the whole purpose of the show, after all. Instead, it seems that a number of the fan base are quick-to-jump-ship type of people when they don't find something funny. This is nowhere near the best episode, but it's also nowhere near the lows of "A Million Little Fibers," "I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining," or "Pee," to name a couple. I'm surprised people weren't jumping ship after some of those ones.