'South Park' Season 16, Episode 8 Recap - 'Sarcastaball'

The return of "South Park" sort of snuck up on me here. Did that happen with anyone else? It seems like this show is always ducking in and out of the schedule, so I never know what's going on. Which is a shame, because I LOVE THIS SHOW. And that is not sarcasm.

With football season in full swing, "South Park" decided to kick off (no pun intended) the continuation of season 16 with an episode about concussions in football and how they're changing the game. Some background for those who don't follow football: recently people have started realizing that concussions are bad (duh) and that they cause long-term brain damage and lead to higher rates of depression and suicide. To help reduce the occurrence of concussions, the NFL has instituted new rules banning helmet-to-helmet contact and requiring coaches to bench their players if team doctors diagnose them with a concussion.

Some people think this is ruining football. Randy Marsh is one of them. When Stan reveals that South Park Elementary has done away with kickoffs (the most concussion-prone plays in the game), he goes on a campaign to change things.

Here's the problem: Randy starts with a sarcastic pitch to the school board, saying that they should just make all the players wear bras and tin foil hats and hug each other if they're going to get rid of kickoffs. Because Randy never stops his sarcasm, people take him seriously.

Thus, Sarcastaball is born.

The sport involves players (wearing the aforementioned tin foil hats and bras) kicking off a balloon, after which players have to hug each other while the player with the balloon compliments people and politely moves his way to the end zone. It's a huge hit. And since Randy continues to be sarcastic about it, it soon replaces the NFL and Randy becomes the coach of the Denver Broncos.

Things take an ironic turn (and the "South Park" magic kicks in) when Randy suddenly finds that he can't stop being sarcastic. He goes to the doctor, who finds that his brain has been altered, but doesn't know what to do about it since there isn't sufficient research about how sarcasm affects the brain. Sound familiar?

Here's the truly brilliant and very strange thing about this episode, though: when the episode ended and commercials started playing, I found that my brain was attempting to detect sarcasm in everything everyone said, because it had just spent half an hour trying to pick it out between different characters in this episode. Weird. Maybe sarcasm really does have a lasting effect.

Apparently this whole thing was kind of a dig at sports commentator Jim Rome, who is I guess sarcastic all the time. He bugs me, so I never watch him, so I can't confirm that.

There was another side to the episode that I could have done without, because it largely relied on a gross-out factor for laughs. It started promisingly enough, as it turns out that Butters, who sucks at sports, is a star Sarcastaball player. Of course he is, it's all about politeness. This was a terrific usage of characters on the part of the show.

However, they also wedged in this gag in which Butters stores his semen every time he has a wet dream, and then later hands it out as a sports drink to Sarcastaball players, honestly believing (after Cartman served as a test subject) that it makes people more positive and friendly.

Eventually it becomes a commercial product, Butters' Creamy Goo, and is endorsed by Tom Brady. It's all totally disgusting, and I had trouble laughing while I was suppressing the urge to hurl, but the end game for the gag was decent: when the source of Butters' Creamy Goo was discovered, everyone thought Butters was being sarcastic about Sarcastaball and having everyone drink jizz to show how "gay" it was. Ironic, as Butters was the most sincere about the game.

Despite that gross-out tactic, this was a welcome return for the show. And hey, they even managed to fit a replacement referee joke in there!

What They're Trying to Tell Us: Everything in moderation, and that includes sarcasm and safety rules in contact sports. And drinking semen.