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I like this episode because it shows why I hate fiction books.

So the boys read Catcher In the Rye, the controversial book which (most of the time), you either hate or love. So Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Eric hate the book and its lack of vulgarity and decide to write their own book that has the vulgarity they like. Unfortunately Stan’s mom finds it, loves it unbeknownst to them, so the boys blame Butters for the book and Butters decides to take the credit for it.

There are a lot of good gags here about the Kardashians and Sarah Jessica Parker but I like the overall plotline about the late author JD Salinger.

The boys crusade against their book and how people call it ‘genuis’ and have ‘multiple meanings.’ I happen to agree that people tend to search for meaning too much in books when it might not necessarily be there, especially when it makes people throw up a lot (watch out for that in this episode).

Yes, it was a very crude episode but I liked it. Yes it takes swings at Tiger Woods, what a tough thing to take a swipe at, but it was great because it just went to the level of absurdity.

It seems like many times recently the same gag has been used that there was an “experiment” and that experiment goes completely crazy and off the wire.

However I found it to be funny and I liked it characterizing the theme as so absurd an excuse. But it does get a little weird at some points.

The Tiger Woods video game is; however, a great gag that consistently makes this episode funny just because of the way it mocks Tiger and his golf.

A short created by (then unknowns) Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Your Studio and You that I like very much.

The TV Shows I like that I’ll keep watching this year. Obviously it can’t be the Jay Leno Show anymore.

The Office I’ll keep sticking by The Office, even if it goes by the wayside like the Simpsons and starts to suck. The story got a little ridiculous and I am a fan of the earlier seasons; however, they can’t screw this up with a talented cast. Right?

Bones Something I like to watch in reruns on TNT and sometimes on FOX/Hulu when I can is Bones. An interesting and different crime drama with a character whose sentences are structured so peculiarly. I’ve started to call it “Temperance & Friends” because of course that HAD to be the title before they called it Bones. Plus you have that long lasting sexual tension between Booth and Bones which is always funny to watch.

Entourage I haven’t watched the previous season of Entourage. However, Entourage is a show where you can just rent the DVDs and watch episode after episode. In fact, that’s the way I first watched it and probably prefer it because the episode are so: weird sometimes. They’ll go from the season’s plotline and then go into a complete tailspin into something different for an episode or two.

South Park I will always love South Park and hope the next season will be fun and better than the last. Who doesn’t love them? We’ll see what they have to offer for a few more seasons and hopefully the quick episode shop machine that is South Park gets it done and delivers a quality season.

One of my favorite episodes of The Office has to be “Ben Franklin.”

This is a really funny episode and it is very quirky, also it was nominated for an Emmy. It uses the recent image of then just-caught Saddam Hussein.

Almost every reference in the final two acts is directly referring to the Wizard of Oz. Even the character types, from the canadians being munchkin-like, from the people the four meet having problems they need to see the Prime Minister for and The Wizard being the Prime Minister. But even there, it goes to a different level almost mimicking the type of style that film captured. The songs are interesting, the characters try to wish themselves places and every change in scenes from characters once they are in Canada is a very slow crossfade.

I personally like all of these South Park episodes that take on musical qualities because they are self deprecating of musicals and make fun of musicals. Even the movie, South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut, makes fun of musicals throughout while giving a commentary about people who criticize South Park.

Also the idea of a Christmas adventure without some of the typical supporting characters makes this a funny episode.

Seasons six through eight provided three good Christmas adventures:

• (Season 6) Red Sleigh Down: the boys go on an adventure with Santa and Jesus to deliver Christmas to Iraq.
• (Season 7) It’s Christmas In Canada.
• (Season Woodland Critter Christmas. A Christmas critter story that takes a very unusual turn that makes fun of critter shows.

Here I will review South Park’s season finale…

One of the things I like the most about South Park is that the characters can break into song. I like Eric singing a song in the first part even though it is a little different in nature. The ideas of pee in the pool, shower and not washing hands after you pee has a few funny jokes in it.

And of course, rip off the crappy movie 2012 of a disaster when there is too much pee.

I’d have to say that the animation of the wave pool looked difficult to pull off.

And then a man pees on a monkey. I mean what else can they do? Cartman’s apparent racism is funny just because, well, he’s Cartman. After trying to find an antidote, they decide to kill the monkeys after peeing on them again. This episode is definitely weird.

The water park owner is Pi Pi, funny.

I also like that they can still make sure they don’t show Kenny’s face.

2012 seems like stupid idea to begin with but this episode was funny to a little extent. This isn’t as good as “Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow” which makes fun of another film from the same director. This wasn’t a great season and the episode before this might have been the best of this half of the season. Probably “The Coon” episode about superheroes was the funniest one in this season.

The great Wikipedia will help with this:

Jumping the shark is a colloquialism used by TV critics and fans to denote the point in a television program’s history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations. These changes are sometimes the result of efforts to revive interest in a show whose viewership has begun to decline. In other cases, the changes have other causes (e.g. an actor quitting, different writers being hired) and the diminished interest is the result. The two causes can feed into each other, leading to even greater changes and even lower popularity

Now with that established, I’d like to point out the TV shows I do watch that have or almost did this…

The Simpsons. Precise time: end of Season 9. Look I love the Simpsons. The Simpsons first eight seasons are some of the best work you will find anywhere (that’s right). But these recent episodes are crap, pure crap. I can’t even watch the Simpsons anymore. Yes, the movie was okay but we are at Season 21 and it’s just not working anymore. I’m being generous about Season 9 too. Most of the time if you look at any Simpsons episode from Season 8 or earlier, you’re likely to find a real classic that grows with being older to catch even more references you might not have understood when you were younger.

The Simpsons legacy is almost with its shows but also with its crew. Many people have gone on to do great things after working on The Simpsons and they should be proud of that, but it is not working anymore.

The Office. Precise time: Season 5 (almost). The downfall of the entire world economy probably is the biggest thing that helped The Office save itself from the most outlandish subplots for an entire half season. There are some things that are nice in this first half of the season but the plot lines got so out of hand, it bordered on ridiculous. The fact that this show probably saved itself by inserting a new character to drive out Michael, and then push him right back in, might have actually saved the show.

South Park. Precise time: You Never Know. Given the world’s craziest production time (6 days per episode, written/edited/voiced-over/rendered/re-edited the week of), South Park always has the chance to rebound from a streak of weird episodes to good ones. I don’t think South Park is over the hill just yet but it is getting challenging to deal with poking fun of every single reality TV show. Look reality TV is the fall of man, I agree, but they already make fun of those too much.

However one of my favorites is “Cancelled” solely because it deals with the idea of this:

(alien character) Yeah, a show should never go past a hundred episodes, or else it starts to get stale with ridiculously stupid plotlines and settings.