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Friday, October 06, 2006South Park needs a new plotSouth Park began its 10th season on Wednesday night. As always, the show was topical but, yet again, it relied on a tired framework that parodies action movies. Sure, the season opener was ambitious and the crew worked with Blizzard Studios, the makers of Worlds of Warcraft, the subject of the show's premise. Still, it seems like every episode of the past few seasons has relied on the same tired, paint-by-numbers plotline. The formula has become so predictable that you can guess the ending two minutes after an episode begins. So I now present to you a quick rundown on how to write your very own episode of South Park. 1. Find a fairly recent, preferably controversial, topic. 2. Begin the episode with Stan and crew discussing the topic. 3. Cut to a boardroom or military stronghold where several officials, church leaders or CEOs are discussing a grave threat to their organization (which relates to the topic). Queue overly-dramatic background music. 4. Involve the kids. Work in as many Hollywood cliches or references to Michael Bay movies as possible. 5. End on an arrest or death/poop joke. If you go the death route, don't forget to work in a tired gag about slow death scenes in action movies. Isn't it about time Trey Parker and Matt Stone moved on from Team America and that one Wal-Mart episode? Isn't South Park supposed to be the most daring program on cable television or something? Can't they at least pick a different movie genre to ridicule? Shake things up every once in a while? Or work in a pee joke, maybe? Can I work another question in this paragraph? No, I guess not.
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