Park Postponement

I have long maintained that whatever British television may lack in choices, it makes up for by having tight scripts and short-runs of shows. The BBC is masterful at having programs which will only air for one or two seasons and then go away regardless of how popular they might be. There is no trying to wring every last twist out of a plot and instead they leave the audience wanting more. There is something admirable about knowing that you could probably come back for another couple of seasons and make good money while mailing the effort in but refusing to do so. Sometimes I wish American televisions shows were as concerned about preserving their dignity. There are few things as bad as watching a show which should have been cancelled years earlier continue to trudge on simply because no one at the network has the guts to point out it is not as good as it used to be or, worst-case scenario, knows how much the program has slipped but is hoping the rest of us are too stupid to notice. Because the networks are also having a tough time developing any kind of quality show right now they are probably also scared about letting anything which pulls in half-decent ratings to go off the air. Thankfully, there is at least one show which seems self-aware enough to never over-stay its welcome and that is "South Park." But even though the show won't try and limp along past its prime that doesn't mean they aren't immune to having the occasional slip-up.

I'll admit that this season of "South Park" hasn't been appointment viewing for me so far. I usually plan to watch the show but the seasons come and go so randomly it is tough to know when a new episode is going to air and then I get caught up in something else. That is why when I flipped over on Wednesday to watch what my guide said was going to be a new episode and was instead given a re-run I thought nothing of it. It wasn't until the next day that I discovered that for the first time ever, the "South Park" guys missed their deadline. I'll explain since I assume most people aren't as fascinated by how "South Park" is created as I am. The entire thing was chronicled in an interesting documentary a couple years ago "6 Days To Air: The Making Of South Park", which I highly recommend seeing if you have the chance. Basically it works a little like this - to keep the episodes fresh the show's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, don't decide on an idea for that week until Thursday or Friday, then they sit down and write a script in a matter of hours. They then send it over to the animation center where teams work around the clock to put the episode together in less than two days and they then beam it from Colorado to Comedy Central headquarters in New York, usually with a couple hours to spare. Well yesterday, for the first time, the show missed its deadline after a power outage shut down their production studios for several hours on Tuesday.

If this sounds like a crazy way to produce a TV show, that is because it is. It is especially insane once you remember that most animated episodes are done months in advance of when they actually air. I assume one of the main reasons the show operates this way is because it can. I once saw an interview with the production team who explained that one of the reasons the characters have never gotten cleaned up and the animation continues to look so choppy is because Matt and Trey want to be able to put the show together at the last minute. The show is no longer done with stop-motion animation - they create episodes on a computer which could produce images which would rival anything seen on the big screen but that would take time. By keeping it simple they can hold off on production until the last few hours, so they are sacrificing style for substance. Not only does this give them an edge over shows like "The Simpsons" who have to hope that jokes will still be topical by the time the episode reaches the masses, it also doesn't give the sensors much time to object to any content or the network time to ask them to alter anything, which I would assume is important to guys who want their show to push the limits. It is quite possible it is as much about control as anything else. I'll just be interested to see if they are allowed to keep doing things the same way going forward.

Look, "South Park" essentially put Comedy Central on the map, so the show has a lot of equity built up with the network. However, you start chipping away at that good will when you don't deliver on the promised product. I know this was an isolated incident but I wonder if going forward Comedy Central will start asking for episodes to be finished on Tuesday instead of Wednesday morning and how that would change the mindset of guys like Matt and Trey. Hell, you don't need to explain to me that some of the most creative ideas come out when you are up against a deadline. But there is also a case to be made for having a script done with enough time to work on refining a few jokes. At one point towards the end of "6 Days" they ask Trey Parker what he thinks of the episode they just turned in and he says he hates it because he doesn't think it is good enough. Well, maybe if they had an extra day to sleep on the script it would have resulted in a product he would have been more satisfied with. (Then again, it could just be that Stone is his toughest critic and wouldn't like the episode, no matter what the final result was. I would understand that as well.) It just makes me wonder if they would ever consider sacrificing being current for having more time to polish the writing. Then again, given what I've read about Parker and Stone they would probably see a concession like that as proof that it is time to shut down for good. So before that happens I would suggest going out and getting some generators for their studio to make sure something like this never happens again.