Over the course of its 23 seasons on the air, South Park has gained a reputation for its take-no-prisoners policy when it comes to satire. No topic is off limits, no matter how rough the consequences might be. The most memorable example of this came in 2006, and again in 2010, when South Park came close to depicting the prophet Muhammad on two occasions, only to be overruled by Comedy Central censors each time. Tonight, Trey and Matt were similarly subversive, going after another topic that is rarely mentioned in polite society: the heavy role that Chinese censorship plays in the entertainment industry, particularly the release of feature films. It’s no secret that blockbuster movies like the Avengers films have to be cleared by the Chinese government before reaching that market, and as such, there’s certain places no mainstream film can ever go. “Band In China” tackles this issue with admirable candor, resulting in an episode that ranks right up there with last year’s two-part Amazon takedown as some of the show’s most blunt, honest satire.
As in last week’s episode, Randy is looking to expand Tegridy Farms, and figures a good way to do so would be to enter the Chinese market, because hey, there’s just so many people there. Unfortunately, he fails to do any research on the country’s marijuana policies, and is quickly apprehended at the airport with a giant suitcase of weed, and sent to a Chinese prison. His obliviousness at the entire situation ranks among the episode’s funniest moments, as he is still doing his affected southern twang, and presenting himself as a Simple Country Weed Farmer while being taken away in handcuffs. It’s a bit reminiscent of King Of The Hill’s “Lupe’s Revenge,” where Peggy thinks she’s receiving a medal for returning a child home safely, when actually, she’s being arrested for kidnapping her.
While this is going on, Stan has formed a band with Jimmy, Butters, and Kenny called Crimson Dawn. There have been episodes focusing on the boys starting bands before (which the show eventually alludes to), but it’s such a winning formula that Trey and Matt can’t be blamed too much for going back to the well. This time, Stan’s anger and frustration at his father moving the family away from South Park, as well his total lack of regard for his feelings, inspires him to start a death metal band. The first scene of them performing works quite well, because at this point, no reference had been made to what music the band actually plays, so the sudden aggressive metal riffage out of nowhere is played to great comedic effect. The band wins over the same record producer who made the PC Babies stars, and since there’s no money to be made from records these days (“What are you kids, from the 90s?”), he goes straight into making a biopic. This is where the two plotlines meet, as the movie Stan attempts to write is censored by the Chinese government at all turns, to the point where he basically can’t write anything. After the randomness of “Mexican Joker,” it was refreshing to see an episode waste no time in tying its storylines together.
Imprisoned in China, Randy continues to make the case for the greatness of both weed and Tegridy, but to no avail. Here, we find out that because Randy angered the Chinese government, all the Marvel superheroes who were also trying to do business in China have been apprehended as well. Since all of these characters are now owned by Disney, this gives South Park a chance to bring back one of their most memorable characters ever, the angry, violent Mickey Mouse, who famously beat up the Jonas Brothers in “The Ring.” He’s just as aggressive this time, smacking Thor around, and calling Winnie The Pooh (who yes, actually has been banned in China) a “fat diabetic bear.” Bringing this character back brought needed levity to an episode that is often quite tense. That they actually have him play a significant role in the episode’s resolution is even more rewarding.
With few options left, Randy and Mickey team up to get what they want from the Chinese. How? By killing their arch enemies, you guessed it, Winnie The Pooh and Piglet. They set a trap of honey for the pair, and when Pooh is finally content, Randy garrotes him. [UPDATE: A previous version of this recap inaccurately described the manner of Pooh’s death. The A.V. Club regrets the error.] With Winnie and Piglet neutralized, Randy gets what he wants, and marijuana is now not only legal in China, but supplied entirely by Tegridy Farms.
Unlike his father, Stan refuses to give into the demands of the Chinese government, and his biopic is shelved. That said, he is initially tempted to sell out in one of the episode’s funniest scenes. Reasoning that his movie will only be released in China if his band is lame and vanilla, he briefly brings back the immortal Fingerbang for a reunion, before pulling the plug at the last second. Perhaps I’m being a bit of a sucker for fan service, but the callback to a 19-year old episode in a perfectly apropos fashion worked incredibly well for me. With Randy giving into Chinese pressure, while Stan holds firm, the conflict between father and son has grown, and could prove to be the primary storyline of this season. When Stan says he’s going to write another death metal song about how much he’s come to resent his father, we know that we’re just beginning to scratch the surface here.
After a funny-but-uneven premiere, “Band In China” is a much more sure-footed episode, and one that shows Trey and Matt remain unafraid to go after a big target. It’ll be interesting to see if this episode will become as controversial as the “Cartoon Wars” saga, or if it’ll slip through the cracks. At any rate, this was a strong episode that should have anyone put off by “Mexican Joker” feeling a lot better about season 23's potential.
Stray Observations
- “Oh yeah, I did kill Winnie The Pooh.”
- “You’re gonna have to lower your ideals of freedom if you want to suck on the warm teat of China.”
- This episode seems to take place at the same time as “Mexican Joker.” Towards the end, Cartman and Kyle get off the train having escaped the detention camp. I’m still not quite sure how they got out. Didn’t the guard leave before letting them out when he thought he was in the wrong flashback?
- The Tegridy Farms-themed opening from last week is back, so I’m guessing they’ll be using it throughout the season.
75 Comments
If you hate your job as a blogger then quit. No need to make us suffer with your halfassed recaps filled with so many inaccuracies that it’s clear you didn’t actually watch it.What a shit show this fake news network network has become.
kill yourself
You first. I’m sure no one will notice or care. You’re clearly a miserable pile of shit.
kill yourself
Just don’t read this site maybe? AV Club reports pop culture and does reviews which are opinions. Please define fake news for me because I have no idea why this site would be “fake news”.
It seems like the complaint stems from descriptions of scenes that completely didn’t happen.
Yeah. That response is weird.“your recap has stuff that wasn’t even in the show. It certainly seems like you’re not watching. Maybe stop blogging about a show if you’re not even going to watch it.”“Don’t read the site then if you don’t like it!”Wut
And now brontosaurian is just dismissing comments that showed them went they’re wrong. Such a child
There are literally things in this recap that weren’t in the show at all. Multiple errors. This is the wrong comment to pull the AV Club fan club bit. It’s a grossly inaccurate recap and it’s fair to question if the writer is even watching the show
“What a shit show this fake news network network has become”This is a totally warranted and not at all ridiculously response to it?
While I wouldn’t necessarily say “fake news,” I’d think a writer blatantly making things up for a show review could probably qualify in that category. I’m thinking you saw that and took it as something political and ignored the actual crux of the comment, which is that the writer literally made things up here. Your response to someone rightfully calling out this writer for putting things that never happened in a review was to tell them to stop reading the site. THAT’S ridiculous. Or do you believe AV Club writers regularly do this and it’s just standard fare here that everyone knows about?
Since you dismissed this for reasons I’m unaware of (I answered your question, wasn’t vulgar and didn’t call you names), I’ll comment it again:While I wouldn’t necessarily say “fake news,” I’d think a writer blatantly making things up for a show review could probably qualify in that category.I’m thinking you saw that and took it as something political and ignored the actual crux of the comment, which is that the writer literally made things up here.Your response to someone rightfully calling out this writer for putting things that never happened in a review was to tell them to stop reading the site. THAT’S ridiculous. Or do you believe AV Club writers regularly do this and it’s just standard fare here that everyone knows about?
fake news now means – something that disagrees with my worldview.
Fake news is making things up, twisting things, or not bothering with accuracy to get clicks or for any other reason. This is a fake news blog. They lie and manipulate for profit and future profit.The readers here are stupid fucks pretendimg to be Liberal as you can see in the replies to me and the rest of the comments here. They have no self respect and attack their betters when we expect better and call these villains out on it.
Oh boy – “They have no self respect and attack their betters when we expect better and call these villains out on it.”This part is insane, like you’re definitely unbalanced.
“fake news network” – really? Did you just do a cut and paste from another site?
obvious troll is obvious
Or you can quit being a melodramatic whiny brat. “Fake news network?” You’re acting like av club is a corrupted standard bearer of journalism insulting a beloved institution, it’s a blog for a show where cartman blasts diarrhea in his mom’s face.
fake news networkSounding like Dear Leader there. Yikes.
I find it disturbing that there were about a dozen more comments last night referencing the fact that the original comment was more referring to the fact that the reviewer clearly didn’t watch that scene of the episode and instead wrote what he imagined happened that have since been removed.
Honestly, you’re a fucking idiot.
Are you even not aware that South Park has infamously sometimes changed whole scenes around at the last minute before air? Matt and Trey have talked about it before. But you’re literally fucking stupid, so you wouldn’t know that or take it into account when you write your idiotic garbage.
Piss off.
are there 2 different versions of the episode? Randy kills Pooh alone. Mickey isn’t present in that scene.
Plus Pooh wasn’t their “archenemy” either they only killed him cause he was banned in China
There are some details mentioned that don’t match the episode I saw.Namely, in the episode I saw, Randy choked Pooh out from behind with a garrote to the horror of Piglet (who survived). Mickey wasn’t even in the scene.
And Cartman and Kyle returned on a bus, not a train. Assuming the review is accurate, I saw the west coast feed so maybe there was a late change to downplay Mickey’s violence against another Disney character? Does the review reflect an east coast airing (assuming the late production schedule of the show precludes advanced screeners)?The idea of Mickey and Randy beating up Pooh in an alley fight seems to better explain the finale scene in which Randy is drenched in blood and his sleeve is torn off. In the strangulation scene, he ends up only slightly covered in blood and his clothes are intact. But I haven’t seen anyone online reference such a change, which would seem to be a big deal.
Mickey: What’s South Park? Do I own that?
Offscreen voice: Not Yet.
East coast – saw what you saw. Maybe this actually had a screener. Also, nice to see SP take a stand again, instead of wimpy “both sides are bad” stances that produce forgettable episodes
Just because they’re not taking YOUR stand doesn’t mean they’re not taking one.
They did take a “both sides are bad” approach thoChina is bad because they opress people and have no democracyUSA is bad because they take advantage of that to make money with people like Mickey, Randy and the movie producer whoring themselves for the chinese market
They say both sides are bad when both sides are bad.
East coast here as well, saw Winnie garroted by Randy, who made the same emotionless face as Anton Sughar in No Country for Old Men.
Also, I don’t recall the other characters being apprehended. One moment Randy is in custody with Pooh and Piglet, then Randy has his trial, and suddenly they’re all in a fancy room together with Mickey Mouse.
I was wondering about that myself. I don’t think they showed anything happening to piglet in the version i saw (same as you). Randy’s dead eyes as he garroted Winnie was straight out of No Country for Old Men which i loved.
i wonder if anyone remembers the name of the av club reviewer who was fired for making up reviews to content he hadn’t seen… leonard something?
https://news.avclub.com/an-apology-from-the-a-v-club-1798223093
Yeah but that was 8 almost 9 years ago. Things have changed since then.
Leonard doesn’t like this post.
I can’t seem to find any clips of a version that includes Mickey in Pooh’s take-down. I’m super curious if there were different versions because he has enough details about the episode to seem like he watched it and the train/bus thing might have just been a mistake.
Randy’s murder of Pooh, though predictable, was a step too far for me, out of everything that South Park has done. lol
Red Dwarf had Pooh gunned down by a firing squad back in the 90s (Admittedly there it was off screen).
Any way to find out if the screener was different? Genuinely curious now. Not to pile on this reviewer more than I already have, but that’s quite a different version of the climactic scene.
I’d be a bit surprised if South Park did screeners. Since they have such a late production cycle, the episodes usually aren’t finished until the day they air. So that would negate any sort of physical screener, and I suppose they could send a digital screener, but given the time constraints just for the network to set the episode for broadcast, it doesn’t make sense to devote resources to giving a few reviewers access to the episode a few hours before everyone else gets it anyway. And you can see that the review for this episode was posted at 2 a.m., several hours after the airing.I suppose they could have done the episodes early and sent out screeners, but that would be a very unusual development for this show, and doesn’t jibe with the posting time for the review.
Okay, well, if you’re right, and what you are saying most definitely makes sense, that’s extremely frustrating. It means, at best, the reviewer here is only passively watching the episodes (which would explain why his takes are generally lousy), and again, if someone goes to Wikipedia for a quick reference on the quality of “Band in China,” what’s the first thing cited in the review section of the entry?“John Hugar with The A.V. Club gave the episode a B grade and noted that it was a “strong episode” and an improvement from the previous episode.” But when you look around for reviews of anything lately, it rarely feels like the person writing has even seen what they are talking about. Shit.
Occams Razor. The writer either is misremembering or didn’t watch those two scenes. Train for a bus is minor but he the Pooh scene is so wildly different that it has to be forgotten or didn’t watch.
I’ve felt that way about a few of their music reviews, especially if they obviously don’t like the band to begin with. They wrote a Chili Peppers album review where some of the songs were inaccurately described, and they seemed to not understand what their songs were about despite them being clearly about a 50 year old dating 19 year old girls and California, Anthony Kiedis isn’t exactly being subtle. But he doesn’t rap anymore, and they kept saying he was rapping. He outgrew that at least.
I’d question if it was a screener, but with a show like South Park where they get each episode done in 7 days, I kinda doubt they have the time to make screeners to distribute to the few professional outlets that review each episode of the series (heck as it is, it doesn’t look like IGN is reviewing the episodes of this season).
Maybe an advanced copy for reviewers?
Last ten minutes of the episode were a mess. Like they suddenly ran either out of time or story resolutions and just dumped some scenes in to finish.
Also the Disney allegory way way waaaay overshot the actual situation. It’s like South Park studios was absolutely pissed off at Disney but didn’t really have much of a point and just made up shit to be angry about. And the whole immigrants storyline, which was actually good, just got dropped out of nowhere.
A huge step up from last week. I’d give it a B+ just for the return of Fingerbang alone, but catching up with corrupt CEO Mickey again and seeing how much more of a money-hungry asshole he’s become was just as great.“The Chinese seem to exploit their own people with forced labor…”“SHUT THE FUCK UP, THOR! You’re here to flex and not think, you fucking bitch!”Also gotta give props to the voice actors Matt and Trey hired to voice Pooh and Piglet. Practically felt like hearing the real thing.
I think that was just them, as always. Pooh sounded a bit like Trey.
Yeah, I honestly wasn’t super impressed with Pooh because I’ve gotten so used to Trey’s voice I can tell when its him and it gets distracting when he plays almost everyone
I haven’t seen the 300th episode yet, but this all could lead to an epic 300th. I don’t think they’ll go as far as 200 but I guess I’ll see tonight
Winnie the Pooh is NOT banned in China, only the “Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh” meme is banned. Go ahead and search baidu.com, the largest search engine in China for “Winnie the Pooh” and you’ll get lots of results. If you search “Winnie the Pooh Xi Jinping” you will get results but none referencing the meme.
Does everyone just tacitly not mention the time they actually depicted Muhammad on the show in the episode with SeaMan?
I think everyone just forgets about it, since it aired years before the incidents that made Comedy Central suddenly freak out about it in the later episodes. It stills bugs me that they completely disappeared episodes 200/201.
The most ironic thing about it was they put Muhammed in specifically to make the point that artists should be allowed to make fun of anything they want and they were NOT going to be bullied by a bunch of nutty extremists..and Comedy Central proved the bullies point
I did enjoy Mickey asking Randy if he “owned him” to which Randy replied “not yet”Fairly obvious but a nice jab at Disney’s acquisition streak.
I was expecting a Bart Simpson appearance since he’s already been on the show
I’m disappointed they killed Pooh just because the thought of Pooh existing and interacting in the South Park world is hilarious. Every time he showed up I laughed.
When Pooh first showed up in prison, I expected him to make Randy his b*tch.
I thought that’s what honey meant.
Me too. Everyone and there mother has made the whole honey is drugs to Pooh jokes.
I’m disappointed they killed Pooh just because the thought of Pooh existing and interacting in the South Park world is hilarious. Every time he showed up I laughed.
This isn’t totally true “The most memorable example of this came in 2006, and again in 2010, when South Park came close to depicting the prophet Muhammad on two occasions, only to be overruled by Comedy Central censors each time” They drew mohammed in the super best friends episode
I rather liked Mickey asking “South Park? Do we own that one” With the reply being “not yet sir”.
There are a lot of genuinely disturbing portrayals of violence in the episode
It’s comments like this that make it abundantly clear just how sheltered from any of this world’s actual violence some of you snowflakes really are. Jesus H. Christ, I hope you don’t suffer from PTSD as a result of watching this episode. Say it with me…
IT’S JUST A FUCKING CARTOON.
You are a fucking idiot. He wasn’t saying that as if it was a bad thing, you stupid fuck. He was saying that that is what it was. And it was. FOR EFFECT.Stop fucking kneejerking like a child when there’s literally nothing here to knee-jerk about. There was a South Park episode where Spielberg and Lucas raped Indiana Jones and it WAS disturbing. And it was intended to be. And it worked. Get the fuck over yourself. You’re reading words in the review that the reviewer never even said. When it’s clear he was referring to this as a GOOD thing.
Grow up.
So, this review is all praises and you still gave it a B?
*Tonight, Trey and Matt were similarly subversive, going after another topic that is rarely mentioned in polite society: the heavy role that Chinese censorship plays in the entertainment industry, particularly the release of feature films.* Hahahaha, if by “rarely mentioned” you mean “mentioned all the fucking time” then sure
“Oh yeah, I did kill Winnie The Pooh.”
this is tricky…fair enough it’s a bold move in a sense & maybe in service to a wider point that has some merit…& maybe they can squeeze some humor out of it to boot…I even appreciate that Stan’s “I’m going to write another song about you” exit line might imply some genuine regret &/or horror at their own actions…but Winnie the Pooh is about as innocent a victim as you could imagine, literally…& I’m not sure that picking him as your brutal murder victim is forgiveable…someone told me that somewhere in the disavowed mountain of then-accredited Star Wars fan fiction someone was actually paid real money for writing a book in which they killed off Chewie in a desperate bid to wring some pathos out of a reportedly bland plot…I think they did something absurd like drop an actual moon on him or something but I don’t remember much of what they told me after the killed-Chewbacca thing…& this episode went a little like that for me…that might be unfair & they might be going somewhere with it that will make the ask worth the get…but it would need to be a hell of a pay off to cover that tab…if Stan’s stated intention to knock up another dark paen to nihilistic guitar-driven angst is all we get for an in memoriam…I may have to excise this episode from my head-canon to have any hope of not bearing a grudge…
So is the reviewer a moron or in a much more ironic twist did Disney force Trey and Matt to remove any scenes of Mickey murdering Pooh and Piglet?
I don’t know what to make of it. It’s completely random, and except a few scenes, it’s not really funny. It’s been this way for a bit now. Also I know it’s south park, but why is Randy freed all of a suden? I don’t know how China deals with foreign prisoners but coming through the airport with a suitcase full of weed could probably get you a life sentence, or death penalty (as it is in most asian countries).
also, flashback to me going to China with a big bag of hops and chemical yeast in my suitcase to help a friend with his beer project (to the untrained eye, it looked a lot like pot and a bag of coke) and having a bit of a sweat going through customs.
Sounds like South Park is no longer the documentary for you!
I’m still not quite sure how they got out. Didn’t the guard leave before letting them out when he thought he was in the wrong flashback?
He unlocked the door just before he “realized” he was in the wrong flashback and left.
Thank you for the update I was wondering if there was any actual editing going on with this site
I’d give this a solid B+ or A-. I was getting sick of the Tegridy stuff, but it led to some funny moments with Stan’s metal band and all the shots at China/Disney/NBA. Gotta love when South Park takes a firm stand on something, especially when it comes to artistic freedom.Also the That’s My Bush and Fingerbang fanservice were much appreciated