In the show's opening episode, "The Ring," Kenny gets a girlfriend and learns that she gets rather hot and bothered when The Jonas Brothers are mentioned. In an attempt to get in good with her, he takes the new girl to a concert of the Disney-backed band only to end up with a purity ring on his finger. Besides pointing out the way that Disney blatantly sells sex to young girls with their bands, this episode also pokes fun at the company in general and married life.
This season's second episode is one of my favorites as Cartman dons a superhero costume, calls himself The Coon, and attempts to rid the streets of violence. Things get bad though when another kid takes up the good fight and all of South Park seems to follow him instead of Cartman's character. Before it's all over, The Coon joins forces with Professor Chaos (Butters) and his sidekick General Disarray in order to expose the do-gooder.
Another great episode, "Dead Celebrities," not only spoofs The Sixth Sense, but also makes a few jabs at Ghost Hunters. In this episode, Ike is haunted by the ghosts of the various celebrities that have died in the past few months. While he is haunted by everyone from Farrah Fawcett to David Carradine and Ed McMahon, his main tormentor is infomercial host Billy Mays. Of course, the whole episode is South Park's last attempt to make fun of Michael Jackson (almost as a follow-up to Season Eight's "The Jeffersons"). As an eerie side note, while attempting to commune with the ghosts, the show brings in a character much like Taniga Barrons from the 1982 film Poltergeist. What makes this eerie is that the actress who played the original character, Zelda Rubinstein, died only a couple of months after the episode aired.
South Park took home home another Emmy for the third straight year in a row with this season. This time, it was for the episode "Margaritaville." In this episode, the economy issues hit hard and most of the town hoards its money and refuses to buy anything until the situation changes. South Park itself begins to look like an ancient middle-eastern village as people wear sheets instead of buying clothes and resort to candles instead of electricity and donkeys instead of cars. Kyle realizes what is going on and tries to explain to everyone that the solution isn't to hold onto your money, but to buy things in order to jump-start the economy. While this is a great episode, it can also be seen as offensive to Catholics and Christians as it quickly (and blatantly) becomes the story of Jesus as this Jewish kid speaks out against the current thought and ends up being persecuted over his acts. Meanwhile, Stan goes on a quest to try and return a Margaritaville Margarita Mixer that his dad bought and cannot afford. On this quest, he learns that he can't simply return it to Sur La Table, because it was financed. He then finds out he can't return it to the financing company because they were just brokers to the banks, which had all of their loans bought up by the government. As a loosely-veiled story about home mortgages and financing, "Margaritaville" is a must see ... if you can handle the religious parodying, that is.
South Park: The Complete Thirteenth Season also devotes entire episodes to the new reality series Whale Wars and wrestling (both the Olympic and W.W.E. varieties). While funny at times, these episodes feel like the low-points in the season and don't compare, especially when you consider "Fatbeard." In this one, the kids become pirates when they hear that piracy is on the rise again, but are confused when they go to Somalia and find a completely different type of pirate. Another solid episode has Butters inadvertently start up a prostitution business. Of course, there are other more mature topics the show doesn't shy away from, but because this is a family-friendly website, we can't really reveal too much about them here.
Unfortunately, there aren't that many special features this time around. The boxed set contains deleted scenes and a behind-the-scenes featurette, but nothing really unusual, and nothing as interesting as last season's featurettes that focused on specific episodes.
South Park: The Complete Thirteenth Season shows that the series is still going strong and it's best asset is its ability to take a hot topic and almost immediately make it the focus of an episode. Season 13 is a must have for any existing fan, and it might do a good job grabbing a few newcomers as well.
