After their fairly bananas "Freemium Isn't Free" last week, give it to show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to follow up with an even crazier installment this week. With "Grounded Vindaloop," they make what could very well be their most mind-bending episode ever.
What starts off as a fairly traditional case of Eric messing with Butters with an "Oculus" virtual reality headset soon turns into something of an Inception episode even more Inception than their direct parody of the Christopher Nolan film "Insheeption" in season 14. That's only about a third in the episode, though, and as the twists and turns of the gang realizing that they truly don't know who is in the virtual reality continue, Parker and Stone make something more akin to Primer than anything else in popular entertainment fiction.
The twists and turns come readily in this seventh episode. But, in all actuality, it doesn't feel like the South Park boys are all that focused on making sure all these facts connect together. Rather, they seem more concentrated on their parody of our cultural obsession with fake realities, growing in popularity as technology grows in our social possibilities. That's kind of the thing about making an episode in a week's time: you don't really get to work out all the kinks of the subplots, and I'm sure there is someone on the Internet now proving that this episode is littered with plot holes and inconsistencies.
But let's focus on what really matters: is this a good South Park episode? Yeah, it's a pretty good one. The jokes centered on ethic stereotypes in customer service lines feels tired and stale, but the story is fairly inspired, and the end is pretty damn clever. In keeping the plot on its toes, there's an odd fascination not in where the plot goes, but how far Parker and Stone want to take their premise. After a while, the possibilities seem almost endless in their own ridiculous way.
It does all get a little tiring after a while, which is saying something when your episode is a mere 22 minutes. But through is continuous plays at reality, there is a feverish, amusing sense of glee watching what Cartman and the boys do in this plot. In a way, that's kind of indicative to the show on the whole now. It's not quite great, but there is still something to be said for its sense of inspiration. Even if the jabs are quite rooted and sharp, they are still able to come up with their oddball ideas and inter-worked plot-lines in their middle age. If that is how the show must end, at least it's commendable.
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