9.12.2011

Warm Fuzzy Viewing Four

I haven't forgotten about doing these.

It's been a while since I've written any Warm Fuzzy Viewings. Not wanting to dilute the content of the site, I've held off until I felt I should contribute to a different section. So how about something that only seems to make sense at night? Maybe it's because it is set during the night, or because I watched them late at night in my parent's basement when I was in high school, whatever the reason - it wouldn't be right to watch it in broad daylight. I'm talking about the Meteor Shower Trilogy, also known as the Lost South Park
Movie.
 Originally broadcast as three separate episodes in the summer of 1999, the Meteor Shower Trilogy has the main cast of South Park split up into their own stories. Cartman's story involves his abusive babysitter (and his obsession with the dated misfire that was Wild Wild West) while his mom attends a party at the Marsh's house to observe the titular meteor shower. Stan's episode is centered around the events of the party, where he's sequestered to the basement with a few other kids (including Butters!). At the party, a misunderstanding entices the involvement of the South Park police force, setting up a parody of the Waco incident in 1993. Kenny gets lumped into Kyle's story for an episode about camping and his Jewish heritage that gets weirder and weirder as the plot unfolds. None of what happens is intensely dramatic or of any permanence to the overall mythology to the show, it's just some bizarre and funny stuff. It's all set over the course of a single night, the three episodes occurring simultaneously.
I had wondered, when I saw the episodes ten years ago, if you could splice them all together into a single story. You may or may not recall my adoration of Fan Edits and how they re-contextualize stories with which we're already familiar. See where I'm going with this? Yeah - provided you know where to look on the ol' interwebs, you can find what's referred to as The Lost South Park Movie or The Meteor Shower. It's pretty loose and not to big on overlapping stories due to the way the individual episodes were written but it's still a very cool concept that only makes sense for me at night. I remember vividly the Sunday nights lying on the couch in the basement and howling at these episodes, loving the fact that they all took place over a single night. If you're interested, take a look around the web and see if you can dig 'em up. It's a cool concept.