They call it, ‘Black Friday’.

SPOILER ALERT: Full spoilers for the South Park “Black Friday” trilogy episode is below, if you’ve missed an episode or all three parts of the episode avoid this review until you have picked up on what you missed. You have been warned folks.

South Park has had some fantastic episodes in the past, but only a short few have made an impact like the Black Friday trilogy. For the course of 4 weeks South Park entered itself into not only the post-Thanksgiving extravaganza Black Friday, but the video game console wars as well and created the fusion of two media behemoths into one mighty storyline, which worked…for the most part.

Stop touching me Elmo! Stop it!

THE GOOD: The Black Friday trilogy was mostly funny, not as funny as the Imagination Land trilogy if we had to compare the two, but for what it was referencing it did a great job. I myself haven’t started Game of Thrones yet, but from what South Park parodied I already knew about, so I didn’t feel lost in the shuffle with those jokes. Butters’ disdain for Game of Thrones and its’ emphasis on “penis showing” was a funny recurring joke.

“I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.” “Cause that’s how Xbox people are!”

Cartman had some noticeably funny moments traversing through and having talks of betrayal in an old man’s personal garden. The B story involving Randy and the mall was also pretty great “No not him! He was really well liked!”. I personally liked Randy’s scenes more than the Butters/George R.R. Martin and Microsoft/Sony Corporate scenes, there were times when the A story felt a little flat in comparison. Like the aforementioned Butters and George R.R. Martin scenes, but the one scene involving the horses was pretty hilarious. Cartman learning a lesson (kind of) at the end was a pretty great scene as well.

“One thing is for sure Tom, this is going to be a f^cking blood bath.”

THE BAD: Most of the Black Friday trilogy was hilarious and fun to watch, but there were some noticeably flat moments. Like I’ve already said most of Butters’ run in with George R.R. Martin was awful accept for the horseback scene.  It felt pretty lazy and I thought Matt and Trey could have done a better job at poking fun at the male nudity used in Game of Thrones, it was funny during the first few scenes of Black Friday, but then it became an annoyance in A Song of Ass and Fire.

“You’re calling the police? It’s my damn lawn!”

THE UGLY: The end result of South Park’s console war may have been the most annoying scene of the trilogy. Don’t get me wrong Bill Gates being interpreted as a tattooed bad-ass was hysterical, but most of his fight with Shuhei Yoshida felt extremely off and uninteresting for the most part, though it was funny when Stan handed Shuhei a wooden sword like it was a legitimate weapon. The thing about the ending that really disappointed me however, was that the boys ended up with Xbox Ones as originally planned.  I didn’t hate the scene because the boys got the Xbox Ones, I hated it because it was predictable,. It would have been cool to see Cartman be the only being all pissy about having to deal with a Playstation 4 while every else had already gotten over it, even so the ending was written well enough to provide a few laughs. The boys basically saying “f*ck video games” all together was particularly nice.

“The Xbox One seems pretty cool” “Yeah and the graphics are like 10% better”

OVERALL THOUGHTS: South Park’s Black Friday trilogy had a lot of fun moments and most of its’ jokes on the gaming industry were spot on. A Non-Game of Thrones viewer/reader could get the jokes just from having friends who are fans of the show/books. Though some of the Game of Thrones jokes were really annoying, more specifically those involving Butters and George R.R. Martin, but the horseback was pretty hilarious. Most of this trilogy was epic to watch and is perhaps the best three episodes of season 17 as of now, but there was some annoying jokes and annoyingly written scenes. Still out of what has mostly felt like a “mehish” Season 17, the Black Friday trilogy has been fantastic in comparison to previous episodes, which is why Otaku Dome gives Black Friday, A Song of Ass and Fire, and Titties and Dragons a 92 out of 100.