South Park - W.T.F. Review

The Boys’ New Dream - To Become Professional Wrestlers

Oct 22, 2009 Tom Mitsos

After attending their first WWE show, the boys set up their very own wrestling show. Despite all of the possibilities for a great episode, W.T.F. falls flat on its face.

It’s hard to believe it took South Park 13 seasons to do an episode about professional wrestling. Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman have done everything else that young boys like to do: play baseball, pretend to be ninjas and start a band. However, now they have discovered professional wrestling.

With their new found dream of becoming professional wrestlers, the boys enroll in a wrestling class. However, they find out that it is nothing like what they saw on TV, it is in fact real wrestling that is showcased in schools and the Olympics.

Wrestling Takedown Federation Misses Golden Opportunities

The boys decide to start their own wrestling show, “Wrestling Takedown Federation,” or W.T.F. Instead of being super excited about hitting each other with chairs or slamming each other through tables, the boys are more concerned with the ridiculous story lines that go along with professional wrestling.

While the storylines the kids make up are somewhat entertaining (Cartman dresses up like a woman and admits to aborting the baby she had with Kyle’s character Juggernaut at the age of 7), the kids never focus on the violent aspect of professional wrestling. Instead of rating their wrestling skills on how good they actually wrestle, they rate themselves based on how good they can deliver the storyline.

It would have been great to see something awful happen to Butters like in the ”Good Times with Weapons” episode. Although seeing Kenny die in “W.T.F.” was a nice homage to the older episodes. However, the ridiculous storylines will no doubt make actual professional wrestling fans enjoy this episode.

South Park Townspeople Provide Mild Laughs

The one redeeming aspect of “W.T.F.” was the townspeople of South Park. After hearing about all of the drama these kids are going through, they start attending the shows and get caught up in these kids’ lives. However, rather than accepting it as entertainment, the townspeople actually believe that these kids are really having abortions and sleeping with each other’s girlfriends.

This is funny because there are no doubt some people that believe the WWE is in fact real and not entertainment. South Park is saying the WWE is basically a soap opera with fighting. This is completely true and the best part is the people watching it don’t even realize they are watching a soap opera.

Even at the end of the episode when the school wrestling coach is trying to explain why the W.T.F. is not real “wrasslin’”, the only way the townspeople understand is when the coach explains that organizations like WWE “took his job.”

So when Vince McMahon decides to select the wrestling coach instead of the boys to be in his next performance, the boys start actually wrestling and the townspeople leave because there are no ridiculous story lines to follow.

“W.T.F.” provided some minor laughs, but missed many opportunities to make it an excellent episode. This episode was definitely the weakest of the last three episodes. Hopefully Cartman, Kenny, Kyle and Stan will still continue to be showcased in future episodes.

  • Original air date: Wednesday, October 21, 2009.
  • Season #13 Episode #10

See also:

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Comments

Oct 23, 2009 6:20 AM
Guest :
The review here is pretty dead-on. Good episode, not great. The comparison to theater was well done - down to the intermission lights and sound ... but as other posters have noted - it's old news that wrestling isn't real and it's been accepted for a long time as being a soap opera with some scripted athleticism mixed in. This is one of the rare cases where South Park seems way behind the times on a social issue - and missed a chance to make a poignant statement about something. The episode was funny, with some really good stuff but not up to par with other recent episodes I thought for lol-effect. So much potential to make a critical statement about wrestling (lack of unions, substance abuse issues, cut-throat booking politics etc ... and most of the points made in the movie The Wrestler) but they go for the out-of-date redneck-audience joke. Honestly, even in the most hick of trailer parks I'm pretty sure they realise that wrestling is scripted and not reality tv. They really could have brutalized the WWE, and it seems they used kid gloves instead - not what we've come to expect from Matt and Trey.

Also - loved the addicted to abortions thing ... good to see them throwing in some news from Canada ... along with the Balloon-Boy stuff, at least they managed to get some topical points in. I give it an 8. Butters Bottom Bitch was a definate 9.5.
Oct 29, 2009 9:28 PM
Guest :
My question is, what did you want them to do? Wrestling is entertainment that's had it's curtain completely pulled back for the last 10 years at least. Steroids is an old story and it's not nearly as popular as it was.

I just don't think it's very fertile ground for satire today. If you wanted fertile satire material, you'd have to go to MMA which is a sport with booming popularity and not too many people will or have taken shots at it. What can you say about wrestling (or boxing for that matter) that hasn't already been said?
Nov 4, 2009 12:16 PM
Tom Mitsos :
I see your point. Everything that can be said about wrestling has already been said. I didn't necessarily want them to have an opinion about it one or another, I just wanted them to touch on the violent aspect more. Before South Park was all about delivering messages behind their episodes, they had episodes where boys were boys. That's all I wanted to see.

Don't get me wrong, I love the episodes with the hidden meanings, but I also love the "omgwtf" episdoes where they just go completely off the wall with no symbolism or message involved.
3 Comments