105 - An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig

Synopsis: When Kyle's mail-order elephant gets to big to take on the school bus, the boys get a great idea - they decide to genetically crossbreed the elephant with Cartman's potbellied pig, Fluffy to make potbellied elephants! When they try to enlist the help of the mysterious geneticist Mephesto, things go horribly awry. Mephesto makes an evil clone from Stan's DNA and now the boys must stop the clone from destroying the town of South Park.

Yeup. With a title like that it's easy to see why South Park has made such a huge cultural imprint on the world. There is simply no other show that has episode titles like that. I really don't know how I feel about this episode. I mean, I understand that many fans consider it to be a classic, and I did try really hard to like it, but I just truly never 'got it'.
Hot off the success of Big Gay Al, South Parks decides to take on another topical and divisive issue - genetic engineering. The idea of splicing a pig and an elephant is, to be frank, fucking genius, and be honest, who doesn't love Fluffy? But, beside that, this episode just felt rather... dare I say, bland. The satire just felt kinda off-kilter and the jokes were either too extreme (Cartman's "stop dressing me up like a mailman and making me dance for you" line felt forced and over-the-top, whilst the Garrison-pig joke is self explanatory), or just not funny.
As for the geneticist satire, while, I didn't find the 'OMG geneticists are all mad scientists' message that sharp. As a spoof of real genetic scientists, it was miles off of any reality that I know of, but as spoof of mad scientist movies, then I felt it worked well.
One other thing that amazed me about this episode was the Elton John parody. I couldn't believe that that was Trey singing. Does he have a voice or what?
So, sorry, but I just deem this episode watchable, and it sure has its moments, but it's definitely not a classic. - 6.8/10

Quotable Notables: "I would never let a woman kick my ass. If she tried something, I'd be like "Hey, get your bitch-ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!"" - Cartman
"Me Stan, bachump, ba-chewy-chump, ba-chewy-chump." - Mutant Stan