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I use to be nostalgic for the days when South Park was new and amusing. With season eleven, Matt and Trey gave birth to a new collection that, if not as insanely original as the first few go rounds, has brought the show back into the limelight.

“Guitar Queer-O”. “Lice Capades”. “Le Petit Tourette”. “More Crap”. And, of course, the “Imaginationland” trilogy. If you haven’t heard of at least half of these episodes, you’ve been living under a rock. I mean, “Imaginationland” has it’s own DVD release, for crying out loud! Those seven episodes make up half the season eleven lineup, and how long has it been since we had a South Park season set where half of the episodes were rock stars? Ages, my friends. I was still in high school.

And that’s not even the kicker. Though I’m addicted to Guitar Hero like it’s Heroin Hero, and I do suspect that Bono may, in fact, be a piece of crap, my list of seven doesn’t even house my favorite episode of season eleven – “The List”. The boys find out what we females like to do most in our spare time – may completely useless lists of completely useless things. This episode may not be on the scale of “Imaginationland” or delve into the absolute brilliance of Cartman having become a caricature of a caricature like “Le Petit Tourette” and “Cartman Sucks”, but the verbiage that the girls use in that episode (“Does that sparkle with everyone?” “Sunshine!”) has wormed its way into my everyday vernacular, and that is something that South Park hasn’t managed to do since I was in high school. And where there is goodness for the girls (and confirmation that yes, we do have secret meetings behind your backs, men), there’s still plenty of disgusting boy jokes – including yet a second episode centered around shit – “More Crap”.

There are a few downsides to this set – namely, “D-Yikes”. You can tell that the episode was written in two chunks, as the first half is great but the second half is a lame 300 parody (as if there aren’t enough of those in the world).

Also, and perhaps the biggest letdown of the set, the commentary is not what I expected. More an introduction done in commentary format, Matt and Trey discuss each episode for three minutes, tops, before moving on to the next episode (which they announce that they’re doing in the commentary). It leaves the viewer with the impression that they didn’t really care about doing commentary, and just wanted to push through quickly and be done with it. Sad, though the DVD set does give a sort of heads up by calling them “mini-commentaries”. Whatever happened to Makin’ Bacon with Macon, or Matt and Trey cozied up with an ever-changing dog in front of a fire? Comedy Central’s Quickies are also here, but really, it’s not what South Park fans are going to look for on this set.

Though the bonuses are weak (thank you, Cartman), the episodes themselves more than make up for it. This is the set to own, boys and girls. Shell out your hard-earned bucks. Siphon gas from your neighbor’s SUV (they won’t notice, they drive an SUV! They expect to pay too much in gas!) and use your own gas money for this set. It’s worth it.

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