How much more of an absolute joke can this become? When a company says, "Allow six weeks for delivery," they're NOT talking about from the time that they processed the check. Six weeks means that about six weeks after you send the check, you're supposed to receive it! Otherwise, how the hell else is the person at home supposed to know when the clock starts ticking? When they receive the check? When they cash the check? Those delivery times have the time for postage to and from built into it.
Comedy Central/Warner just completely messed up on this. Talk about a complete lack of professionalism. I mean, this is their job! This is what they're hired to do! And up and down the line, the legal department, the DVD department, Comedy Central, have managed to give everybody a little bit of insight into just why AOL Time Warner's stock is where it is - in the toilet. No, I'm not saying THIS is why AOL is so undervalued. But perhaps it's a clue as to how things are being run at there.
Let's not forget that the DVD itself is of very poor quality. I've seen South Park episodes in SVCD format that I doubt came from regular cable (if it did, it was the PPV special from last year). South Park can and SHOULD look WAY BETTER than it did on these discs. They just didn't want to go through the expense of remastering. Where are their priorities? Isn't South Park just about the only thing that's keeping CC afloat? Didn't they anticipate a HUGE DVD audience?
And let us also not forget the whole reason for this ridiculous commentary-on-CD fiasco. Matt and Trey said something so upsetting and disturbing on these discs that Warner felt compelled to take them off the DVDs. SO HORRIBLE were these comments that Warner couldn't even risk the idea of the eight-year-olds who only watch South Park (
) hearing them and warping their fragile little minds! Well, Matt told us what their comments were about - the movie
Contact (released by Warner). I listened to the "inappropriate" comments just now (Ep. 111 - Tom's Rhinoplasty) (from the MP3, no, I have yet to receive my CDs, even though the check was cashed more than a month ago)and here is what they said (*potential* spoilers ahead):
At about 7:05 of the track, Trey explains that it was "important" "to get across how bad the movie
Contact really is and was." They explain how a bunch of people from the show were "super-excited" to walk down to the theater because they "thought it looked like it could be a really cool movie." But they didn't like it, and were "angry" about it, because "it's so bad, but you wait, even though, through all the suckyness and badness, you wait because you think, well, I gotta see what the aliens look like." But it turned out to be just her dad, and that left them "angry." According to Matt, "that was really when I really stopped liking Robert Zemeckis and Jodie Foster." Trey also thought that
Castaway, another Zemeckis movie (released by Fox), and everything he's done since then, was "crap" as well. They both liked
Back To The Future , but they thought that since then Zemeckis has "just gone off the f---in' deep end." He said that he got "Spielberg-itis", and warned people "Don't get near Spielberg, or you'll catch it."
What perhaps was more offensive than that (unless you're Robert Zemeckis) was when they later explained that Comedy Central took a joke about yeast infections out of a show(one of the few times, it seems, that Trey and Matt were overruled). They say it was because "most of our executives were women at the time, and they just weren't going to go for that," and that they couldn't get away with anything that had to do with "female hygiene," but that anything similarly related to men was just fine.
They also slightly made fun of David Hasselhoff, saying they were "embarrassed talking to him" when they ran into him, but really, it's David Hasselhoff, wouldn't you be?
So there you have it, folks. All this inconvenience and incompetence over nothing that was any more offensive than any of the subject matter contained in any sixth season episode. I haven't listened to all the commentaries, but of the ones I have, Matt and Trey are so tame you cannot believe something they said caused Warner to take away the commentaries.
If Warner/Comedy Central is serious about doing good DVD business for this show, they damn well better take their time with the second season and do it right: high quality transfers, REAL supplements (like behind the scenes), and, if Matt and Trey are willing to risk it, unedited commentaries that ARE ACTUALLY CONTAINED WITHIN THE FRIGGIN DVD!!
Thanks for reading my looong post.
