Featured TV on DVD Review: South Park: A Little Box of Butters
October 8, 2010
South Park: A Little Box of Butter - Buy from Amazon
After the success of The Cult of Cartman, the people at South Park realized they can release theme DVDs focusing on one character and make more money from the same episodes that have already been released. The latest release, A Little Box of Butter, has 13 episodes on two discs, plus a few extras. The episodes start with...
Disc Two:
Extras on the DVDs include a clip show disguised as a Butters quiz and that's it. However, the box set also includes a number of physical extras, like a a WWBD wrist band. There's a Inspector Butters badge, newspaper clippings, check, etc. Fun stuff, but is it worth the price of a Full Season set?
I'm not sure who the target audience is for South Park: A Little Box of Butter. If you are a big fan of the show, chances are you have all but one of these episodes on DVD already. On the other hand, if you are a more casual fan of the show, these are not among the best episodes the show has to offer, while the WWBD wrist band and the other physical extras are probably too geeky for you. I think its for hardcore completists, but I'm sure there are a lot of you out there.
The Show
Disc One:
Of the 13 episodes on this DVD, three to five can be considered legitimate classics, three more are well above average, there are a couple I would rate as "Meh" and three are misses. That's not a bad hit to miss ratio for this kind of release. However, only one of the 13 episodes hasn't already been released on DVD, The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs, and it was only average. Additionally, perhaps the best Butters episode, The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers, is not on this DVD.
It's Butter's parents' anniversary, but Mrs. Butters wants to know what her husband is getting her, so she sends Butters to spy on him. But what he finds out is not exactly what she was hoping for.
At the end of season five, Kenny dies. ... permanently. Or at least more permanently than usual. As a result, Butters becomes the Fourth Friend starting at the beginning of season six; however, he is abruptly relieved of those duties at the beginning of this episode. While Kyle, Stan, and Cartman look for a new Fourth Friend, Butters becomes a super villain and looks to destroy the world. Second episode in, and Butters is already the B-plot of an episode.
Professor Chaos is back and is trying to destroy the world, or at least irritate people, but every plan he comes up with was previously on The Simpsons. Again, this is the B-plot.
Butters becomes obsessed with a waitress at Raisins, a pre-teen version of Hooters. And yet again, Butters is relegated to the B-plot on his own DVD.
A parody of You Got Served. Not one of the better episodes on the DVD, but at least Butters is integral to the main plot.
Cartman wants to spy on Butters for reasons that likely only make sense in Cartman's mind. His plan is to dress up as a robot from Japan, The A.W.E.S.O.M.-O 4000. Butters is gullible enough to fall for it, but so is the military.
Paris Hilton comes to South Park and wants Butters as her new pet. He's barely the B-plot here. ... On a side note, how can they include Christina Aguilera in the same list as Paris Hilton?
Cartman witnesses the girls using one of those foldy paper thingees. The kind where you ask it a question, count off numbers, open a flap and read one of four preselected answers. (I'm not sure what they are called, but when I tried to Google the name, "Foldy Paper Flap Thingee" i didn't get many useful results.) While the boys try to learn how this "time machine" works, Cartman instructs Butters to go undercover to the girl's slumber party as Marjorine, the new girl in town.
Cartman has been inviting Butters over to his house for sleepovers a lot recently. But he hasn't decided to be a nicer person, he's been taking pictures of Butters to blackmail him. When one of the pictures actually makes Cartman look worse than Butters, he tries to correct his mistake, and in the process gets Butters sent to a Gay Conversion Camp. Arguably the best episode on the DVD. It's this or Awesome-O.
Butters thinks there are real vampires in South Park, and worse still, he thinks he's become one of them.
Butters, in the guise of Professor Chaos, becomes Cartman's sidekick when Cartman becomes a masked vigilante known as "The Coon". Yet again, he's a side character on his own DVD.
Butters has never kissed a girl, but when he finds out Sally is selling kisses for $5, he decides to become her business manager. I.E., her pimp.
The class is assigned The Catcher in the Rye for school, but when they find the book far less offensive than advertised, they write The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs. Worried that their book is too offensive, they say Butters wrote is so they won't get into trouble. But the book is amazing, and Butters is showered with praise, a book contract, etc. Now the guys try to expose him as a fraud. The Extras
The Verdict
- Submitted by: C.S.Strowbridge
Filed under: Video Review