South Park: The Complete Eighth Season

This was the season where South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were working on Team America: World Police, thus a lot of the ideas that they previously felt were easy targets — Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson and Wal-Mart, to name a few — were given the green light, as the writers were facing burn out. Oddly enough, what could have been thrown together, last minute duds ended up becoming some of the funniest moments in the show's impressive television reign, due to the fact that the story lines journeyed down new avenues rather than driving one or two jokes into the ground. A great example is when Cartman decides to fake a mental disorder in order to join the Special Olympics, an event he feels he will surely dominate. Sound familiar? The same idea was apparently "stolen” from the creators of The Ringer, but as Trey mentions in his episode commentary, he thought it was a stupid idea to begin with and was amazed someone was able to make an entire film around it, let alone a 30-minute cartoon. They had such a hard time coming up with ideas that they ended up having to make an episode based on writer's block, in which the children are forced to fuel their creativity with drugs — an experiment that Matt and Trey confess doesn’t work. Once again, the short commentaries from Matt and Trey are the only extras to be found but listening to the duo adds flavour to incredible episodes such as "Awesom-O” and "Good Times with Weapons,” and is, as always, enjoyable. It’s kind of comforting that the pair have no problem being completely honest and down-to-earth when admitting that Paris Hilton is a total dog. (Paramount)