The outrage game? Really?

Kyle Smith thinks Parker and Stone should give it up and move on with their lives:

Having nothing left to prove with the show, Parker and Stone would be smart to cast it aside, knuckle down and come up with a full-length feature as enduringly hilarious as Team America: World Police every couple of years instead of spending that time spitballing their way through 28 or so half-hours of hit-or-miss comedy. Like immensely rich versions of your friend in study hall, though, they won't listen to reason: They're signed to produce more episodes through 2011.

Well, I for one am glad they're signed through 2011. South Park is the ultimate hit-and-miss show. I find some episodes utterly repugnant; others boring and silly; and yet every now and then there is an episode that just works on so many levels--from the vulgar potty-mouth to the extremely timely and satiric--that, well, I keep watching.

In fact, I'd say South Park really slowed down around season seven, and had far more misses than hits, but in recent seasons has made a huge resurgence. I mean, the World of Warcraft episode was pure genius--and the "Day Before the Day After Tomorrow" episode was hands down the funniest spoof on global warming I think I've ever seen.

So, I say take the bad with the good. It's not a perfect show, and it doesn't aim to be. It's just self-aware enough to not take itself too seriously, and just smart enough not to devolve into pure silliness.

So it may not be the "graduate-level satire" that the Simpsons is, but it fills a void in TV, between the silly and the serious, and the smart and the stupid, that is altogether its own...and that's something, isn't it?