Over Logging

"Over Logging" is the sixth episode in the twelfth season of the American animated series South Park.^[1] The 173rd episode of the series overall, it originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 16, 2008. In the episode, internet access cuts out in Colorado, which leads to a social crisis, making the Marsh family join a mass-migration west to a camp with scarce Internet access. The episode was rated TV-MA-LS for strong language and sexual content in the United States.

The episode was written and directed by series co-creator Trey Parker. The episode parodies John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath and its subsequent film adaptation.^[2][3][4]

Plot[]

The Marsh family are performing various online activities: Stan is browsing randomly, Shelly is iChatting with her online boyfriend Amir from Montana, and Randy is (discreetly) watching internet porn. Sharon sends them all to bed for the night, insisting that the internet will still be there the next morning as could be expected if it worked well in the conceivable past.

The next morning Stan discovers that he has no internet connection. A disconnection error message resembling that of Internet Explorer 6 appears. Randy desperately enters Stan's room, usurping him from his seat hoping for internet access after realizing it is unavailable on his own computer as well. It is promptly established that no device in the home has internet access, which leads to panic.

They then hastily walk to the Broflovskis' house to use their internet connection, just to find that the internet does not work there, either. Both families drive to Starbucks for free wireless internet, but when they arrive it soon becomes apparent that the entire town's internet connection is down. Streets are filled with a panicking and screaming crowd. A man with a "Yoshiba"-branded laptop (Toshiba parody) jumps on the car hood showing a web browser displaying the disconnection error message (resembling Apple Safari). Randy could not read the news on his BlackBerry mobile phone for help. The TV news, which has nothing to report without the Internet, gives vague rumors of Internet access in Silicon Valley.

After eight days without internet, the Marsh family decides to "head out Californee way". Various people they pass by also mention their lack of internet. At an overnight stay at a camp, a man tells a tale of his two children starving due to waiting three days for a web page to load, with the loading progress bar having reached around half.

When the Marshes reach California, they are placed in a Red Cross "Internet refugee camp" where only one computer is available to serve the visitors. The camp is supplied with electricity through a diesel power generator, and is so overcrowded that each family is only permitted 40 seconds of internet access a day. Users whose time expired are dragged off the computer desk reluctantly by camp staff. The first user is shown trying to order books, but fails to fill in the dispatch address form in time.

Randy quickly becomes agitated and complains to a guard that he has not "jacked off" in over two weeks. Randy explains to the guard that he has become so used to being able to find any fetish he wanted with a click of a mouse that he "can't exactly go back to Playboy." Someone nearby on the camp ground noticing his relish invites him into a tent with a "simulator", promising a surrogate, which turns out to be someone behind curtains scribbling on paper for few seconds what Randy requests in resemblance to typing search queries. After exiting in disappointment, Randy is demanded a payment, to which he responds with "well at least that part's like the Internet."

At the end of the day, the camp staff shuts down internet access until the next day and locks the computer away in a shipping container shed for the night, disappointing those who did not get to use it.

At night, Randy decides to sneak in to use the computer secretly. He successfully climbs in through a window, boots up the computer and looks up bizarre sexual fetishes such as "Japanese girls puking in each other's mouths," bestiality, and "Brazilian fart porn". As he masturbates while watching the videos, his loud moans attract attention outside and he is discovered in front of the computer covered head-to-toe in semen which also soils the wall and the computer set. He tries to shift the blame to "a spooky ghost" who allegedly slimed him with ectoplasm. A guard angrily discovers that Randy has used up the little amount of connection they had left.

Meanwhile, the government has attempted to find a way to fix "the internet," a large machine resembling a giant Linksys wireless router,^[5][6] which has stopped functioning for an unknown reason. Several fruitless attempts are made to repair it: negotiating with it, communicating with it musically, and even shooting at it. Reporters of a live news channel react overjoyed to receiving a fax, an old-fashioned technology used for messaging before wide adaption of Internet that remained functional during the crisis.

Acting on a hunch, Kyle disconnects and reconnects its power cord. The network indicator now glows green and the bars of the connection strength indicator gradually light up again, indicating that nationwide Internet access has been re-established, much to everyone's surprise and joy.

After the internet is restored, Randy delivers a speech advising against taking internet access for granted, wearing a Native American-esque outfit, warning about overuse of "natural resources" (a parody of the long monologue speech that Steven Seagal gives about the environment at the end of On Deadly Ground). Randy says that people should learn from the experience and stop "over-logging on", because they may be unprepared as a result if the Internet is lost permanently. He advises people to stop browsing pointlessly, to only use it when truly necessary and to only view porn "twice a day... max."

Cultural references[]

While most of the episode is a parody of The Grapes of Wrath,^[2][3][4] other works referenced include a parody of Steven Seagal's speech from the ending of On Deadly Ground, and the five-note musical motif used to communicate with aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.^[4]

Reception[]

"Over Logging" received mixed reviews. Travis Fickett of IGN said that "Ultimately 'Over Logging' attempts to be a satire on our over reliance on and addiction to the Internet. However, it only raises the topic without actually having much to say or jokes to tell" and that "it's all build up with not much pay-off. That's the way much of the episode functions – as if there's a big joke on the way that never really arrives. There's a Close Encounters reference, and the revelation that "The Internet" is just a giant router. Kyle figures out that all you have to do is unplug it and plug it back in – the catch-all solution". Fickett gave the episode 7 out of 10.^[4]

Josh Modell of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "C" grade and noted that "There was one big message – we're overly reliant on the Internet, and we mostly use it for time-wasting bullshit – which was beaten until it wasn't all that funny anymore."^[3]

Brad Trechak of TV Squad said of the plot "As someone who works with the Internet for his day job, I had some problems with the simplistic way that it was presented. The Internet is used for much more than shopping or e-mailing (or, indeed, porn). Entire industries rely on it. The only part that struck me as truthful was seeing people live in a Great Depression-type state without the Internet."^[2]

Home release[]

"Over Logging", along with the thirteen other episodes from South Park's twelfth season, were released on a three-disc DVD set and two-disc Blu-ray set in the United States on March 10, 2009. The sets included brief audio commentaries by Parker and Stone for each episode, a collection of deleted scenes, and two special mini-features, The Making of 'Major Boobage and Six Days to South Park.^[7]

References[]

External links[]

• "Over Logging" Full episode at South Park Studios
• "Over Logging" Episode guide at South Park Studios
• "Over Logging" at IMDb