The boys’ plans to go trick-or-treating as their comic-book heroes, the Avengers, hit a snag when Stan’s dad needs his son’s help with a new business venture.

Spoilers Below

The Marshs are RICH! How? Well, Randy now owns a Blockbuster video store and he thinks its great. However, the place is dark, dank, and littered with DVDs which clearly doesn’t impress Stan because well, he has an iPad that he can watch movies on. Also, it doesn’t help that the local kids see the place almost like a haunted house which it kinda is because the fucking place has ghosts! But, no matter what, Randy firmly believes in DVDs being  the mainstay of home movie watching.

A couple days go by and its now Halloween and Stan is getting ready to go with his pals to go trick-or-treating. Unfortunately,  despite the fact that they are all dressed like The Avengers and Stan is Captain America, Stan can’t go because his dad is making him work. In his place is Stan’s video feed on an iPad mounted on a skateboard all of which infuriates Cartman. Worst yet, none of the neighbors even know who Cartman is dressed up as so you know his trick or treating experience is just fail-bombed.

Another snowy night, another empty day at Blockbuster for Randy who is getting pissed that his investment isn’t paying off like it should because no one is coming in so naturally he starts to go crazy and we learn that these ‘ghosts’ are actually just visions inside the dude’s head.  Later, the kids find a bunch of dudes trying to rob a convenience store that has a Redbox which guess what? Is also out of money! The kids run away but Stan’s iPad board stayed behind and as such gets captured and thrown off a cliff.  Thankfully, some people walk by and find the iPad/Stan which seems to be doing fine, but Randy on the other hand nearly on the verge of climbing a clock tower whilst watching previews for Ted. 

The police break the news to the Avengers…that store was being run down by the ‘Red Box Killers’ and now that they have been reunited with roller-Stan, they are good to go. That said, the cops want Stan to go under cover to a costume contest but his dad finds Stan’s iPad and starts terrorizing the neighborhood! Thankfully, the cops kill the monster but Stan’s iPad loses battery leaving the kids to go back to the contest without their Winter Soldier. Good news? Randy’s store burns to the ground while frozen, but at least Sharon was able to get some of the money back.

As funny as the ‘Red Box Killers’ were I don’t know if they were fleshed out enough but that didn’t matter because this week’s episode had SO much gold in it. Let’s look at the obvious, South Park decided to take a shit on retail video  despite the fact that yes there are (maybe?) some die-hards out there that rent movies. I mean, I personally don’t know anyone who goes to a store to rent anything anymore but hey I guess they are out there somewhere, right? The kids as the Avengers was pretty golden, and not only was Cartman’s insults funny but Kenny as Iron Man just seemed to work especially when trying to commandeer the bad guys after some thought out planning.  Also, you had to love the drama brought on by Stan on the iPad which was just so well done.

That said, the real winner tonight was Randy! For one, could we have seen SOME sort of I guess breaking of the ice between the South Park writers and Seth MacFarlane?? I mean, for years those guys talked about each other to the press and on TV and such, but with Ted(which is rentable at Blockbuster very soon) playing softly in the background with no real sign of an insult one might think there could be a nice little shout out here? No! Ok, well it was worth a shot. However Randy going nuts over no customers and pretty much doing a scary ass rendition of Beautiful Mind was just utter brilliance, the likes of which puts South Park front and center at the water coolers tomorrow morning.

(9.0 out of 10)