Unfortunately, I'm spending a lot of time home and fuzzy thanks to the pain killers I'm on. As a result, I've been watching a lot of TV. Yesterday, I re-watched the Mormon episode from South Park. It's the first time I've watched it since I left the church two years ago. Back then, I was shocked to discover the portrayal of Joseph Smith "translating" out of a hat was true! All my life I'd been taught that there was a complex set-up on a table with sheets and whatnot.

Now I realize how easy they went on the church. They could have had lot more fun with that episode. Here are a few things I think would have enhanced the episode:

1) Multiple first vision accounts
2) The Jaredites
3) Polygamy (come on South Park!!?!)
4) Temple clothing/garments
5) Word of Wisdom

What other things do you think they should have poked fun at and brought to light?

To be fair, they didn't go easy on the church, they packed a lot into the show's 23 minutes. If they dedicated even 2 minutes to each thing on your list, that's nearly half the episode right there.

I don't think their purpose was to do a full send-up of the entire ridiculousness from start to finish. The episode's mission seemed to be more elementary: you know those overly nice, seemingly family oriented mormons? The ones who say they are christian and their religion makes them so happy and have such loving families that you think "hmm, being a mormon might be awesome"... well, the religion is "dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb" and founded on absolute nonsense. That "happy, perfect" family is just brainwashed, let's laugh at the absurdity of the foundational things they believe.

I really don't think they were aiming for anything more complicated than that. Considering their demographic, I think they probably accomplished exactly what they aimed to do, anything more would have had their viewers tuning out. If you know nothing about LDS, seeing Joseph Smith with the rock in his hat, dictating, followed up by the second version, I don't think people need much more than that to realize how insane these beliefs are.

It will be interesting to see how the Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon" turns out. It's written by the two guys behind South Park, and is scheduled to open next year.

Wow. This is Savannah, Shannon's ex-mo daughter. As a member of todays youthful culture I too have watched a lot of South Park and think that the episode in question is exactly as wittyname explained it as far as the purpose of the episode being simpler then one who knows about LDS would expect. That Broadway Musical sounds fabulous. I recently returned from an arts school field trip to Newark for the Dodge Poetry Festival, and we spent 4 days up north. I had never been so upstate before. We took the first day we arrived to journey into New York City and we all saw Billy Elliot on Broadway. It's so beautiful to a newcomer haha
But I didn't see this advertised?
I wonder when it comes out. O.o