(S12E06) South Park, along with the rest of the country, has lost the Internet. As a result, Randy Marsh takes his family on a trek to California to find it.

As someone who is an Internet addict, I certainly can understand the dilemma of this situation. I don't think we could go back to being a society without Internet, much as we can't go back to being a society without phones, television or cars.

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.

There are several subtle ironies in this episode. The Great Depression happened as a result of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The South Park Depression happened as a result of the Internet crash of 2008. Also, without the Internet itself I wonder if South Park would have become the phenomenon that it is.

I don't think this episode was a satire of any particular show or movie (although there was a glaring reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind), but there were historical references to the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the Great Depression. They even used the cinematic tradition of presenting that context in black and white.

One of the characters in the show was stating about how he couldn't wait to e-mail someone, and my first thought was "if nobody has Internet, who'd read it?"

The episode focused on the Marsh family with minimal appearances by the other kids (although Kyle had a critical role in getting the Internet back). Stan's sister Shelley remains her usual sadistic self. Grandpa didn't say anything. He didn't even call Stan "Billy."

At first, I thought Shelley's Internet boyfriend Amir was one of those middle-aged Internet stalkers (which may have led to another Chris Hansen episode). Let us not forget that 12-year old Shelley once dated a 23 year old in the "Timmy 2000" episode . However, we eventually learn that he's a normal kid around her age and as usual, Internet relationships are awkward when put face-to-face.

I love how they presented the Internet as a giant wireless router, which is probably what it looks like to the general public who have one in their household. Kyle used the same solution to fix the problem as most of the tech support people at my ISP tell me to do whenever the Internet is down. It's always the simplest solution.

I've got to say that Randy's Internet habits are disturbing. I don't know a single guy that would masturbate to women vomiting in each other's mouths. And he's very loud. I loved how at the end he was dressed in an American-Indian costume and speaking of the Internet as if it were a limited resource like oil (which was a parody of a 70's commercial).

At the end, Randy was given the honor of the money shot. And what a money shot it was! Last year, he took the world's biggest poop and now this. The man has more bodily secretions and less dignity than any other cartoon character I know. However, that scene was a hilarious punchline to an otherwise lackluster episode.

Overall, a good if not great episode. I didn't think it was as good as last week's with the Penis Mouse.