Ok. Lets face it. Team America, World Police – the guys who put the “F” back in Freedom – is hysterical. It’s as simple as that. We watched it with Pat (who hadn’t seen it) and Val (who had) at Whistler, and Michelle, Val, and I were all laughing so hard that Pat left the room to go to sleep because he litterally could not hear any of the dialog. It’s brilliantly written and the satire is perfect. But there’s more. There’s a whole layer of funny behind the perfect South Park style of brash, unapologetic messages to the political Left and Right (not to mention the ridiculous habit of celebrities to get involved in world affairs).

Yes, that layer is the sixties TV Series, Thunderbirds. Michelle and I have been fans of this show for some time; we even own all the episodes and both full-length features. Thunderbirds was a brilliant show about a rich father, his sons, and two housekeepers who policed the world, fighting villains and aliens alike with their sophisticated ships and elaborate plans. The creators of the Thunderbirds took their project extremely seriously, and were masters at the art of marionette to the point of a new art being created: SuperMarionation. Aside from their fantastic skill at moving the puppets and their interaction with each other, the creators built elaborate sets in full Mid-Century Modern style: Eames, Corbusier, and Noguchi all feature prominently in their fantastic MCM home. Being MCM enthusiasts ourselves, this feature provides a key entertainment: picking out architectural icons from the scenes.

This devotion is what makes Thunderbirds so great. They took it so seriously, and the show is awful. The plots are so ridiculously elaborate, the villains so preposterously evil, and the heroes so obnoxiously heroic, that you can’t help but love this show. Add to that the fact that the creators and people doing the voice-overs for the characters are all Brits doing American accents, and you have a show that is so incredibly uncool that’s it’s cool.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have never given credit to Thunderbirds for their inspiration that I’m aware of, but they saluted the show perfectly. In every way that the creators of the Thunderbirds we masters, Parker and Stone suck completely, which is brilliantly the point. I’ve never seen a worse example of marionette in my life. The fight scenes between two puppets amounts to no more than two puppets being swung against each other repeatedly.

And don’t even get me started on that sex scene (NSFW).