Review: Moonbeam City “Cop Con”

Spoilers Below

Moonbeam City Police Department are making their annual jaunt to a convention all about the cool shit you can do and be when you are a cop. This event, called Cop Con, is held once a year and is a jam-packed house filled with conventions, panels, and Dazzle’s best Elvis impersonations. Unfortunately, Rad is being a sour puss, so he decides to start his own con out in the alley called “Rad Con” and after a while it actually gets a decent following, but nowhere near the glitz and glamour that is Cop Con.

The restaurant is jam-packed with all sorts of eateries inspired by being a cop, and for whatever reason the even gets Pizzaz really in the mood to bang out Dazzle multiple times. You would think that with all of the cops at this convention, it would literally be The Purge in the streets of Moonbeam, but quite the opposite. Turns out, when the cops aren’t around, the criminals are not only well-behaved but valued members of society.

It doesn’t take long for the Cop Con to go bananas, and it does just that when random shots are fired during one of the panels which causes the con to go into shutdown mode. Fortunately, Dazzle pretty much knew all along who the asshole was that started the mess, and an arrest is made. Rad shows up to try and crash the joint, but is thwarted, and Chrysalis is named homecoming with a massive robot.

Our Take

Ironically enough, despite the fact that this episode takes place at a Con, the producers of Moonbeam City had noted that this episode was too extreme for San Diego Comic Con and, as such, they weren’t allowed to show it.

Which makes no sense if you ask me, because San Diego Comic Con would have gotten in early on one hell of an episode. A number of things impressed me about the episode, most notably how incredibly detailed the convention was presented. Like, you can tell that the writers came up with a board of a 100 ideas on what would be at a convention for cops at Moonbeam City, and they did their best to cram as much as they could. Dazzle’s panels were hilarious, the food names killed (literally in some cases), and to see the juxtaposition that eventually became Dazzle and Pizzaz’s tryst was rather timely.

As a matter of fact, the criminal element was the most impressive because a clear message was brought over about cop violence and the fact that criminals, no matter what race or creed, are people too. This is just as timely and important now as it has ever been and it certainly shows that South Park isn’t the only animated comedy on Comedy Central that can tackle some of these issues.