Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

In this week's episode of South Park, the boys decided to spend their last day of Spring Break by ziplining in the Colorado Mountains. Taking a page from Animal Planet's I Shouldn't Be Alive, the story took many of the docudrama's defining aspects like "talking heads" and voiceover narration to set the scene -- and this actually worked out surprisingly well. I especially enjoyed the first few minutes of Cartman's voiceover paired with him making fun of Kenny's herpes. Indeed, "I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining" had a promising start.

However, it wasn't until the boys realized that they were ziplining with a larger group that the episode really started to pick up. The entire second act featured the majority of the laughs. Listening to each of the boy's vital descriptions was one of the better recurring jokes of the episode -- Cartman's dietary breakdown was hilarious.

The actual ziplining segments were equally great and, at times, painfully accurate. Day trips and excursions are almost never as fun as you expect them to be, and some of the examples they kept harping on were entirely too true. We've all been there -- I myself have even been subjected to the horrors of Colorado horseback riding. Everyone wants to get to know everyone, and there's always that one guy who will make the rest of you listen to the geological history of a certain rock formation. For me, these were a steady barrage of laugh-out-loud moments.

Things got a little weirder with the incorporation of live-action "reenactments" on the boat, and I suspect this will be a point of controversy for some. I wasn't really sure what to make of it. It's not that the idea of live-action in an animated show is utterly blasphemous -- and the context in which it was used was indeed an appropriate outlet if there ever was one -- but there were just a few too many jarring elements that kept me from fully enjoying it. Maybe if they had used actual fourth graders or perhaps animated the stand-ins altogether, it would have played better. But as it was, I couldn't quite get into it. It just seemed lazy (never mind if that was the point).

The inclusion Mr. Hankey also didn't really click for me. Yes, I digress, poop is always funny, but the resolution here felt like it was conjured out of thin air. If they wanted to pull a left-fielder, I think Russell Crowe and Tugger the tugboat would have made much better cameos.

Nevertheless, this was an otherwise entertaining episode, particularly the first half or so. It was even, dare I say, very close to becoming a South Park classic. Unfortunately, between the arbitrary live-action sequences and the puzzling final scenes with Mr. Hankey, "Zipline" never quite tapped its full potential. (And for those wondering, yes, I did catch the Kony reference this time.)

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love on Twitter and IGN.

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