Warning: Fullfrom the episode to follow.

In recent South Park episodes, there seems to be a pattern forming where the storylines are generally strong out of the gate, but quickly lose steam by the first commercial break. Such was the case for this week's "Taming Strange," which set up two promising ideas that never really went anywhere. The first, of course, was Ike going through puberty. This in itself a pretty funny concept, one that normally wouldn't work on most shows (after all, 10-year-old Kyle is five years Ike's senior), but because it's South Park, we're willing to go along for the ride and see where it all goes. Unfortunately, Ike as a hormonal "teenager" wasn't quite as hilarious in practice.To me, what makes Ike so funny -- aside from his Canadian heritage, of course -- is his youthful voice. When you take that away and replace it with a mouthpiece more comparable to a teenager's, the circumstance loses its impact somewhat. Personally, I think this storyline might have been more enjoyable if Ike had retained his childlike vocalization. I understand that's not how puberty works, but this is Canadian puberty we're talking about here, and from a comedy standpoint, chewing tobacco and talking about "pounding strange" just doesn't really cut it for LOLs.In fact, it was the Canadian Board of Health segment that I found to be the most entertaining this week, as the department head explained how Canadian puberty works. ("For instance, when you fart, your d*** gets hard.") There was also something delightfully absurd about the department head's own revelation that farting and queefing weren't at all related to Canadian reproduction. I particularly enjoyed the recurring callbacks to "budday," "guy" and "fwiend."The Yo Gabba Gabba/Miley Cyrus tie-in was also only okay, and didn't serve much purpose in the large of scheme of things. Clearly, this subplot was meant to correlate with Ike's own struggles in growing up -- much in the same way that Miley's image as a Disney child star has devolved into... well, whatever Miley's image is now. Later, the references to Miley's VMA performance and "Wrecking Ball" felt forced in making obvious jokes that we've now heard and seen countless times in much funnier memes on the Internet.As for the "Intellilink" storyline, which largely focused on Mr. Mackey's vehement need to integrate the school's new digital portal into the curriculum, there were some funny bits, including the constant misuse of functions: dimming the lights, rolling down window shades and playing arbitrary song files -- I also got a laugh out of Ike's drawing of Kyle with a "whooping crane" on his head, and Butters' gleeful snickering. However, the Obamacare commentary at the end, again, seemed like an afterthought that was tacked on to make it all seem relevant. (I'll admit, though, I did chuckle at the Tom Brady cutaway.)Overall, I thought the satire this week was pretty scattered, with the episode shoehorning in as many "hot topics" as they could into the central plot. While the two main parodies (Miley Cyrus and Obamacare) probably could have worked in tandem, neither arc was strong enough here to warrant a connection at the end (unlike, say, the World War Z/Trayvon Martin mashup in "World War Zimmerman"). In the end, these jokes were simply too one-note to satisfy a full 22 minutes. Honestly, they probably could have run about the same length as an SNL sketch and gotten the same effect.