Loyal readers will know that I love Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s work. There are very few things that I think they produce that could actually be considered bad.
I tell you this — not just to make you aware of my bias — but to make it clear that I’ve been following their work since I was a kid sneaking recorded episodes of South Park on VHS behind my parents’ backs. When I talk about this current season, I’m coming at it from someone pretty well-versed in their style of humor, not just someone who actually likes their brand.
This season of South Park has been an interesting one, and it’s safe to say that the show has made itself more relevant today than it has in a handful of years. That is, in itself, proof that Parker and Stone know what they’re doing in terms of hitting the right vein after all these years. That said, they know where to hit, but how well are they hitting it?
It might depend on who you ask, but as for me, it’s a mixed bag. There are times when I’m laughing out loud, and there are times when I’m kinda wondering how the comedy duo let a joke that unfinished slip through to production.
The first episode shocked everyone with just how anti-Trump it seemed. Many people were angry because the show didn’t really come down on anyone in the Biden administration, but seems to be going in so hard on Trump that the jokes are grotesque. I’m not angry about this because South Park is not a political show. Biden didn’t nearly have the same cultural relevancy that Trump does, and as such, Stone and Parker weren’t all that interested.
That’s how they’ve always worked. The funniest joke about the most relevant topic is the one that gets told. It doesn’t matter who the target is; it’s getting made fun of. There are no sacred cows in the eyes of the duo. Become such a cultural force that you can’t be ignored, and you will show up on an episode of South Park in an unflattering light.
With that in mind, some of the jokes they’re telling just aren’t landing, especially those about Trump. I’m not saying this as a guy who voted for Trump and largely still supports him, I’m saying this as a guy who usually sees a bit more cleverness out of their mockery. There’s usually a joke behind the joke with Parker and Stone, and jokes about Trump having a tiny penis and having gay sex with Satan feel undercooked. The fact that he’s a one-to-one of Saddam Hussein in past episodes — down to the voice, the catchphrases, the tiny penis and the gay sex with Satan — makes me believe the joke is still unfurling, but Parker and Stone are usually better about delivery.
That said, there are moments that do have that well-polished Stone and Parker humor that had me laughing out loud, especially in the second episode.
In particular, the storylines revolving around ICE, Cartman, and Mr. Mackey were so well done that any moment they weren’t on-screen felt like a momentum loss.
Cartman becoming Charlie Kirk and obsessing over becoming a “master debater” is well crafted, especially when fellow student Clyde Donovan becomes a podcaster who sounds more like Nick Fuentes and begins cutting in on Cartman’s shtick. Cartman’s mom, confusing what Cartman is doing behind closed doors as actual masturbation, adds another level of hilarity to it as she constantly tries to get him to stop.
The other part that had me rolling was Mackey’s quest of trying to get his “nut,” which in this case, is being used as the slang term for a person’s financial responsibilities. He’s fired because there’s no more funding for counselors in schools, and is forced to join ICE to pay his bills. He inadvertently becomes a fantastic ICE agent as the organization raids places like “Dora the Explorer” stage shows and, after hearing that there are likely many Mexicans in Heaven, ICE vehicles rush to it to arrest them there.
It’s these jokes that felt very well put together. The Kristi Noem jokes about shooting every dog and having a runaway face were also kind of funny, though this probably won’t fly with a lot of people who don’t like or misunderstand dark humor.
But I noticed as the show got to Mar-a-Lago, it started to feel a bit underdeveloped. We return to Trump, who now has JD Vance in tow, and pays homage to the Fantasy Island intro of old, with Vance being more like a tiny servant that Trump abuses. That part was kind of funny, but then it devolves from there.
Trump wants to make Mackey the new head of ICE because Noem freaks him out, and also wants to help him with his nut, which ends up being a gay sex with Satan joke.
I think it’s odd that Parker and Stone nailed this misunderstand trope with Cartman and his mom, but completely fell flat with it later between Mackey and Trump in the exact same episode. I can’t help but feel like whoever is writing the Trump parts of the show is an entirely different, less-experienced writing team.
Even the part where Noem shoots Superman’s dog Krypto out of the air at Mar-a-Lago felt lazy at that point, almost like they were trying to bring in one more thing to make the show feel like it’s up-to-date.
Over the years, South Park has always been a happy warrior kind of show. If they really didn’t like someone, they definitely came down on them with satire, but it rarely felt lazy or try-hard, and this season of South Park has those moments. Kristi Noem going into a pet store and killing the dogs off-screen while the credits were rolling just felt tired at that point. Parker and Stone like to push jokes to a point where they stop being funny, then push it further so it’s funny again, but they just didn’t get there.
It’d be like if the focus were Biden, and they kept making the same joke about his incoherent speech throughout the show. It might’ve been funny the first couple of times, but without some actual end result of his speech being incomprehensible, it’s just and-then storytelling… a kind of storytelling that Parker and Stone famously hate.
With all that said, I’m not giving this season a thumbs up or a thumbs down yet. Like I said, I have a feeling that some of these jokes are still playing out, and they’re delaying the punchline. My faith in Stone and Parker remains, and they are still doing what they’ve always done — which is make fun of the most talked about person/thing in the room, and I hope they never stop.
My worry is that they will turn South Park into a political show, or at the very least, into a political season. They’re no stranger to making jokes about politics or political issues, but the show was always culturally focused, even in those moments. Right now, conservatism is dominating the culture in a way that could be considered a landmark moment for our civilization, but my hope is that the joke will run its course, and the show can get back to talking about something else.
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