Everybody Hurts When South Park Is This Bad. By Christopher Patterson.
How South Park Lost It’s Authority
South Park was too good for its own good. Pioneering and utterly sidesplitting, its impact is a beast to be consulted at a different time. What’s essential to know is that it was paramount to modern comédie. But now? After a myriad of ghastly seasons and forgettable direct-to-streaming films, the legacy looks awfully deficient. And why? After being given the keys to timelessness, how did this beacon of comedy fall apart? Or do things just fall apart? Well, I’m here to delineate. How South Park lost it’s authority.
Rather than keeping integrity and class. Dot. Dot. Did a Game of Thrones. Backspace.
Now, that’s how I wanted to start this review, but upon measured reflection, I would like to start somewhere warm. The Before Era. When South Park was South Park.
Even if you weren’t there in 1997, you were there in 1997. Something every South Park fan will not not tell you. A thing every fan will tell you is that we know what good South Park is. And the earlier seasons are adjacent-enough. Season one wasn’t inadequate by any metric, simply under-budget. Season two was static in its inexpensive aesthetic and tarnished storylines draped with vigorous latent. On the whole, a middle-of-the-road yet productive opener. Then we arrive at the pinnacle of South Park every not fan should inform you of: three to seven.
Were there moderate spots? Of course. For every “Proper Condom Use,” we got “Pip”. But at a lesser ratio. Alas, Dickens has me here: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” We lived in harmony. Close to grace.
And you know the rest. Mediocre seasons ensue and too undisguised political writing. Nearly all South Park fans will reply: “The show was always political. The world you lived on called and wants its dumb and dumber back.”
I would reply ‘touché’ and ‘always political’? Well, naturally, but never this flagrant and hackneyed. There was a line. Personally and preferably Professionally, I would coin it a different ballpark. It was an unwritten rule we all knew and we all preferred. South Park was political but apolitically restrained. In a non-member berry time, there was never an entire season dedicated to an entire election.
South Park, at it’s best, picked sides, but at the end of the day showed the problems with both. It never tried to force it’s narrative to the viewer, nor demonize a side. All’s fair in love and war till it wasn’t. As South Park went on, it’s politics became too cheap. It reflected less the complex nuisances of both viewpoints, and rather did what it long-criticized the media for doing. Playing a narrative.
To give an example would be to act as if there aren’t too many to count. Essentially, if you’re playing by modern South Park rules, one side will be the illogical one’s today, then logical tomorrow. While, albeit, South Park plays with vastly different situations to reach these ends, they work for the same angle. And, if you are a long-time fan, it can help but feel anti-South Park.
Previously, the show would illustrate how both sides end up with pitchforks and provide rational reasoning to solve, sometimes, a insolvable matter. And if the situation didn’t call for debate, the show rightfully ended it there. Now, on practically every matter, does the show grab pitchforks without delving into the topics as meticulously as it once did before. It’s not to criticize South Park‘s stances, but to say the show lost it’s bite. Before, it felt as if the writer’s expressed their views and laid them with tactful consideration. Now, it feels all-too rushed and all-too mediocre.
There were exceptions, though, even if tiny ones. Kyle becoming his mother is fascinating, even if it was middling in execution. Nonetheless, it helps to reflect the stages of South Park. The stage where the writer’s where trying to get the mood of the world. The second stage where the writing became electrified. The third stage where the writer’s got old and realized it. And the fourth which is repetitious and banal. This writing decision reflects a mix of the third and fourth stage. Regardless of whatever imaginary stage you started in, South Park is a everlasting rebel of television, for many including this dear writer.
Such is the virtue of South Park, a paternal linking to the wicked, as seen by adults, and nonfictional reasoning for those raised on this ‘gospel’. Its flame ignited generations, and abruptly left us distant in the end. It’s not to say South Park has never been without its slip ups, the first seasons can attest to that, but these new seasons are blatant anomalies for the fellowship. Rather than politics homiciding a once oeuvre, the storylines are. Ascribable to the recipe being too recycled and defectively categorized.
Lay hold of a run-of-the-mill recent episode, in which Randy and the other grown-ups decide to help the kids fight teenagers. While an indifferent if passable premise, the denouement feels repetitive. The resolution: the kids are growing up and the parent’s see that. All right, but for the past twenty-seven years, the show has tackled this. Take the tooth-fairy episode and how it illustrates Kenny, Stan, Kyle, and Cartman growing up through a straightforward yet toothbinding premise. The tooth-fairy is not real, and they act out in reaction, causing them to scheme as a means to cope or not be reminded of it.
At its most enthralling, South Park uses relatable scenarios to inspect growing up with smooth outlandish humor. But we have 2020s by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, where storylines seem too abbreviated and niche, and far away from the coming of age touches that made it reinvigorating.
Even the most middling of episodes, “Pip,” still surpasses new South Park by an avalanche as it provides an energizing experience by adapting a captivating novel using South Park shenanigans. New South Park seems too online, too unreal, to accomplish the wholesome pessimism that flourishes in “Pip.”
While most would point to: Who’s Afraid Of South Park? South Park. And while there may be some truth in this, I would account it to the writer’s growing up and preferring different taste. I would agree that the show has lost it’s bite by losing or fearing it’s touch. compare any season five episode to season twenty-five. But, considering episodes like “201”, the many reactions to it, the fact these guys have families, it’s not unworkable to see why.
To one reader, comedy is for those in-the-know or those in-the-relevant. In my belief, that is only part of the truth. Comedy is for the relevant and time travelers. Those who read the now and those who have the knowledge to provide a new window to peer out of it. It’s a balancing act for balancers. And Trey and Matt sure had multi-tasking tight rope skills, but with an expiration date. To place a form of criticism on recent South Park humor, I would offer “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” juxtaposed with “No Scrubs.”
A trap the writers fell into and never came out of, is too much of the same thing and stumbling to decrypt what made the show work. For a quick pro quo, it was when the show balanced growing up with the current day, never too much of both, did it succeed.
What made seasons such as the fifth so memorable was how the balancing act paid off. When the season aimed at what was trendy it did it maturely with sentimentality. To add, sentimentality can be good and bad. Too much, and we can arrive at banality. Too little, and it feels cold and robotic. Steering clear of it all together is substandard. It’s like following a pamphlet rather than the heart. There are no rules to writing, so why limit yourself.
Take the Christmas episode. There, the show spreads its wings and unleashes a brochure for the most stressful time of the year. With wholesome to “Christmas Time in Hell,” it’s not your average sentimental December watch. But it has love poured in into every lyric, a worthwhile watch with the family. Essentially, it makes you feel cozy and plainly sentimental. And can’t that be enough? Modern South Park would beg to disagree.
When modern South Park is ‘sentimental’, it can be summated as half-hearted rubbish. Take Cartman and Heidi. Their ’emotional’ wrap-up for their unrelieved and tedious ‘romance’, can’t help but make you aloof in the end. As if the artist furnished such a ill and noxious experience, no emotion can be present in the circumstance. Their romance was too predictable and the flowery conclusion is tiredly vapid by offering nothing new to the table. We realized long ago Heidi needed to develop agency from Cartman and dragging it out for a entire season was overplayed and inessential. Even worse, it’s just a plain bore. This is a narrative that could’ve worked as a single episode, but never nothing more. This is a pattern when South Park tries to continue storylines. Things become hallow.
It’s an utterly unfulfilled feeling retained by a utterly irritating show. This is given without direct mention of possibly the most dangerous agitation scratched by the writer’s. The Randy situation is possibly the most destructive addition yet faced by a defaced series without a face, like the character.
Randy is a tool. Moreover, he is a tool for the writer’s to say what they want and morph like clay doh. And like clay doh, he lacks anything relevant to a personality. Randy is a shapeshifter without years, context, nor backstory. In the single decision to make him the focus for nearly a dozen seasons, it helped to solidify the termination of the only good long-running series on television.
What makes Randy such a disreputable choice for central figure, is that he is a characterless character. He is a vacant soul for the senior writers to live off of. Compared to the sociopathic Cartman, grandstanding Kyle, whatever-goes Stan, quiet and exceedingly poor Kenny, we are afforded with Randy: the weed farmer without a cause.
Randy is a ruinous result of the more-is-better dogma. In truth, Randy was a character robustly aided from the temporary time you spent with him. He was the supporting character better played in breadcrumbs, nothing more. The background character you loved for being the background character. He was adored, but in short glimpses.
Imagine Mean Girls from fan favorite Janice’s perspective. Wouldn’t be that riveting? There was a reason the new girl was the focus. If Mean Girls made Janice the focal point, she would be less liked and become a burden on the viewer since she wasn’t intended to carry the plot along. Now, imagine that for more or less a decade of television.
At it’s worst, South Park fails to send a message. It’s so absurd and has no lesson, and while a lesson is not required, when the universe get’s into too much havoc, it helps to make everything come together. A formula the writers used to always use, flawlessly. Now, that is lost. The only time a lesson is given is to tell the audience there is no message, over-and-over. Spinning us around, around like a common denominator eh.
While you could afford this to South Park growing up, the characters haven’t nor has the world. Before, South Park would comment on current issues with outrageousness latched with enough wholesome moments to make it all worth it. Now it relies on a soulless pessimism or soulless commentary. So soulless the people writing it may not even have souls. Wait a second. Faustian deal theorists, you here? I think I found something.
The reason South Park may not be the same again is because South Park can’t, for the writers. They really aren’t as shocking as you remember. Don’t misinfer, South Park was boundary-pushing, for the time, but time grew to where we are desensitized to everything. Including South Park. Meaning, if they went usual South Park again, the writers might fear it won’t get the reaction they so desire. But I disagree. In fact, I think South Park could be better this way.
There is a reason “Good Times With Weapons” is an amazing episode despite never having much political commentary. It’s because it was an outrageous episode that captured your zany imagination as a kid, using different animation and accurate commentary. Rather than retaining this bite, this observance of being young, the writers treat the kids of South Park, now when they even decide to focus on them, too much like depressed adults.
If I had to viva recent South Park for all it’s worth: moderately perspicacious, too hasty, and a sober ego death. Not to forget an utter bohren.
But here is the question: How do we save it?
It’s hard to say, but if I had to culminate: rip up the spreadsheet and restart the formula. Go back to square one with the prescription that always worked. Even bring back the 2000s animation. Would it be cheaply nostalgic? Yes, but compared to the drab coloring presented, it wouldn’t be too much of a slight. Another feature to be reprised would be the theme of growing up. Too often has South Park hid from showing it’s characters grow with the audience, to our intolerance. Rather than supplementing the ordeal, it only seems to diminish it.
The volume of promise flattened on washy politics and Randy is inexcusable. Through Randy, it felt like another ‘scheme’ to avoid creative storylines and authentic brainstorming presented in 6 Days to Air. Total indolence.
The wonder years are gone. If you wanna take the writers to lunch for it, this is probably what you will be confronted with. Probably to them, they wore these kids’ childhood thin, so they focused elsewhere. I would reply: Huh? Take a leap!
Show the teen years of these delinquents, focus on how they manage. Probably the reason I deeply loathe episodes like “Help, My Teenager Hates Me!” more than middling junk like “Credigree Weed St. Patrick’s Day Special” is because it feels so cutthroat. It expresses humor in the idea of doing more, but never does. I am curious who would’ve preferred if the show, made the kid’s teenagers there and explored angst in the manner of the adults rather than the kid’s struggling to deal with teenagers. While the show certainly has used it’s adult voice in the form of the young, this feels utterly wrong.
As if the writer’s are trying to convey the scuffles of raising teens but sluggishly executing it. It’s an extent I would call ‘unwatchable’ programming. With truly dreadful entertainment you can laugh at the minimum, but when it’s an up to par idea being mutilated on screen it’s unambiguously contemptible. This is contemporary South Park. Vandalization.
The ultimate alteration I would make to state-of-the-art South Park would bring back the show’s heart. Beginning around the Black Friday-GOT themed season, it was hard not to feel an inert uninspired triteness coming from the Emmy-winning series. Season 22 happened and felt like the first time the show openly felt just crude. Whenever this season does anything, from storylines to political commentary, it couldn’t help but be dower about it. Like, the magic that gave the writer’s so much is gone and a sour and angry note is left they won’t leave alone.
Whereas earlier South Park would comment on troubling issues of the day with spaced out pessimism, but still have someone limit all the dreariness, now that is gone. There is no hope. What South Park would’ve mocked in earlier seasons is now South Park. You either get a depressing episode or a soulless adventure. And after seven years of waiting for this show to improve, it’s hard not to feel disconsolate. But now and then, they quietly remind you they can do better, they just don’t want to. Instead, we will get South Park toys and South Park restaurants, with allusions to our dearest remembrances. Moments we could get more of, if only they remembered where to look.
VERDICT
South Park is too verbose in spades, but no more than now. A persistent insistence on penance yet enacted self-harm is all-too-prevalent. Even the sound of pets might be more palatable. Wait, the Beach Boys did it. South Park is on the dying edge, like The Simpsons. It is the portrait of a now-uncourteous excreta as an old geriatric man.
