South Park has been ambitiously trying new things, and over the past couple of seasons Matt Stone and Trey Parker have slowly transitioned the show into having a fully serialized season plot. It was a surprising decision for a show now in it’s 20th season, but made sense that after so long the creators would want to try something new and exciting. However, for as fun as that idea sounds, South Park loyalists weren’t too big on the idea of changing something that wasn’t broken. A lot of what the show attempted was really solid and Season 20 has had a ton of great ideas, but it feels like South Park has almost gotten in over it’s head, and trying to juggle creating an episode in six days with multiple long-term stories is a little more complicated than it seems.
The Troll Trace software has finally gone live and as expected, it’s destroying the town of South Park (and presumably the rest of the world). A lot of turmoil has come from the program but sadly in this day and age pretty much nothing online is truly safe, and while South Park has taken the idea to a whole new level, it really is amazing how much is out there when a person searches their self. The story has been pretty fun, especially because of the focus it’s brought to the Broflovski family; the show has done something more with Gerald, delivered classic Sheila overreactions and finally had Kyle become a man by taking action to protect his family. South Park has been doing things a lot differently lately, and the focus on Kyle and his family is one of them. It was executed pretty well and was a ton of fun to see Ike take baby steps into trolling and eventually see Kyle step up into the role as well, but the show doesn’t need to over-innovate and try to ambitiously expand on too many characters.
Season 20 really saw a lot of character change, including Cartman who seemingly did a complete personality flip with Butters. For once, Cartman was put into a position of niceness that actually stuck and even landed him a girlfriend. It was definitely an interesting idea to explore but certainly felt weird to have one of the most clever, evil and hilarious characters flip like that. Cartman’s whole spiel was actually pretty funny for the most part with the running Amy Schumer joke and the urgency to go to Mars through SpaceX in order to avoid being outed by Troll Trace. While Cartman has been interesting, “The End of Serialization as We Know It” seemed to communicate that the character was returning to his roots with his positive love for and belief in women waning. Even managing to work with Garrison to ensure the SpaceX facility would be blown up showed that Cartman was once again thinking on his feet and plotting, so hopefully South Park will keep the character’s words and get revenge on the other boys for destroying all of his electronics.
As for Garrison, the choice to have him represent Trump was clever at first, but might have been the cause of this season’s dip in quality. Stone and Parker had to have completely believed Trump had no chance of winning the election, but unfortunately had to try and play it out after committing. South Park does a great job of expressing it’s political view by explaining the opinions it displays, but Garrison’s entire plot just seemed to have no concrete endgame in sight. Each episode the writing chose to make a point through that story and it all made sense, but after a while lost it’s shine. Although they probably didn’t want to spend so much time on the plot, Stone and Parker got stuck with it, and maybe that was a part of what they were trying to express with the reaction episode titled, “Oh Jeez,” but “The End of Serialization as We Know It” certainly seemed like they were stalling. It’s really a shame because Garrison was already such a great character who went majorly wasted in Season 20, so it will be interesting to see where South Park takes this next season.
Despite a few stumbles throughout this entire season, South Park remains to be a fantastic show, because even it’s worse episodes will always provide laughs. Season 20 has felt like Stone and Parker tried to do too much and although their attempts deserve high praise, things definitely need to be scaled back, but it seems like they know that. “The End of Serialization as We Know It” seemed to send the message that serialization has always been an experiment, but because the internet is a place where next to nothing can go untouched by Trevor’s Axiom it sparked a ton of mixed emotions towards the show’s attempt. Whether South Park nixes the serialized season stories or not, hopefully this has been a good learning experience and will allow the show to deliver the best of both worlds and come back super strong.
Other Thoughts:
*Trevor’s Axiom and the explanation is incredible.
*Surprising to see the Member Berries only pop up briefly at the end. Clearly there is more to that story, but hopefully it doesn’t feel forced to be closed next season.
*Cartman’s fear for men on Mars is hilariously absurd.
*Has Sheila reached her final form?
*Kyle with that sweet Batman escape.
*Glad we got to hear the Danish song for one final episode.
*Memba Kenny? Yah, I love Kenny!
