South Park season 20 started off with a bang last week as it lampooned a wide array of recent topics in its 22 minutes. The national anthem, Colin Kaepernick, the election and Star Wars all received attention in humorous and insightful ways.
Unfortunately, it almost felt like the writers played catch-up with so many events that they had to skim through them. The show works best when it can go deeper into an idea, as Trey Parker and Matt Stone have proven to be excellent satirists over the show’s 20 seasons.
For those that don’t know, South Park has picked up an overarching narrative in recent seasons and actually has a story across its episodes. Because of this, you may want to watch the first episode of this season “Member Berries” to be totally cued-in. And in case one was needed, *spoiler alert.*
Episode 2, “Skank Hunt,” picks up on some of the points introduced in last week’s episode and further expands upon the plot of the internet troll “skankhunt42.” Much to my, and many viewers’, surprise last week, it wasn’t Cartman who was behind the internet trolling, but Gerald. He started photoshopping dicks into mouths and leaving nasty comments all across social media, especially toward the women of South Park. The school, parents and students began freaking out, and many of the women felt personally attacked — so much so that one female South Park Elementary student decided to end it all and delete her Twitter (a comparison the episode very cleverly draws to suicide).
This episode feels a great deal more focused than last week’s, and, as such, the humor and social commentary are both refreshing and very entertaining. Gerald’s surprise turn as the internet troll is nothing short of side-splitting. When Gerald trolls, it’s a leisure activity. He busts out a glass of fine wine and his favorite Boston record before getting off to leaving hateful bile online.
Gerald soon makes national news, to his excitement, where he learns the Dutch won’t pay attention to his trolling. This is where the show’s newly introduced overarching narrative works, and I am intrigued to see where the writers go with Gerald as he prepares to up the ante.
Social media commentary is heavily present in this episode, especially with the Twitter deletion being equated with suicide. The commentary peaks here, as Parker and Stone point out how social media has consumed people so much that they become it. I find this to be an impeccably relevant message, as I mindlessly scroll through Facebook in my underwear, unsure of how to type the rest of this review.
The laughs and commentary balance out really well in this episode. While mainly focusing on social media and trolling, the show made me almost fall out of my chair laughing this week. Compare this to last week, where, despite a very strong premise, I only had a few decent chuckles. The laughs work well into the plot, too. As tension rises between the boys and girls of South Park Elementary, the girls plot to get back at the boys for their trolling. To dissipate this, the boys frame Cartman for the trolling and give him a painful punishment to hopefully stop the retaliation. Although he didn’t deserve it in this case, I will admit it’s a bit gratifying to see Cartman finally receive some bad karma for years of sociopathic (albeit gut-bustlingly funny) behavior.
The girl’s retaliation at the end of the episode is a hilarious scene, which I won’t spoil here, but it does leave interesting narrative questions. While this episode is topical and funny, I‘m wondering where they are headed with it. I don’t know if the “Gerald trolling and Boys vs. Girls” plot can last a whole season, but I hope it can because there are some really neat ideas brewing from the beginning here. As of now, I am very excited to see what the rest of season 20 has to offer. I await more of South Park’s ability to make me laugh at the expense of others, and take a hard look at myself afterward. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back on Facebook and mindlessly scroll until 3 in the morning.
Contact CU Independent Arts Writer Austin Willeke at austin.willeke@colorado.edu.
