The last few episodes (maybe this whole current season?) are just weird and I don’t get it. Its like some meta (I don’t even know what that means) performance art soap opera.
What’s with the stupid new characters like the “PC Principal” and the frat guys and the gentrification of the town and lame Whole Foods nonsense?
Am I just old and so out of touch I don’t get it anymore? Help a geezer out and clue me in.
And what the hell happened to Butters that he has the thing to support his head? I knew a kid in school that had one of those after surviving a bad car accident.
Oddly, it was only in retrospect long ago that I realized one of their early seasons had all episodes occur on the same day. I should look back and see what the deal was with that. But they have been known to do season arcs, though I don’t think they always did. Last year’s arc set up the video game that came out (great game, if you can handle the fact that it’s of course offensive). This year they’re reacting to the new rise of Political Correctness, controversies around ad blocking, gentrification and the presidential election in a story arc that twines these issues together. Interesting so far, but you have to have been watching the whole season to know what’s going on.
Well, South Park in general has definitely moved to a much more ‘meta’ humor. This season the whole story-arc is mainly about the re-emergence of being PC (politically correct), social justice warriors, “safe spaces”, gentrification, etc. Personally I think this season has been incredibly on point, so if you don’t “get” what it’s satirizing, count yourself lucky you haven’t had to put up with all of that.
As for Butters, he got physically beaten up by PC Principal a couple episodes back and has been wearing the headgear since.
I think they’ve devised a framework to explore the good and bad aspects of political correctness, gentrification, changing demographics and politics by having the town undergo gentrification and a wave of political correctness. It’s actually somewhat refreshing that they can sometimes have things in town change and stay changed.
I’m middle-aged, and still think South Park is hilarious commentary on the more ridiculous social mores of the world.
Worse for the OP, my 75-year-old mother also thinks so. (However, she is a retired middle-school teacher, so she might not be right in the head herself anymore.)
This is one of the best seasons ever, I don’t see what the problem is. They aren’t all winners this season, but there have been some high quality episodes this season.
Supposedly this entire season is just going to end up being a long ad for the new south park game the fractured but whole the same way the 3 part episode about black friday that was a GOT parody was an ad for the stick of truth. So that is why there is all this talk of is it entertainment or an ad. Art imitating life.
Butters jumped out of a window in episode 5 this season, he has been wearing headgear ever since.
Basically, this season (and the last one, I think) added episode to episode continuity - as others have said, there is a season long arc, and things that happen in previous episodes continue throughout.
Last season certainly had an arc running through the whole thing, with the two-parter finale referencing every other episode. Not sure that you couldn’t watch some of them out of order, though (as long as you saw them before the finale).
Funny enough, the creators said they never actually had South Park mapped out until making the video game forced them to. This season I now notice that they have a much better idea with how the town is laid out, as there’s a lot of camera angles overlooking large parts of town at once.
I didn’t do it intentionally, but when they started adding continuity is when I found myself not interesting in watching. I watched the first two episodes of last season, and the continuity was cool as a one off gag. But I heard nothing about subsequent episodes and thus forgot to watch. (Unless the Game of Thrones PS4/XB1 episodes were in that season: but they didn’t seem to have any continuity…)
All I saw of this season was episode 2, and the parts that connected to the previous episode were the least funny. There was no satire and no absurdity, only frustration based humor. I find that feeling sorry for someone and laughing at their misfortune to be completely incompatible. And it doesn’t help that I have absolutely no interest in watching the first episode.
Fractured But Whole is about them playing superheroes, which sounds cool. If this is an ad for the game, though, it’s lessening my desire to get the game.
Anything that takes aim at the social justice whiners gets props from me. South Park being what it is, and mostly has been in the last decade or so, of course they’re doing a spectacularly good job of it.
I knew a kid in school that had one of those after surviving a bad car accident.
(However, she is a retired middle-school teacher, so she might not be right in the head herself anymore.)