South Park Is In Trouble And Needs To Change Course, Fast

For the first time in my life, I’m going down to South Park with guarded enthusiasm. The show I’ve adored since third grade has taken a media-friendly turn for the worse because it’s missing one key element: boys being boys. Season 27 isn’t about the kids. It’s about the nonstop political commentary that’s already flooding every other media source.

Escapism is more important now than ever, and South Park used to nail the balance between absurd world-building and sharp, timely satire. Now, it leans so hard into politics that the fun is gone. If I wanted lazy “Trump is an orange man with a small wee wee” jokes, I’d tune into Late Night With Seth Meyers. Instead, I’m getting more of the same from a show that once thrived on chaos only kids could cause.

I’m super cereal.

I waited all year for Season 27 after Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced plans to hold off production until after the 2024 election to steer clear of politics. But in the wake of their messy Paramount deal, they couldn’t resist poking the bear. While I admire them for taking shots at the establishment, I’m ready for them to crank out some episodes centered on the boys.

Boys Being Boys Is Still South Park’s Bread and Butter

If you own the South Park DVDs or have listened to the mini episode commentaries that are all available on YouTube, you’ll notice how Trey Parker and Matt Stone repeatedly gush over the episodes centered on Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Stan, Butters, and the rest of their classmates.

Dressing up as superheroes, wizards, or ninjas, or getting way into World of Warcraft for their own good, are the trappings of a classic South Park episode that holds up. The comedy works because it’s grounded in foul-mouthed grade school friends trying to make sense of talking towels, alien invasions, and whatever disaster their curiosity unleashes on their clueless and overzealous authority figures.

Episodes like “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers,” “Good Times with Weapons,” “Casa Bonita,” and “AWESOM-O” all sit at the top of South Park’s IMDb audience ratings because the formula works. Most of the series’ top 100 episodes give the boys full control of the narrative, proving that the boys alone can capably unleash a level of chaos that’s truly timeless.

Record Ratings And The Lowest Common Denominator

South Park’s Season 27 premiere, “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” pulled record numbers with the highest viewership the series has seen in over 25 years. It also holds a 9.4 rating on IMDb and sits at number four among fan favorites as of this writing. But it is the Season 27 exception, not the rule. I doubt it will stay in the top ten long-term.

The episode’s blunt digs at Trump’s allegedly small junk landed well with fans and newcomers, and its timing helped garner its positive reception. It aired hours after Parker and Stone signed a $1.5 billion streaming deal with Paramount, who had just settled a lawsuit filed against them by Trump. You can’t really blame them for striking while the iron was hot and giving Paramount a giant middle finger before the ink on their contract fully dried.

But high viewership doesn’t always mean that great art is being produced. This becomes clear when you look at the rest of Season 27’s audience ratings. The second episode, “Got a Nut,” currently ranks 72nd. The next, “Sickofancy,” drops all the way to 246th out of 325, making it one of the worst-reviewed in the series.

South Park’s signature sense of social satire is still dripping from every frame, but Season 27 will continue to see diminishing returns if its creators keep trying to double down on “Sermon on the ‘Mount”s success.

Getting Back To The Playground

There’s still promise, though, because Parker and Stone seem to realize Season 27 needs a course correction in the form of the boys reclaiming South Park. “Sickofancy” isn’t a top-tier episode, but it marks a stylistic shift by forcing Randy Marsh to sell Tegrity Farms and move his family back into town after years of mixed fan reception with the story line. With the Marshes back in South Park, Stan is in the neighborhood again and more likely to cause trouble with the rest of the boys.

Antagonizing the President was fun for a while, but now it’s time to get the boys back on the playground.