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South Park Season 26 Review

The twenty sixth season of South Park is another very good season that signaled the semi-return to form for the show. I still have my objections, but most episodes are strong here.

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“The true Jews of Israel are your black ancestors“

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My main issue with this season is its ridiculously short length. Running in at just six episodes, it was needlessly slight and it left me wanting for more. It also ended on a very sour note, but more on that later. Trey Parker and Matt Stone did close off some very annoying serialized storylines, but they also opted to continue a couple of them, which bothered me so much.

The first of the six episodes is Cupid Ye. This is a very good, albeit not great installment. The decision to bring back the fan-favorite Cupid Me character was a sound one and the little guy absolutely stole the show with his hilariously cute voice juxtaposed with amusingly malicious lines of dialogue. Cartman is very funny here throughout and the episode mostly worked, but Kanye West was an overly easy target for the duo and the conclusion of the episode was overly preachy and one-sided in its politics.

The Worldwide Privacy Tour is one of the best episodes of this season. The brand management subplot wasn’t the funniest, but they cleverly lampooned just how atrocious and ridiculous this current era of branding is. But the highlight of course is what they did to Harry and Meghan as both are ridiculed in glorious fashion. Them wanting “privacy”, yet doing everything to attract attention was a joke that was repeated countless times here, but every time it was so well executed that it made me laugh. It’s an aggressive episode for sure, but one done for a just cause.

Japanese Toilet is by far one of the best episodes of the 26^th season. As somebody who doesn’t use toilet paper anymore myself, I related to this episode in a grossly hilarious fashion. Parker and Stone have always been obsessed with toilet humor and this particular bodily function, but this episode is all the best for it as not all stories have to be political. Randy has by now become just an obnoxious, horrible human being, but his bragging here and his obsession with this technological marvel of a toilet produced many hysterical moments.

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Deep Learning is the most socially relevant episode of this bunch. It’s far from the funniest as its humor is mostly only okay, but the social commentary here is actually terrific as they both criticize and welcome the A.I. chat programs. It’s a complex subject matter and here it was handled quite well with Stan being an excellent protagonist for it. I just wish that it were funnier.

DikinBaus Hot Dogs is another instant classic. This is a return to the classic roots of Cartman using Butters narrative and it was beautiful to witness. Yes, Butters was actually changed in this season to a wholly different personality, but that actually worked as hearing Butters talk about smart stuff is inherently funny. He stole the show here, but Cartman was also most definitely hilarious. They still make him be too positive in certain episodes, but here he was as terrible as he should always be. The way they ended the whole living in a hot dog serialized narrative was ingenious and oh so welcome.

But Spring Break almost destroyed all the goodwill that I’d garnered up to this point in the season’s run. This was a terrible way to end the season. They decided to go back to serialization by bringing back the Trump version of the Garrison character, who was just never funny to begin with. The second storyline fared better with somewhat amusing results, but for the most part this episode was overly political and very rarely humorous.

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Parker and Stone for instance never chose to comment on the relevant crazy transgender activism issue throughout this season, but of course they ridiculed all the conservative standpoints and Trump himself, which seemed very disingenuous and partisan on their part. And it was simply not funny, which was my biggest issue here.