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South Park: The End of Obesity Review

South Park: The End of Obesity is the eleventh South Park television special that premiered in 2024. It’s a very funny, surprisingly good special.

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“Rich people get Ozempic,

poor people get body positivity“

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This episode satirizes the American health care system as well as the celebrities’ usage of weight loss drugs. The episode has a lot to say about these issues and in a typically blunt and silly South Park manner. The result is a thematically heavy episode that still doesn’t lose itself in preaching, but is actually funny most of the time. It’s one of the best specials that they’ve made so far.

My only issue here is the ending itself. This is where we see body positivity included and that message is all wrong. I would have been fine with them not wanting to insult Cartman for his weight, but he gets a free pass for his insults and others can’t do the same. It felt like a typical double standard hypocrisy that America is suffering from nowadays. The entire third act was lackluster and it did not end it on a strong note.

But I did love that chase sequence. That was a lot of silly and goofy fun. The mascots should have gotten even more screen time as they were so amusing. Cartman stole the show here. In what is the first for the franchise, he wants to try to lose weight. This was a great formula that they should have done years before. The comedic highlights included his truly disturbing eating habits and him dreaming about being thin and insulting others freely. The Pakistan jokes were especially hilarious.

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Others fared somewhat worse. While I did like what they did with the women and Randy himself, this subplot was ultimately much less funny than the main one. Randy got too much screen time per usual, but at least he was much less obnoxious here, though the ending saw him get high with Sharon, which was quite an annoying sequence. The women got some solid moments and the critique of these pharmaceutical companies and their hold on America was strong. The Lizzo jokes were certainly funny, though I wouldn’t really call them warranted as her music is nowhere near as terrible as stated.