Just as I thought it would, last night’s episode of South Park lampooned this week’s unexpected election results while keeping to its season-long story arc.
I can only imagine the scene at South Park Studios Tuesday night and into Wednesday as Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and the rest of their team worked to change around the episode to reflect the real-life sequence of events revolving around the election. This, of course, means that longtime South Park character Mr. Garrison (standing in for Donald Trump) has become the President-elect of the United States in the world of South Park. Here are some of the highlights of the episode:
- Member berries and this season’s continued low-key bashing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens:
- I’ll admit that when this season kept coming back to the claim that The Force Awakens wasn’t as good as everyone originally thought, it annoyed me; I am one of those people who acknowledges that while the film wasn’t a masterpiece, it was still a good movie, despite what many naysayers on the Internet continue to claim. With that said, however, I still find it very funny that South Park ties the way our country is headed to nostalgia and a longing for things to go back to the way they were. The really funny part of this storyline comes when Mr. Garrison’s victory is attributed to the strange talking superfruits called “Member Berries” (introduced in this season’s premiere) being able to infect others and put them into an almost trance-like state. Part of me feels that this aspect of the episode was planned out all along, as the previous episode sets it up with a member berry being dropped into the martini of Caitlyn Jenner, Mr. Garrison’s running mate. How this and several of the other plots come together in the season finale is anyone’s guess, but given last week’s episode, I expect J.J. Abrams to be involved somehow.
- Gerald Broflovski’s infiltration of the Danish “Troll Trace” website:
- One of the more interesting aspects of this season’s story is the inclusion of a mysterious internet troll who causes many of the problems at South Park Elementary and later around the world. While the girls at school assume that the troll known as “Skankhunt42” is secretly Eric Cartman, the troll is actually Gerald Broflovski, Kyle’s father. All of Gerald’s trolling is starting to catch up to him, as he and many other trolls are at risk of being exposed by the people of Denmark, who have a long history of dealing with trolls (a play on old fairy tales and legends of the area surrounding trolls). While Gerald gets sent to Denmark by Hillary Clinton believing that he will be shutting down the website Troll Trace, it is actually a trap that he and several fellow trolls have fallen into. The funniest part of this storyline this episode came when the briefcases that all the trolls brought with them open up to play the music video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
- Eric Cartman and his continued attempts to avoid his past internet posts:
- In terms of character development, this has been one of the biggest seasons for change for Eric Cartman, usually the most bigoted, racist, anti-Semitic, all-around horrible person in the entire town of South Park. Instead, he is more soft-spoken, and asserts that women are funny, despite him feeling that the 2016 Ghostbusters failed because the women in that movie were not funny. He’s concerned that if the Troll Trace website becomes operational and available to the public, his girlfriend, Heidi, will find out some of the awful things that he said online. But he’s not worried about all the times he made fun of Kyle for being Jewish or for times he was blatantly racist towards classmate Token Black (his real name, by the way); he is most concerned about an email he sent to Butters in which he expressed his opinion of the new Ghostbusters. His solution? To follow through on a desire he has had for several episodes: go to Mars and terraform the planet, all because there is no Wi-Fi on Mars, and no one can look up anyone’s internet history when there’s no Wi-Fi. It’s a classic Cartman reaction from a seemingly reformed Cartman, and I can’t wait to see where it goes.
Was it clear that this episode had to be changed quickly? Not really, unless you pay attention to some of the half-finished backgrounds or use of real-life footage and backgrounds in some shots. But to be fair, the entire country was caught off-guard with this election, and if the team behind South Park wants to remain as current as possible, that means moving at a rapid pace. I don’t think they had planned on a Trump victory anymore than America did, so they had to scramble to rework the episode to fit the real world events of our political scene. Will they continue their commentary and satire on the political landscape in the final three episodes of the season? Will Cartman and Heidi make their way to Mars? Will the trolls find a way to protect their online identities from the Danish? And will Butters stop being an annoying little brat? Only time will tell.