South Park - Season 26

[Mobbd]

I watched the chatbot one today too. Just great. Gets an A from me. Charming, Pythonesque, coherent. Looking forward to watching the rest.

[JamesTC]

Catching up on this. Really loving the skewering of various celebrity's pathetic crypto adverts by having them do adverts where they have to drink piss. Larry David is not somebody I thought I would see deservedly get ripped by South Park.

Cartman getting huge fake tits is funny.

[idunnosomename]

teaser for the new movie/special/thing they're trying to claim is separate to what they're supposed to deliver to HBO

Joining the Panderverse

Cartman's deeply disturbing dreams portend the end of the life he knows and loves. The adults in South Park are also wrestling with their own life decisions as the advent of AI is turning their world upside down. Stream the new South Park exclusive event on Friday, Oct. 27 in the US and Canada, and internationally on Saturday, Oct. 28, only on Paramount+.

More PC Principal stuff I'm afraid but whatever

[madhair60]

the trailer makes it look fucking appalling but I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. if it really is just taking on the unbelievably dated "woman version of thing bad" fucking Ghostbusters 2016 thing I'll be extremely surprised and disappointed

[idunnosomename]

Trey Parker doing his stupidest trailer voice ala "Rob Schneider is..." gives me hope

[perplexingprocrastinator]

the trailer makes it look fucking appalling but I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. if it really is just taking on the unbelievably dated "woman version of thing bad" fucking Ghostbusters 2016 thing I'll be extremely surprised and disappointed

I always liked South Park, and still like South Park, even when I point-blank disagree with whatever "point" they're making. Their politics is always such a mixed bag that I can't really get too exercised about their various "wrong-thoughts". It's all too scattershot to be really offended... and SP remains in general a bracingly infantile "fuck off" to contemporary cultural pablum. AND, honestly at this point, the characters have more lore and layers than in many comedies. Randy is an incredible portrait of a middle-aged doofus.

This ep looks like "taking aim" at the "wokeification" (blech / sigh) of existing IP. An old target of theirs. I see lots of people interpreting these jokes as racist / anti-representation, etc. But mostly that seems like missing the point to me...; I want to see non-white, non-straight, non-cis characters and stories in comedies and dramas. That doesn't mean I mindlessly applaud white, straight, cis executives clutching audience data and pandering to me with boring, existing IP - lazily recast with non-white / non-straight / non-cis actors. (It can be done well; it's generally done cynically.)

To be clear, I'm not Gamer-gating this issue and saying "get the women / black people / gay folks out of my superhero movies" or whatever. I'm just not impressed by Disney (etc) doing the laziest possible job - but with added Girl-Boss bollocks, which seems much closer (to me) to what Matt and Trey are actually making fun of with this stuff.

Or with PC Principal for example, who I know loads of people hate... But I like him, he makes me laugh. He seems to me like a satire of an insecure white lib, desperate to perform his progressive politics / allyship / etc to a ludicrous degree, and in the process chiding and bullying everyone else. A bit like Hilary Clinton calling half the electorate deplorable, to reach for a very obvious if slightly stale example. But who isn't sick of class (and actual) war-monger like her endlessly posing as a forward-thinking defender of the disenfranchised? It seems to me that that hypocrisy is usually what SP is digging at, not the issue at face value.

Anyway, my two cents, maybe I'm wrong. Interested if folks think different.

[madhair60]

i also like it! i agree that lazily-done "wokification" (your word!!!) sucks, i just think it seems a bit late to the party by their standards and covering very familiar ground.

[bgmnts]

Why is lady Kenny's parka hood open? That's upsetting.

[Led Souptin]

yeah it does seem like a bit of a yawn to cover this topic when there are far more interesting targets that south park could be taking a sideways look at.

i'm not saying i need a 90 minute south park critique of the israel / palestine conflict, but hasn't woke rebooting been done already? always sunny did an episode on that 5 years ago.

[Pete23]

In the recent Little Mermaid live adaptation the Little Mermaid herself was black, while her parents were white, and the love interest Eric was white, but he was adopted and his parents were black. If only the clever Disney script writers could think of a way to have the same amount of representation but the family situation not be so complicated?* So if they're making a point about this kind of stupid I'm all for it.

*To be fair, I doubt kids care about this stuff and the film isn't meant for cynical middle aged dick heads like me.

[perplexingprocrastinator]

i also like it! i agree that lazily-done "wokification" (your word!!!) sucks, i just think it seems a bit late to the party by their standards and covering very familiar ground.

Oh yeah, they've done it to death alright. But if I were them, after who-knows-how-many-hours of content, I'd probably just be 'playing the hits' too! Still, most other comedies at this longevity are running on the memory of fumes.

My god but Stone and Parker have made a lot of money though. It's honestly unfathomable. I wonder what they actually DO with it. Probably just... keeping it. Pointlessly hoarding it and adding incrementally to the meaninglessly long number on their bank statements. I guess that's what most billionaires do.

Oh, I guess they bought Casa Bonita too ha ha :)

I do remember they funded "How's Your News" to make a feature-movie, years and years ago. Does anybody remember that? It was an independent documentary / reportage show made by people with various physical and cognitive disabilities / differences. Matt and Trey funded them to drive across America and make a travelogue film. I remember really liking that, and rating them for doing it.

[Captain Z]

I'll be surprised if the joke is as surface-level as everyone is assuming. Even the latest series was refreshingly current for something that has been going 26 years.

[idunnosomename]

I suspect the aged gender-swap thing is just a small part of the whole feature and is just being pushed to the front for marketing. I mean come on the Azn girl Kenny dies in the teaser. How often do they even bother to kill Kenny the last twenty years?

[madhair60]

I'll be surprised if the joke is as surface-level as everyone is assuming.

i'm probably just shit at communicating but my current assumption is that it won't be as surface-level as that. and I really hope that I'm right lol.

[Noodle Lizard]

Oh yeah, they've done it to death alright. But if I were them, after who-knows-how-many-hours of content, I'd probably just be 'playing the hits' too! Still, most other comedies at this longevity are running on the memory of fumes.

My god but Stone and Parker have made a lot of money though. It's honestly unfathomable. I wonder what they actually DO with it. Probably just... keeping it. Pointlessly hoarding it and adding incrementally to the meaninglessly long number on their bank statements. I guess that's what most billionaires do.

They've always been very smart and assertive about the rights to their work, to the point where they have a reputation with the networks/studios for being incredibly difficult to deal with (including physically holding their work hostage). Although possibly the most valuable thing that they didn't have to fight much for was getting the digital rights to South Park way back in the early 2000s, which obviously paid off massively.

They seem to be reinvesting a lot of that money into various other projects. The Book of Mormon was entirely self-funded, and they spent $300m to fund their own movie studio (although I'm not sure anything's come of that yet), as well as the deep fake thing which didn't really take off. Casa Bonita was apparently a terrible financial decision for them, but they made it clear from the off that it wasn't intended to be a moneymaker, just something they wanted to do.

Supposedly their staff at South Park Studios are very well-compensated too, paid yearly salaries even though the bulk of their work only takes about a quarter of each year (admittedly those weeks probably feel like months given the turnaround). They're not outsourcing like virtually every other animated show is, even though CC basically demanded they do so early on in the run. On balance, they don't seem like the worst kind of rich people.

[perplexingprocrastinator]

On balance, they don't seem like the worst kind of rich people.

Thanks! That's all gratifying to find out. In that slightly featherbrained parasocial "is my imaginary celebrity-friend nice in real life?" way.

Still! Good to know... not the worst...

An additional bi-monthly husk of bread for them in the re-education camps.

[idunnosomename]

it always seemed shitty tbh Eliza Schneider nailed Mary Kay Bergman's female voices (sans Sheila Broflovski) S4-7 then she asked for a union contract so they told her to take a hike

[Captain Z]

i'm probably just shit at communicating but my current assumption is that it won't be as surface-level as that. and I really hope that I'm right lol.

No, I probably shouldn't have said 'everyone' in my post.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

My ex girlfriend's best friend works for them. Probably can't say exactly in what capacity obviously but she's in the SP credits. They're supposed to be great to work for if that helps anyone.

[Noodle Lizard]

it always seemed shitty tbh Eliza Schneider nailed Mary Kay Bergman's female voices (sans Sheila Broflovski) S4-7 then she asked for a union contract so they told her to take a hike

I don't think they'd be able to run the show the way they do if it was union. Whether that's a good or bad thing is another matter, of course, but that's one explanation.

[The Giggling Bean]

I've not watched South Park for years now, I gave up completely during the interminable Tegridy Farm series. Have they gone back to the kids being kids, and off the wall comedy or is it still satire of the week?

I recently loaned a PS4 and got a copy of The Fractured But Whole. I really enjoyed playing that, and enjoyed the Stick of Truth previously. That was what I enjoyed about the show, The kids doing kids stuff but dramatically OTT while the adults were idiots.

I went off it a long time ago when they started doing the five day turnaround to shoehorn whatever issue was going on at the time. Tegridy Farm was the final straw for me.

[idunnosomename]

The Marshes still live on Tegridy Farms but its not as central as season 23, where it clearly was an obnoxious meta joke about Matt and Trey getting a bit tired of South Park.

South Park: Post COVID set forty years in the future was brilliant imo, although you probably ought to just watch the pandemic specials that make up S24 as they set up some of its plot points, although you don't have to.

[The Giggling Bean]

The Marshes still live on Tegridy Farms but its not as central as season 23, where it clearly was an obnoxious meta joke about Matt and Trey getting a bit tired of South Park.

South Park: Post COVID set forty years in the future was brilliant imo, although you probably ought to just watch the pandemic specials that make up S24 as they set up some of its plot points, although you don't have to.

I've seen clips of the Post Covid shows, they did look pretty good. I just need to find where to stream them. I might give it another try but I honestly endured 3 or 4 seasons, hoping it would get better and remembering past glories.

[steveh]

The Post-Covid and Streaming Wars movies are now on Comedy Central on Now TV if anyone has that and not Paramount+ and hasn't resorted to other means.

[backdrifter]

Have they gone back to the kids being kids, and off the wall comedy

I think season 26 is what you want. It's not phenomenal but definitely a return to those kinda eps.

[idunnosomename]

thought Panderverse was funny. it's nothing amazing like the rest of this year's output but plenty of laughs and takes swipes at a lot of things from a lot of angles, and as standard they know how to pace stuff so it's never boring.

they could've padded it out to over an hour if they'd wanted. stuff like panderverse Butters almost felt under-exploited. but think that's a good thing really. it's basically just a double-length episode.

also sound design back on good form. and great voice performances from all the guest PoC they've sourced for the panderverse kids like the woke cucktards they are (though a lot of Yank right-wing online grifters are claiming this is a critical strike at woke Hollywood and Kathleen Kennedy, if you watch it... it patently isn't)

[madhair60]

i thought this was really bad and felt like a low point for the series... the lowest stakes imaginable and a plot that reads like a 4chan thread.

you say it wasn't a "critical strike" at kathleen kennedy or whatever and no, it wasn't. but it wasn't anything.

[Mobbd]

Sexual Harassment Pander?

[frajer]

Just watched this and found it a bit of a slog.

The plotline about white collar workers no longer being able to do anything practical was more enjoyable than the panderverse stuff, but that might be because I'm always up for a non-Tegrity Randy story.

A a couple of decent chuckles but not enough for the runtime. My favourite gag was Randy falling through the multiverse and morphing through an "infinite possibility" of Randys.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I liked it.  (And I was expecting it to be an episode where everyone was their alternate characters all the time for the entire episode so I'm glad it was more nuanced than that!)