The South Park Season 26 Premiere Brings the Show Back to Basics
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The post The South Park Season 26 Premiere Brings the Show Back to Basics appeared first on Consequence.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for South Park, Season 26 Episode 1, “Cupid Ye.”]
What to make of South Park in 2023? It’s a minor miracle that Comedy Central’s longest-running animated series is not only still on the air after a quarter of a century but that its creators, the cartoon enfant terribles of the ‘90s, are now the (semi-)respectable uncles of the genre. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s show has inspired legions of rip-offs and successes, inspired by its no-holds-barred provocations and ever-expanding cultural criticisms. So, how does the show fare in an era where everything that made South Park so shocking in its heyday is now the benchmark for comedy?
The first episode of Season 26, “Cupid Ye,” seems like a step back to basics, focusing on the kids and their school troubles. Kyle has started growing closer to Tolkien Black, with their duel TikToks going viral throughout school, which is making Stan jealous. Cartman decides to be a good Christian helper (ahem) and grows determined to split the two apart the only way he knows how: through ceaseless cruelty and bigotry.
After trying to taunt Tolkien with the deeply anti-Semitic conspiracy regarding the Black Hebrew Israelites, it suddenly becomes the rumor of the week that Kyle secretly runs Hollywood. Kids start pitching their movie ideas and handing over headshots, and the more Kyle denies it, the stronger the smear grows.
Cartman isn’t alone in his “Christian” endeavor: He’s aided by his imaginary friend, Cupid Cartman, who has changed his name to Cupid Ye and become hyper-religious. You can see where this is going: Yes, it’s a Kanye West parody.
Rather, Parker and Stone offer a brief but succinct examination of his recent anti-Semitism, which is now so incendiary that even Cartman thinks it’s too much — having the former Nazi cosplayer note that saying Hitler was a great dude with some good ideas is a bad thing is extremely to-the-point. When you’ve lost Eric Cartman, you’ve lost the plot, and seeing Cartman in a face mask on an Alex Jones-esque show (no Jones appearance or parody here, which makes sense given the brevity of the moment) gets one of the biggest laughs of the episode.
South Park (Comedy Central)
It’s all very classic South Park, as the show has mined hundreds of hours out of the depressingly undying nature of bigotry in its purest and sneakiest forms. Some of the kids may not see the big deal in thinking that a pre-teen Colorado kid runs Hollywood (and Butters’ anger at a Super Mario Bros. movie did get a laugh out of us) but when Cupid Ye starts talking about “they” who rule everything, you know how far such conspiracies can spread and the damage they do. The most seemingly ludicrous claims can quickly grow legs and mutate into something unstoppable.
It says a lot that a plot like this could have been done in any South Park episode of the past quarter of a century and little would need to be changed. Swap out Ye with any number of politicians or mouth-frothing YouTubers and it’s near-identical. That does lend the episode a sort of “running on rails” quality. It’s South Park as straightforward as can be, albeit with less profanity than the classic era and way crisper animation (it remains hilarious that the show has added new depths and details to its paper-cutting style but that all the characters still walk without moving their legs).
Yet the jokes are consistent but not as scathing as the series can be. The best laughs come from the gang’s absolute bafflement and Kyle and Tolkien’s TikToks, a gag that will feel painfully relatable to anyone over the age of 17. Randy’s rant about “woke Hollywood” will inevitably be taken out-of-context by the usual suspects, but it works well when you realize this is a grown man blaming a pre-teen for Avatar 2.
The most effective moments are in Tolkien’s total dismissal of Cartman’s obvious attempts to incite hatred between him and his Jewish friend, through the anti-Semitic conspiracies about Black people being the “true Jews.” Tolkien, who got a name change recently from Token, works best as a character when he’s the most stone-faced and pragmatic one in the group. He has so little time for bullshit that it almost seems quaint when Cartman tries to break him.
The conclusion is also very classic South Park: Kyle, often the series’ moral center, tells an eager audience that they should be aware of the lies they’re willing to swallow and where such conspiracies come from. He’s then quickly refuted when the crowd decides that he should now run Hollywood. A moment of truth followed by the far louder default mode idiocy of the world: it’s how Parker and Stone get stuff done.
To give credit to Parker and Stone, they have remained remarkably consistent over the decades, with their eye-watering six days production schedule per-episode allowing for rapid responses to world events, and their keen eye for pop culture takedowns as sharp as ever. They’ve shaken up the formula when it calls for it, tossing aside their already-tenuous canon with feature-length specials and arcs on Paramount+, two acclaimed RPG video games, and a reliable lack of f**ks for what everyone else wants or needs.
The Gen X distrust of earnestness that made them stars, however, doesn’t always work in modern times: Trite gags about safe spaces and even their Trump arc never landed with the intended punch, and such moments feel less like sticking it to The Man when Parker and Stone are now definitively The Man. Still, for every cheap shot, there are moments of genius, such as their scathing take on Hollywood’s willingness to cozy up to the autocratic Chinese government (which climaxed with Randy Marsh strangling Winnie the Pooh in the style of Anton Chigurgh).
It will be interesting to see if Season 26 decides to keep things as classic as “Cupid Ye.” Often, the show’s ambitions get in the way of good jokes, and bringing things back to basics has its benefits. After all, the first teaser for the trailer showed a classic clip of poor Butters about to be anally probed, and what could be more iconically South Park than that?
South Park is streaming now on Paramount+.
The South Park Season 26 Premiere Brings the Show Back to Basics
Kayleigh Donaldson
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