Television Review - 2015 (Part 4)

And now, I'll go ahead and conclude my list of my favorite five TV viewing experiences of the past year.

1. South Park (Season 19)

I've always been a South Park fan, but it's usually just a standard show I enjoy and aside from the occasional standout episode, nothing I'd consider truly great.  I can't think of another year in which I'd put South Park in my top five, let alone at number one. This season was an entirely different animal.

For those who haven't paid attention to South Park in a long time, or are just vaguely aware of what it's about, the show has evolved significantly from being just about a bunch of poorly-animated third-graders swearing and laughing at fart jokes.  To stay fresh, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have veered away from the oft-goofy plots from the first several seasons and have increasingly focused on the satirical aspect of the show. Their ability to create an episode in just a few days' worth of time allows them to zero in on current events shortly after they take place.  Over time, they've become absolute masters at social commentary, and Season 19 represents their finest work to-date.

Season 19 began with the introduction of a new principal at South Park Elementary, a buff Oakley-wearing recent college grad committed to social justice and emblematic of all things "bro".  His name? "PC Principal". PC Principal aggressively and violently combats even the slightest failure to demonstrate political correctness, such as beating the shit out of student Eric Cartman for saying "spokesman" instead of "spokesperson". He's a spectacular satire of today's "outrage culture" that has gotten completely out of control, in which people seem to be looking for ways to get pissed off and chest-puffy in response to pretty innocuous things. Of course, PC Principal is portrayed as a piece of shit who causes more harm (and even hate crimes) than he prevents. He and his PC "bros" are more interested in making it look like they stand for something and belittling other people than actually effecting positive change. Nail on the head.

Rallying against political correctness is nothing new to South Park, so what makes this (and I suppose Season 18) different than earlier seasons of the show is serialization. South Park used to be mostly a string of standalone episodes, but Season 19 is sort of like watching a 3-4 hour movie, divided into ten segments. The new format allows them to take the satire of PC culture and spin it into something bigger. And spin it, they did.

For example, South Park implies that the PC obsession has in part given rise to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, as outrage culture provokes a corresponding response in those it rallies against. It draws a parallel between PC culture and the recent gentrification trend in America's towns and cities, which creates an atmosphere of smugness and self-importance. In one episode, PC Principal tasks a student with scouring the social media posts of other students and even some celebrities to remove all of the negative criticisms, creating a veritable safe space on the internet for those too thin-skinned to handle it ("Lena Dunham just put a picture of her asshole on Twitter and only wants the positive comments"). Everyone wants to look good publicly; whether everyone wants to actually be good is of (distant) secondary importance.

Pervasiveness of advertisements, gun control, ISIS, police brutality, all of it gets woven into the rich tapestry of Season 19, and no one is safe from scathing portrayals, not even those damn charity-shaming Whole Foods checkout employees. That's what's great about South Park -- it mocks everyone and both sides of every major social issue, and that sort of nuance is something we don't see from anyone in news, social media, or even other television shows. South Park doesn't have an underlying political agenda, and its only real message is that we're all idiots, idiots who are convinced we know what's best for ourselves, others, and society while not even entertaining the idea that we could learn a little something from those who disagree with us.

Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention that the series of episodes leading up to Season 19's conclusion was probably the most compelling South Park has ever been from a plot standpoint. I was giddy with anticipation after the penultimate episode to see how they'd wind up the season. Unfortunately, the season finale disappointed me to a degree with how quickly it had to wind everything up (tackling gun control and wrapping up the larger PC Principal-based narrative of the season proved to be too much for a 23-minute episode). Fortunately, it looks like some storylines will carry over to next year and get the conclusions they deserve (the finale all but confirmed PC Principal will return and that they're setting up coverage of the 2016 election). It's damn impressive that this show hit new highs in its 19th season, and I'm extremely excited to see what Parker and Stone have in store for us next year.

Essential Episodes: Where My Country Gone (s.19 ep.2), Safe Space (s.19 ep.5), Sponsored Content (s.19 ep.8)