South Park (Season 22)

South Park re-invented itself late in its run with season-long serialized material, and the novelty has worn off that change and there's now some distance from the excellent Season 19. They've been pretty hit-or-miss with their material since then, with some excellent episodes tossed together with some misfires (see basically the entire back half of Season 20). It's inevitably compared to Family Guy and The Simpsons, and the good news is that the quality has held up far, far better than that of either of those two shows.

One nuance of Season 22 is that libertarians Trey Parker and Matt Stone take aim at some of the opinions expressed in older seasons of South Park. The pro-capitalist stance they took back in Season Two's "Gnomes" is reversed in their two-part season finale in which they attacked Jeff Bezos and Amazon's continual takeover of our way of life (though the principal mouthpiece was effectively a talking Amazon box, so it wasn't a full-on endorsement of communism/socialism, either). Similarly, the two-parter of "Time to Get Cereal" and "Nobody Got Cereal" seemed almost like an apology for Season Ten's "ManBearPig", in which they dumped on Al Gore and his focus on global warming. Though they didn't exactly let up on Gore, they presented 'ManBearPig' as something to be taken seriously and the dangers of kicking that particular can down the road. It certainly resonated.

When they weren't trying to make a point, Parker and Stone did put together some funny material over the course of the season. "Buddha Box" took on our society's smartphone addiction to hilarious effect (and brought a little victory to the hectic lives of PC Principal, Strong Woman, and the PC Babies). Also effective was the Halloween episode "The Scoots", which presented a not-so-subtle homage to The Birds and Mr. Mackey going insane about the plethora of e-scooters being scattered about town.

Less good were "Tegridy Farms", which featured newly minted weed farmer Randy Marsh taking on vape culture. While it was the rare episode in which they focused almost exclusively on comedy rather than messaging, and despite the re-emergence of Towelie, it didn't come out all that funny, (and on a personal note, from someone who neither smokes weed nor vapes, much of it didn't resonate). The plot twist of Randy's new career was used to good effect for the rest of the season, however. Also weak was "The Problem with a Poo", a weird takedown of Mr. Hankey that seemed scatterbrained and lacked focus; it may have just been an excuse for Parker and Stone to create an episode with that title, given the similarly-named attack on The Simpsons.

It's still impressive that South Park keeps chugging along like this after this many years. They've mostly lost the capacity to surprise me, but maybe they'll have another Season 19 waiting in the wings in ten years.

Episode Grades:

1. "Dead Kids": B-
2. "A Boy and a Priest": C+
3. "The Problem with a Poo": D+
4. "Tegridy Farms": C-
5. "The Scoots": B
6. "Time to Get Cereal": B-
7. "Nobody Got Cereal?": B+
8. "Buddha Box": A
9. "Unfulfilled": B
10. "Bike Parade": B

Season Grade: B-