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-

South Park (Season 20)

I've been a big fan of South Park since I was but a middle schooler. In addition to being really funny, it served as an important escape during some tough times in my life and when I was much younger, it helped me to make sense of things that were way over my head or outside of my sphere of knowledge. It's crazy to think that something that's self-described as "a show about potty-mouthed fourth-graders" can be those things, but the truth is that South Park has always had something useful to say and is often on-point with its social commentary.

Recently, South Park has organized itself into season-long arcs. While it's always had some appetite for playing the long game, the commitment to turning each set of 10 episodes into its own little movie with a few side plots mixed in has largely been effective. Season 19 of South Park, which was basically an extended story about PC culture, Donald Trump's rise to popularity, and the unsettling prominence of sponsored content online, was the long-running series' crowning achievement. That sentence seems bizarre, particularly when rivals The Simpsons and Family Guy had thoroughly tanked far prior to that breakpoint, but it's true.

Season 20 of South Park largely picked up right where Season 19 left off. PC Principal remained on as a character, albeit more of a minor one, and we jumped right back into the presidential campaign, featuring an over-his-head Mr. Garrison as a Trump stand-in against Hillary Clinton. Shortly after the season begins, we're introduced to one of the season's best features, "member berries". These are essentially little purple berries that speak in high-pitched voices about pop-culture days of yore ("memba Jeff Goldblum?"), most frequently about Star Wars. The overall point that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were trying to get across with these is that there's a lot of parallels between nostalgia and the things that many voters felt Donald Trump stood for. While this was fairly obvious from the start and they still spelled it out for the viewer, it made for a compelling storyline.

The other excellent narrative from the early half of the season was an in-depth look at online trolling. There's a troll on the school message board that's ripping girls to shreds and everyone is completely convinced it's Cartman. In a crazy twist, it turns out that the troll is Gerald Broflovski, who is just about the last person you'd expect. Gerald is a successful lawyer and is the patriarch of the closest thing that South Park has to a stable family. The stereotypical reasons that one might assign to trolling (rage coming from getting picked on as a kid, behavior stemming from the shittiness of one's own life, a complete lack of morals, etc.) don't really apply to Gerald. He's just doing it because he thinks it's really funny. One of the strongest episodes shows Gerald, fresh off a trolling session, leaving the house and interacting with the world in a thoroughly positive, friendly way. Trolls can be a jerk to strangers on the internet and not have that behavior affect their life at all once they step away from the computer, so it's a way to act privately in the most public of forums. It's commentary on how the internet reflects the ugliness of many of us and that we can't assume anything about the people we meet there.

After a relatively strong start, however, Season 20 begins to lose a lot of its steam. The latter half of the season revolves around a scheme from some folks in Denmark trying to set up something called "Troll Trace" that would make everyone's internet history public. There's some decent one-liners in there along with jokes about just how catastrophic that would be for the vast majority of humans, but overall, the last several episodes fall relatively flat.  They're mostly just forcing the plot forward at the expense of being funny or saying anything meaningful, and unlike last season's PC Principal arc, the plot wasn't edge-of-your-seat exciting.

I'm sure much of this can be forgiven because Parker and Stone got thrown for a loop on Election Day when Donald Trump won the presidency and they had to scramble to re-boot an episode in less than 24 hours (consequently, that episode sucked). That afforded them the opportunity to get in more Trump satire (splicing "Hail to the Chief" with "The Imperial March" was particularly inspired, particularly given the season's focus on Star Wars), but there's plenty of that to go around these days. I would have loved to see how they would have wound up the season had Clinton won, because you get the sense that was the story they were prepared to tell.

I guess this means that South Park is back to being just a good show instead of whatever awesomeness we got to experience in 2015. That's just fine for a show that just concluded its second decade of life. At this point, it's doubtful that Parker and Stone's material will ever get stale, because the insanity of our wonderful society will always keep generating more.

Season Grade: B

So What's Else Is Going On? - TV

Clearly I've spent a good amount of time here discussing Better Call Saul and BoJack Horseman, but I do watch other stuff (I promise!) that I don't have the desire or energy to discuss on an episode-to-episode basis. Here's some blurbs on what else I've been watching this year.

Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory

I'm lumping these two together because they're both just kinda there. They've had two very different trajectories over their run. Modern Family started out amazing and then gradually went down the tubes. The Big Bang Theory started out pretty bad, got significantly better and peaked in its seventh season, and now is facing the decline phase as it tries to wring whatever plot lines it might have left in this core group of characters. I enjoy these shows, but they're largely forgettable.

Archer

I mentioned during last year's TV review that Archer was getting dangerously close to getting dropped from my rotation if it didn't start getting a lot better. While Season Seven was nothing like its Seasons 1-3 heyday, it at the very least featured a massive rebound from Season Six. The gang's reboot as The Figgis Agency largely worked and we got an interesting season-long plot line that kept things moving. I'm not a fan of the clones/Kriegerbots/whatever, but at the very least that aspect of the show was used to great effect in the finale. Without spoiling anything, I have no idea how they're going to reconcile the Season Seven ending with the fact that Archer has been renewed for another three years.

Catastrophe

This is the first Amazon Prime show I've ever watched and it was a good one. Rob Norris (Rob Delaney), an American, goes on a business trip to London and meets Sharon Morris (Sharon Horgan). The two have an extended fling, but when he goes back home, he gets a call from Sharon (who amusingly pops up as "Sharon London Sex" on his phone during the series' entire run), who reveals that she's pregnant. This is the initial "catastrophe", but many others ensue as Rob moves to London to make it work with Sharon and raise their baby.

The heart of the show is Sharon and Rob's relationship, but the minor characters get a little more to do in the second season. The show has a sharp wit and is often laugh-out-loud funny (Carrie Fisher is awesome as Rob's awful mother). It's only two seasons of six episodes apiece, so it's a relatively quick watch if you're looking for something new to get into.

Suits

Suits somehow is still trucking along through Season Six and has been renewed for Seasons Seven and Eight. I have no idea what they're going to do with it -- they've already exhausted pretty much every plot line that could cause upheaval within Pearson Specter Litt. The firm's been whittled down to just the core six characters and Mike's stuck in prison. I've been pretty invested in Mike's prison plot line and his relationship with his roommate and his prison nemesis, but the rest of it has been pretty "eh". The writing has become piss-poor on this show over the years and they use the word "goddamn" like a crutch. 

Louis Litt, the show's best character, has very little to do relevant to the drama and does ridiculous things, like purchase a house just so he can spend time with an interior decorator he has a crush on. Donna's schtick is getting pretty old after six seasons. The whole thing seems so low-leverage to me -- Mike's in prison for two years and everyone else got off scot-free. Isn't that a tremendously positive result given how many rules they've broken? Can't he just wait the two years (assuming Harvey could get Gallo out of there) and call it a win? I don't see why a group of very smart people is willing to risk even greater chunks of their lives to spring Mike from jail, even if he took those years to protect them. I'm probably not going to stop watching Suits because it's fun, brainless, easy to digest, and my wife likes it too, but it's far past its prime.

Louie (Season Five)

Season Five of Louie came out on Netflix this year and it was pretty strong, even if it was short. The season features Louie and Pamela trying to make sense out of their relationship and some interesting experiences that Louie has when traveling for work.

Louie is always a hard show to explain to people who haven't seen it. I guess I'd compare it to a more serious Curb Your Enthusiasm in that Louie explores the ridiculousness of some somewhat mundane situations, but the show digs deeper than Curb's pure goofballery and there's a surreal component to it as well. I'm never over-the-moon enjoying myself while watching the show (Season Four's superlatively excellent "Into the Woods" arc aside), but it's always making you think about the way we interact with the world.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

This is belated, but I finally got around to watching Season 11 (wow, how is that possible already) of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This is a show that just kinda sits around on our DVR, never at the top of my wife's / my list of things to watch on a given night, and eventually we accumulate the entire season until I just decide to binge it while she's working or reading. It was surprisingly pretty funny even this late into its run. Much of the season is spent nodding and winking to loyal fans of the series over the past ten seasons, but despite that, it's still great television on its own. My personal favorite is one told entirely through Frank's eyes, and we learn just how ol' Danny DeVito struggles to keep up with the gang's shenanigans on a day-to-day basis.

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

This one I'm close to writing off. I fell asleep (literally) during many of the episodes and it just wasn't compelling enough to keep me going now that Kimmy's somewhat removed from being a prisoner. Two of the four primary characters -- Lillian and Jacqueline -- are thoroughly disinteresting, particularly Lillian, whose weird anti-gentrification schtick wears pretty thin and who offers absolutely nothing except attempts at humor through ohmygawd-she's-so-decrepit shock value. Jacqueline is just Jane Krakowski playing essentially the same self-absorbed elitist character she played on 30 Rock. I've seen that movie before. Plus, the show weirdly created a second character for Tina Fey to play. It's her baby, so she can do whatever she wants, but as an audience member, I found her plurality bothersome.

Silicon Valley

This slipped my mind somehow in my original edition of this post. Silicon Valley's sense of humor is as great as that of any show currently on television and Ehrlich Bachman and Bertram Gilfoyle are outstanding comedic characters. Season Three digs further into the somewhat complicated relationship between Richard and Ehrlich as the latter's mistakes continue to wear on their friendship. Richard continues to deal with what's been the central conflict of the entire show -- the difficulties of having control over the destiny of your own idea. I have no idea whether the show accurately portrays the power struggle between the idea men, the business managers, and investors, but it's fascinating to watch. The show has done well to give Richard more of an edge to him as the series has developed. Originally, Richard was pretty shy and humble, but he's attained more confidence from the call of leadership and it's not clear that's made him a stronger person -- in reality, he's kind of an ass sometimes. We're not rooting as hard for Richard to succeed as we did when the show began, but we're just as interested to see if he does.

South Park

I'm only two (good) episodes in, but I can just tell that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are going to hit this one out of the park, just like they did last year.

Other Shows I Hope to Watch Before Year-End
Mr. Robot (Season Two)
You're the Worst (Seasons One through Three)
Top Chef (first half of Season Fourteen)
Ballers (Seasons One & Two)