Season Review: South Park Season 20

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Slowly but surely, serialization is making its way through all of television as viewing habits go from spur of the moment to binge-watching and that has certainly taken form in animated comedy. BoJack Horseman has nearly mastered the art of making a compelling season of animated television while established franchises like Family Guy ready to do something similar to keep up.

In seasons’ prior, South Park has had some excellent trilogies but they were just that…trilogies. Whether it was the “Mysterion Trilogy” or the Emmy-winning “ImaginationLand”, it certainly didn’t take a whole season to tell those excellent stories. Starting in Season 18, South Park started to really work in arcs to really good success, but it still wasn’t anything really major just yet. The best way I can equate this is that of an Olympic relay race in that each episode handed off an arc to the next episode in hopes of coming into first place at the end. In Season 19 this was continued but the arcs MUCH bigger, and really featuring a whole season that really did have a point when it came to growing trends in pop culture, in this case…douchebaggery.

South Park has been messing around with serialization for a couple of seasons now, but season 20 was the first time the producers established a bunch of ideas at the onset of the season, flesh them out, then make sure each thread is tied up by the time we get to the end.

While the journey is hilarious, I’m not sure we got the bang for our buck at the end. Ideas introduced such as the “member berries” will certainly live on in South Park lexicon for years to come, but I think the finale episode really surmised how Matt Stone and Trey Parker were feeling about the exhaustive efforts of trying to come up with compelling serialized television week after week. What we got was a lot of borrowing from the likes of Mr. Robot and not in the paradoxical ways in which this franchise is best known for…no…straight up “borrowing”. Certainly, the “SkankHunt420” thread showcased the majority of said borrowing, but I’m trying not to be spiteful here. There were still a LOT of funny ideas here. Like, Cartman’s constant excuses as to why his girlfriend was the perfect choice to save the world, or how about the brilliant Elon Musk as a guest star?

Admittedly, though, I got kinda bored of “Garrison as Trump”, but in fairness, it’s not the show’s fault. Ya see, after close to two years of hearing Donald Trump jokes, I had had just about enough of the punchline and South Park had a lot of the same as ones I’ve heard before. Everything from Trump’s shitty hair to his pouty lips and the stupid shit he says week-in and week out. I’ve heard it all in a number of places whether it was on the late-night circuit or all-over Twitter, I was just done with Trump jokes.

The other thing is, that I think so much time was spent on the Cartman/Trump/Skankhunt240 story lines that the most original and hilarious arc of the season was kinda lost in the shuffle…the aforementioned member berries. For starters, I don’t think we got any real conclusion on Randy’s fight with the member berries, but perhaps that’s the “hook” for next season. However, it’s difficult to argue with a lot of what was said during the member berries thread, isn’t it? I think Randy succinctly put it best when he said, “Maybe Star Wars: The Force Awakens was more of a Happy Days reunion than a sequel?” Hell, we didn’t even really see that much of Randy this season and maybe the highlight of the season was the town going to J.J. Abram’s house over the National Anthem. Even PC Principal was more-or-less put on the backburner as well even after his much-heralded 19th season contributions.

I must wonder, would Matt Stone and Trey Parker have stuck with all of these arcs had South Park: The Fractured But-Whole” not been pushed back? You may recall when the Stick of Truth released, it was several months after the “Black Friday Trilogy”, both of which had almost identical premises featuring the kids dressed up as Hobbit-inspired get-ups. Had the new South Park game released on December 6th like it was supposed to, I’m wondering if the kids dressing up as superheroes would’ve played out in the show’s 20th season a bit more? I’m wondering if maybe we would have gotten a South Park season that felt more like season 17 with a couple of great episodes leading up to a trilogy that would’ve fit right into the new game instead of the more political route that we got?

Don’t worry, it’s not like South Park’s 20th Season is a total loss. Unfortunately, I don’t think it showcased the ‘berries’ to be the best animated series of the year as opposed to last year. By far, one of cable TV’s best animated titans that can put up a fight against Netflix and BoJack Horseman, just not this time around.