Review: South Park “A Boy and a Priest”

Burn the Priest.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Every Sunday morning, Father Maxi is the hottest ticket in town at the local church. That is until Butters starts to feel sorry for the long-serving holy man and opts to befriend Maxi much to the dismay of all the parents who need him for church and the rest of the kids who think that Butters is spending way too much time with the priest. Eventually, upper management in the Catholic church catches wind of Maxi’s shenanigans and expect the worst so they decide to send a cleanup crew to try and find Maxi and leave no trace of potential cum deposits of which there aren’t any.

Eventually, the church captures Butters, Stan, and Clyde and use them as bait in an attempt to lure Maxi, which works, but just when they think they are able to buy the loyalty of South Park’s most popular servant of the Lord, Maxi fights off his would-be captors and gets back to praising the work of the good Lord.

Our Take

The message South Park is kind of getting across this week is obvious, but quite frankly, despite my hate of the Catholic church, I thought a lot of the jokes and punchlines presented had been kind of old hat by now. It’s almost like the producers took Randy’s dad jokes about Christianity and made them the DNA of the episode that just didn’t work. The “Clean Up Crew” gags were well done, but I’m not sure if the subject matter was as compelling as the show’s season premiere. Series like Mr. Pickles and even last Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons do a better job at mocking the true falsehoods that is organized religion, even prior episodes of South Park are legendary in this space. But, this one just didn’t work out.