Review: South Park “Buddha Box”

A box filled with emotions.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

A Buddha Box is a cardboard box that connects via Bluetooth to your phone that allows you to more or less shut off your surroundings and allows you to encase both you and your anxiety without having to deal with anyone and instead helps you concentrate in just messing with your phone. Devastated by the return of ManBearPig and the fact that people liked Black Panther, Cartman’s the first to jump in on this craze, but eventually, most of South Park jumps in on the rage as well.

When Strong Woman and PC Principal get in on the action, it’s early, but realize that cutting off the rest of the world has it’s consequences like losing your PC babies whom scurry around town causing a scene. Eventually, the PC babies meet up with a record producer, drop a hit single, and then reunite with their parents whom now have a newfound respect for each other and their family as a result of everyone else being preoccupied and not paying any attention to the SJW’s. Like usual, Kyle and Stan are the lone wolves that really don’t catch on to the Buddha Box praise, however, Cartman goes DEEP, even shaving his head and looking more like the Dalai Llama, ready to help those in need of curing their anxiety with the phrase “namaste” or “fuck you too” as Cartman translates it.

Our Take

There’s a LOT going on this week, and I have a feeling a lot of the plot devices developed in “Buddha Box” aren’t going away for the next week or so and that there’s going to be more to this. The concept of the Buddha Box is a silly idea, but it’s even sillier when literally everyone you know claims to having anxiety, a condition that as South Park mentioned is the most overprescribed condition in America and America only which therefore leads to mass amounts of people on disability and eventually depression meds. I think South Park touches on an important topic, one that will hopefully flesh out more as time goes on.

The other major note, social justice warriors only care about their cause when everyone is paying attention to them. This is a rather accurate portrayal, and continues some of the important points that the show has also touched upon this season that also showed up in The Problem with A-poo, focusing on the genesis of a faux outrage as opposed to the resulting social justice points scored by those whom are keeping track by all who are watching.

This week’s South Park is one of those episodes that does a great job of delivering these points, but not a ton of jokes. Instead, the show focuses on just the “Buddha Box” as the punchline and the types of people that would benefit. It’s one of those “it’s a great story, but lacking in laughs” type deals that doesn’t quite have the balance in humor and delivery as other classic episodes have done, but as mentioned, I don’t think this is the last we’re gonna hear from the producers moving forward as it pertains to the whining citizens of America.