Review: South Park “Christmas Snow”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The town of South Park is ready for another amazing holiday season. At the annual lighting of the tree, however, Santa rears his Christmas-y head to become the season’s merriest buzzkill. He emerged from his northern home of elf and reindeer debauchery to warn everybody about the dangers of drunk driving. The citizens refuse to listen to this Coca-Cola touting symbol of nanny-state nations, and proceed to drive twice as drunk and three times as hard.

Calamity ensues.

The next day, an entire hungover town is personally accosted with a mysterious ordinance that won’t allow anyone to buy booze until January 2^nd. With alcohol out of the picture, nobody can find their X-mas spirit and the town’s commerce suffers. This forces the mayor and her advisers to make a deal with an old adversary—Randy Marsh.

Bearded and fatter, Mr. Tegridy Farms yearns to produce a X-mas Special but his crops are all down for the winter. Towelie suggests making a potpourri weed batch from all the leftover strains. While Randy is okay with reusing, he feels the batch needs something special. After praying to Jesus, he comes up with the perfect solution. And that solution is cocaine.

Once the Christmas Special goes on sale, the town’s spirit rises again, and people are driving, crashing, and causing all sorts of ruckus from early in the morning to late in the evening. Remember kids, cocaine doesn’t sleep. Everyone loves his laced marijuana except Santa who tries to kill it with another ordinance which bans marijuana until January 2^nd. Silly Klaus, Randy has fought this battle before. After rallying the state, he gets medical and recreational cocaine legalized in just a few days. To get around the ordinance, he simply starts selling straight-up cocaine. After all, there’re no longer any laws banning his farm-to-nostril marching powder.

With the law letting him down, Santa is left with no choice but to break into everyone’s houses late and night to steal their stashes—Grinch-style. Miraculously, everybody in town is fast asleep despite all that cocaine. So Kris stuffs it all in a few enormous sacks and loads them in his sleigh. He would’ve gotten away with it too, if not for Randy, the best weed seller in Colorado and the only one with Tegridy.

Long story short, Santa and Randy crash but continue to fight in a ravine, both battered and bloody. Randy finally wins the fat man over by convincing him to try some—Green Eggs and Ham-style. Jesus, who flies in on a cloud, is skeptical. But after he also tries the product, it’s clear that Randy makes the cleanest, dopest cocaine (keee-yah!). Using his powers, Jesus spreads the gear throughout the entire town just in time for Christmas.

 

Our Take

What a nice Christmas special, and what a nice Christmas Special! However, we kind of lose Towelie’s narrative early on. He was there for Randy to bounce ideas off and to throw one last helping of shade at Shelly, but then he reverted to inanimate object status for the rest of the run. There’s no doubt that Randy’s a certain type of crazy, but it helps when he can talk to somebody as level-headed as Towelie—who knew?

Santa has been an integral character since the very beginning of South Park. But he’s never been such a buzzkill. In most cases he partook in, or even kicked-off the chaos. It leaves one to ponder why he’s suddenly such a stickler for the rules. It can’t be because he found Jesus. The two of them met years ago and have never gotten along. A random guy’s comparison to Greta Thunberg and that whole “global warming thing” was spot on, and the results were readily apparent after a impaired-driving montage or two. Somebody even killed a dog! That’s not right, man.

We got two seconds with Shelly, who hasn’t changed her tune even though Randy appeased the family by temporarily closing down the farm. But I was surprised when Sharon didn’t make an appearance. She’s had a hard-on for Randy’s side hustle (front hustle, I suppose) all season long. In every “coming out of retirement” story there has to be a concerned naysayer. Shelly doesn’t count because she only hates the drugs. Sharon, on the other hand, hates what her husband has become because of the drugs. A scene with her would’ve given better context to Randy’s current, disheveled status.

Nice dig at The Mandalorian, Butters. This is why you’ll always be my MVP, little Scotch. One week you can’t get enough of the bounty hunter drama, and now you hate it. That’s so typical of Disney.

Did I miss Jesus getting resurrected for the second time? Sure, I stopped watching for about a dozen years, but last I remember, he got his neck broken by terrorists about fifty seasons ago. Or did I need to watch The Book of Mormon on Broadway for a better explanation? Damn, I’m getting fed up with the complexities of the Important Studios Extended Universe!