Review: South Park “Doubling Down”

Abusive relationships: It’s what’s for dinner for tonight’s South Park.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Cartman and Heidi’s tumultuous love-hate relationship has come to a head, and Kyle is absolutely sick of it. So, in Kyle’s typical meddling fashion, he decides to get to the bottom of why Heidi puts up with Cartman and his craziness. In the background of this, Cartman is tricking Heidi into eating unhealthy fast food by pretending that its vegan, for the express purpose of making her feel overweight.

In the White House, Mr. Garrison’s presidency is getting shaky, with a recent scandal provoking his staff into questioning if Mr. Garrison is fit for the position. A revolt which Mr. Garrison stomps out, quite literally, by beating up his executive staff. Meanwhile, the plot thickens as Kyle’s investigations into Cartman’s relationship make him question whether or not he actually has a crush on Heidi.

Kyle and Heidi share a heart to heart about Cartman’s abusive behavior, which leads into a surprisingly dramatic musical montage showcasing  Cartman’s dependency on Heidi, while Kyle gets closer and closer to Heidi’s heart. This is paralleled against Mr. Garrison’s abusive treatment of his staff, while the American public quietly sheds a tear.

Heidi ends up breaking with Cartman. Grief-stricken, he seeks support in Token so he can get out his emotions by “Disrespecting the flag and stuff.” But Token’s dad lets slip that Kyle and Heidi have been seeing each other, which sends Cartman into a psychotic rage. Back at the white house, Garrison’s cronies try to form a plan to stop Garrison after seeing his low polling numbers, but Garrison remains confident that he knows how to play the American public.

Cartman confronts Kyle at the school and tries to fight him for Heidi’s love, but Kyle knocks him out with the business end of a right hook. But, just as it seems like things are going to end happily with Kyle and Heidi, she’s driven back into Cartman’s arms when Cartman convinced, I kid you not, that Kyle manipulated her into loving him because he is sneaky. And Jewish. Perhaps they’re meant for each other after all.

The episode ends as Garrison’s battered staff gives him a depressing “Happy Anniversary” party, that finishes on a note of quiet desperation as Garrison proudly tells them, with strap-on affixed, that the next three years are going to be even better. Gross.

Our Take:

This is one of those episodes that actually manages to surprise you, even after the 20-something years that South Park has been on television, and that’s a rare treat. I can’t say that the majority of the episode is that funny, but there’s something a little juicier here in how well it unexpectedly twists at the end and portrays the current political climate we’re in. Portraying Garrison’s stand-in for the Trump presidency as an abusive relationship is disturbingly accurate, and a grim portent for what may be next in the coming years. But what really blows me away is how Cartman actually manages to convince Heidi that Kyle’s Jewish heritage makes him a bad person. Though it is not quite “Scott Tenorman eating his parents in a bowl of chili” levels of unexpected, it’s a delightfully horrible twist to what might otherwise have been a somewhat happy story. Overall, I enjoyed the episode, and hope we get some more good stuff like this next week.