South Park is back with all-new, uncensored episodes from the show’s incredible 21st season, available on DVD and Blu-ray June 5, 2018! Join Cartman, Kenny, Stan, and Kyle as they take on the opioid epidemic, experiment with water bears, dig into the underbelly of social media, and go to war with Canada. Here is my review:
Review
After last season’s epic and sprawling storyline that focused on how internet trolls were responsible for nearly starting another world war, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to include more “one-off” or stand-alone episodes for season 21. That being said there are some brilliant ongoing storylines this season, the most intriguing and prominent one of course being Cartman and Heidi’s dysfunctional relationship and how destructive it becomes. Seeing how Stone and Parker translate such real and complex problems into an animated show that also features grown men dressing up like witches and smoking crack around Halloween, is quite surreal because South Park is equal parts ridiculous and gut wrenching accurate in it’s portrayals of our ridiculous society as it stands today.
They tackle so many important topics and they do so with indirect genius. For example – racism. All of South Park’s white rednecks are furious over Alexa and Siri “taking their jobs”, so they wind up replacing some of the town’s tech devices by actually sitting in their houses and playing music, remembering shopping lists etc. This all takes place while there’s a reality show called “White People Renovating Houses” as well, which I feel like I’ve seen before at my mother’s house when I go to visit every summer on the Home and Garden channel. Or when Kyle decides to blame Canada for their offensive humour which now that’s he’s older, finds to be inappropriate so he starts MAC (Milleniuals Against Canada) to try and boycott the show, inadvertently leading to a nuclear war because the President is psychotic. These are ways that South Park tackles hot and ultra relevant topics without turning into Late Night Show monologues. I don’t think there’s a better comedy series today that is so socially and culturally ‘on the button’ than South Park.
From Mark Zuckerberg invading the town in order to spread fake news, to the old age retirement home looking like a prison where top bitch owns the most hummels, all 10-episodes are stacked and hysterical. The music numbers are fantastic and I wish I could add Cartman’s suicide song to my Spotify playlist today. Every single bit of angst and bitterness that has been eating me alive over the oversensitive and over-exaggerated social media trends right now are addressed in South Park season 21 and to perfection. I laughed my ass off, so much and although it maybe wasn’t as epic in scope like Season 20 was with their incredible trolling storyline, these episodes were still brilliant and I applaud Parker and Stone for deciding to let the Trump jokes simmer a bit… But don’t worry – you’ll still get them, just not as frequently. Hell – they turned the finale into a creepy IT homage, where the President is so obsessed with his approval ratings that he’s popping up in South Park like Pennywise the clown to check in with the people and see what they thought of his plans to BOMB ANOTHER COUNTRY. South Park is still an incredible comedy series and I highly urge you all to check it out.
Special Features
#SocialCommentary on all episodes. That’s it and although it’s interesting watching the episodes with this “pop up video” sort of effect on them to provide more insight, it isn’t overly engaging or necessary either. But the main thing you want this Blu-ray for is to have all of South Park season 21 uncensored and that’s where you get your money’s worth.
Rating: [star rating=”4.5″]