Nine of the 10 most-beloved South Park episodes, at least according to IMDb users, are from seasons five to 10. There’s Cartman boasting about hitting puberty in “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” Butters getting a ninja throwing star lodged in his eye in “Good Times with Weapons,” and the boys going on a “quest” to return The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring to the video store. What do these episodes have in common, besides all being classics? They’re about kids doing kid things. That’s something South Park has ditched over the past few seasons (with a few exceptions, like season 19’s “Tweek x Craig”), especially as the show has gotten increasingly serialized.
But in an interview with the Los Angeles Times to promote Despicable Me 3, where he plays super-villain Balthazar Bratt, co-creator Trey Parker said South Park will likely return to its “boys will be boys” roots in season 21.
This season I want to get back to Cartman dressing up like a robot and [screwing] with Butters, because to me that’s the bread and butter of South Park: kids being kids and being ridiculous and outrageous but not ‘did you see what Trump did last night?’ Because I don’t give a [sh*t] anymore. We probably could put up billboards — ‘Look what we’re going to do to Trump next week!’ — and get crazy ratings. But I just don’t care. (Via)
When asked about whether it’s harder to do satirical comedy now, in the age of social media and Trump, than it was 20 years ago, Parker responded, “Yeah, and it’s also just gotten boring. We weren’t ever really that show. We would do an entire season and there would be one moment that played off something that had just happened and people would go, ‘South Park is the show that does that.’ And that’s just not true. We’re not.” He continued, “We did start to become that, though, especially the last season. We fell into the same trap that Saturday Night Live fell into, where it was like, ‘Dude, we’re just becoming CNN now. We’re becoming: ‘Tune in to see what we’re going to say about Trump.’ Matt [Stone] and I hated it but we got stuck in it somehow.”
South Park can still comment on politics, as long as it’s farty-pants politics.
(Via the Los Angeles Times)
