After eight episodes of Lorde songs, cissys, and Cartmaaaaaaan Brah, everything season 18 of South Park had been building toward came together in “#HappyHolograms.” Did it make a lick of sense? Nope, but that’s kind of the point. Not unlike “You’re Getting Old,” which turned Stan into a cynical asshole because he doesn’t get tween wave, “#HappyHolograms” was a meta commentary on South Park itself. When Stan ranted, “We are not old people, you guys are just into lame, vulgar crap,” he sounded like every out-of-touch reviewer writing about the Comedy Central series when it premiered. But now he’s that ancient critic, and he just can’t understand why the damn kids are interested in something new, something foreign, something MEH.
Or maybe I’m just overthinking things, and Matt Stone and Trey Parker used “#HappyHolograms” as an excuse to have Iggy Azalea sing a Christmas song out of her ass. Total tossup. Either way, one of the episode’s many highlights was the series of increasingly confused tweets that rolled along the bottom of the screen. There were references to the Smashing Pumpkins and Mr. Hankey and Fat Albert and c*ck magic. Always with the c*ck magic. Here they all are.
