South Park subsists on controversy and conflict the same way you and I subsist on carbon-based food matter. In this respect, the show could go on forever; the world sure isn’t getting less hysterical and contentious with time, providing Trey Parker and Matt Stone with an infinite supply of grist for their mill of proudly dim-witted parody. (Or at least, enough to fulfill their contract with Comedy Central for another five seasons and 12 hour-long TV movies to run on the Paramount Plus platform.) Limited more by the practicalities of maintaining a famously rigorous production schedule under the added strain of a pandemic than by creative stagnation, the show now returns to a regular season order following a quasi-hiatus that saw 2020 and 2021 pass with a pair of specials apiece. And because America continues to grow more fractious and paranoid, a pop-culture institution entering its 25th season still has plenty to work with – yet little to say.
The recent tragedy of parents and children everywhere comes to South Park as a lucky break, the setting at an elementary school placing the foul-mouthed tots right in the zeitgeist’s crosshairs. As the most inflammatory subject of public discourse, masking naturally claims the focus of last night’s premiere episode Pajama Day. The students in Mr Garrison’s classroom are abuzz about the chance to model their comfiest clothing for friends during the schoolwide holiday Mr Mackey calls “the Met Gala for children”. But when the youngsters show insufficient enthusiasm for Mr Garrison’s news that he’s found a boyfriend, he freaks out and bans them all from taking part in Pajama Day, an injustice that the town’s grownups protest by wearing their own PJs to work, the store and every other enclosed space. Of course riots break out, and at every step of this convoluted societal breakdown, whoever feels slighted by the turns of fortune busts out a comparison to Germany under Nazi rule.
