classicswim | [South Park: The Woman in The Hat]

Having just watched this in the morning, my immediate pivot when they first announced the episode was how utterly stupid and horrible and nonsensical the timeslot was that they put this in.

Halloween night at 10pm when everyone’s getting fucked up... no one was going to put on South Park.

Virtually nothing would’ve changed if it had aired the Wednesday night it was supposed to air. I don’t think viewers having watched the special on a Wednesday would’ve had traumatic Halloween amnesia, barring them from forever knowing such a holiday ever existed.

But then it clicked.

This was a bad episode, and they were ashamed of it. The collective viewer was shot in the foot over a bad episode.

I should’ve seen it coming that everything they built up from just the last one by itself would be crumpled up in the bathroom trash. Peter Thiel and Cartman are just...... somewhere now because Matt & Trey consider tedious and unresolved overarching plots back-to-back to be their core fucking identity now, supposedly.

Shit on Pam Bondi’s nose as a joke was perfectly fine in concept. By the end of it, I had realized that this series’ constant rhythm of signature running gags for each individual show has allowed them to become more lazy.

Say what you will about the ICE episode (I did, and Trump administration has called my people the fucking Flood from Halo since then), the ICE episode had a payoff. Regardless of how comfortable I was, I acknowledge a payoff was there.

You can’t just ‘say the thing’ over and over and expect that to be enough ammunition.

Oh wow. You had a FOX News scene where a real life image of Pam Bondi had cartoon shit smeared on her. Twice. Poo stain progressively larger each time.

Really? No audible explosive diarrhea? No visual of Saddam Trump parping on her while she’s praising him? What the fuck happened to South Park lol.

Speaking of “what happened to South Park,” oh boy. Here we go.

This is the part where the series wears its own criticism like a vest by grouping it to only amount to an annoying vocal minority.

You ever find the current show irritating at times? Even a little? Even when you DO align politically? Too fucking bad. You’re just a performative airhead grifter.

They make a shit ton of episodes convey the point that Stan’s lost his own show to Randy, and the second Stan gets the script back... he fucking becomes Randy.

Their episode protagonists lose very often. Only in this particular instance are they so insanely spiteful that they’ll say “hey. We’ll ruin ANYONE in our stupid little cartoon.”

Does that really say anything? Hell no.

They gave up on their preachy speeches years ago because they kept getting knocks over it, to the point of becoming self-conscious.

The end result, so it seems, is that you cannot have anyone on the show to root for anymore. Even for one miserable fucking episode.

If Hell froze over and Matt & Trey actually wanted to bring back Chef, you would have Chef singing songs about his love for *insert fucking comedy dead-end like bitcoin or AI*.

This is the worst one they’ve ever put out in recent memory, and I’m really worried that they’ll only be repeating season 20’s mistakes again.

That first episode when they came back was SO STRONG, it got people to love South Park again. But they only want to be their own worst enemy when they can easily obtain greatness by putting in effort.