Thoughts and impressions
I had high hopes for the 20th season of South Park given that season 19 was so strong, with only ten episodes this season South Park needs to remain strong in its delivery of quality content for its viewers.
Now I am British, but I understand a great deal about American culture and even have a fair understanding of the country’s current state of affairs.
Spoilers ahead
Episode one of season 20, is titled “Member Berries“.
From my understanding of the episode’s content, the “Member Berries” are some nostalgia in berry form. A nod to JJ.Abrams Star Wars reboot, specifically the nods towards the original Star Wars characters and storylines. I could be wrong here, but that’s what I made out of it.
However these berries are not the focus of the episode at all, South Park again has focused on Americanised culture, specifically the presidential elections.
Now, this isn’t exactly a bad thing, keeping up with the current state of affairs is usually a good move for long-running shows.
But for me, I know precisely bupkis about the presidential campaign in America, I have even written this without looking into the episodes source content for a fairer first impression.
The episode starts strong with a nod and comedic play towards the American national anthem athlete sit-downs and even rounds it off nicely with JJ.Abrams rebooting the American national anthem altogether. Nicely done.
At this point, I got quite bored by my lack of understanding of current American political affairs and my mind trailed off. I later needed to rewatch the whole episode because I missed the ending.
For me it was not a great start, South Park has had much stronger first episodes to name a few recently would be season 16th “Reverse Cowgirl” and 18ths “Go, Fund, Yourself“. Both episodes playing true to more general tones on things a global audience can weigh in on and as such were both were strong season opening episodes.
Damn, I almost forgot last season’s opener. Season 19th first episode”Stunning and Brave” that was a big WTF? Moment for me I had to Google Caitlyn Jenner to know what the whole fucking episode was about. I mean come on, we watch to be entertained, not to Google what it was about in the first place.
With this episode, I had flashbacks to said Googles searches and simply wasn’t willing to search again to understand the episode.
Closing thoughts
Episode 1 of season 20 rings true to the last season for me so far. It is clear though that this is a two-part episode, so perhaps the veil of understanding will be lifted in the next episode, and the shaky start will redeem itself? Time will only tell.
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I really enjoyed it man. Laughed at the Token’s Life Matter t-shirt Cartman was wearing. Dude, how could you not know Caitlyn? She was eeeeeverywhere. Didn’t know Bruce won gold at the Olympics though.
I enjoyed it too, particularly the bit where Mr Garrison figures out he has no plan after the election – sound familiar? Eheh.
But I do agree about last season, some of the Jenner stuff, like the car crash, I had no idea about. I also know plenty of people who have no idea what is going on in the election. If you are clued in – or American – I think its great, but the level of political satire does close out a universal audience.
On another note, screw Gerald, what is Cartman’s real angle?