To give you an idea of the timeline, South Park premiered in August 1997 just as I was starting third grade. I was the exact age that Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflofsky, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick were first depicted on the show (eventually Trey Parker and Matt Stone would age them up to the fourth grade).
Considering this was right at the time period that The Simpsons were beginning to fade from their "golden age", it seemed like South Park was going to take the mantle as the hot new animated comedy on TV, but the catch is that it was far more abrasive than The Simpsons ever was.
I think the reason I didn't respond to South Park as much as a child and even into my young teen years was that I viewed it as stupid and juvenile...and it didn't mesh with the image of what I wanted to have as a kid who was so desperate to leave West Virginia for the bright lights of the big city.
As I got older, I did end up revisiting South Park and realized that this was one of the smartest shows on TV that just so happened to be disguised as a cartoon laden with trashy and inappropriate humor. However, THAT is one reason why I think the show works so well in that Parker and Stone have more or less gained the ability to do whatever the hell they want.
We are now nearly 30 years as of this writing from when South Park first premiered on Comedy Central and its 27th season has just released its first episode on July 23rd. I don't think it will necessarily be the case...but there is a world where it could also be its last. I just don't think Paramount would be THAT stupid when they are now in the line of fire.
The 27th season is slightly over 2 years coming as Parker and Stone were involved in other projects such as making a movie with Kendrick Lamar and making a new South Park video game...plus they had made it abundantly clear that they were sick to death of dealing with Trump and anything related to presidential elections so they opted to make no new episodes in 2024.
I did view this as a win of sorts, because season 20, which aired during the 2016 election and involved the boys' racist narcissist schoolteacher Mr. Garrison acting as a placeholder for Trump (as they really didn't think Trump would end up winning either) was overall a mess. The serialized storyline that season was an interesting idea, but it just didn't play out in a way that was super funny or even that compelling.
As the premiere episode showed, and what had been alluded to in an episode from season 26, Garrison is back to being himself in South Park...which is truly a great sight as Garrison might be, in many ways, the most ridiculously vile character on the show aside from Cartman and it frequently leads to hilarious diatribes from him. Who could forget his stint as a trans woman when he yelled out the line "That dolphin has my scrotum!!!!"
...you had to be there.
I am getting ahead of myself. Let me set the stage for where we are as the episode premiered.
We know that Paramount settled on the 60 Minutes lawsuit with Trump in which he felt they were trying to help Kamala Harris look better by editing her interview last year...and that this was likely due to the FCC holding up their merger with Skydance.
Shortly after this occurred, Stephen Colbert called out this shameless action on The Late Show which he has been hosting for a decade after taking it over from its originator, David Letterman. Colbert is someone I grew up watching on both The Daily Show and his piece de resistance: The Colbert Report. I will easily admit that his CBS persona is not exactly the funniest...but he clearly still has a fanbase in that he is the #1 show on late night TV. However, that is still misleading as late night TV ratings have been in freefall for a while, and it has been reported that the show has cost CBS/Paramount a loss of roughly $40 million a year.
These losses were the main reason the show was set to be cancelled once Colbert's contract ends in May 2026, but CBS isn't just ending Colbert; they are ending the entire Late Show model. Back in 1993, CBS bought the Ed Sullivan Theater to be the home for the show...and now, they'd sooner just let the whole thing go. Say what you will about Colbert in this format, but I still find him more entertaining to watch than Jimmy Kimmel (who admittedly has gotten better to me over the years) and especially Jimmy Fallon who never deserved The Tonight Show to begin with.
Parker and Stone are watching that firing go down, they watched the settlement with Trump, they watched Trump gleefully rejoice in all of this on TruthSocial...and all of this led to the season 27 premiere getting delayed from a July 9th premiere to eventually premiering on the 23rd. This incensed the two of them, but they were able to work out a deal of their own.
Paramount granted Parker and Stone a five-year streaming deal, also allowing for all of the episodes to stream as they had intended to ban several episodes (some for indecipherable reasons) except for the ones that feature Mohammed.
How much was this deal?
1.5 BILLION dollars.
Keep in mind, these guys only just a couple of years ago got a separate deal for $600 million dollars to make South Park content up until what would be the show's 30th season...and now, they get a new deal worth over a billion dollars and they were adamant to get that in writing so that their premiere episode could air in time the next day.
These two guys who have spent nearly 3 decades trolling EVERYONE just signed a deal that made them billionaires and how they respond?
An episode of South Park that absolutely EVISCERATES Trump and Paramount in a way that is so blatantly baiting that this might be up there as one of the craziest, if not THE craziest, things that Parker and Stone have ever done.
I know that what I am about to say here is nothing new than some of the comments that have already been said, but I do have to say that this premiere, entitled "Sermon on the Mount" is a blatant dare to Paramount coaxing them to cancel the show. They may have been sick of dealing with Trump and the political climate after several years of it bogging down the show, but it has reached a point where it is clear that these two men are fed up with it all and want to call them all out.
The episode begins with Cartman bemoaning the fact that his favorite comedy radio program was cancelled...that being NPR. Nothing is funnier to Cartman than hearing a bunch of liberals whining and crying and talking about their woke issues, but his mom Liane tells him that it was cancelled thanks to "the President".
This Cartman subplot of the episode is pure genius because it sets up the exact same place South Park is as a show right now. We live in a society where hateful, bigoted rhetoric is all over the place and there is a war on the idea of "woke" identity politics from the right. Cartman, however, views this as a negative. If more people are like him, he can't be the contrarian he loves to be.
Meanwhile, the character of PC Principal, who was depicted over the last 8 seasons as a frat boy type who loves promoting woke ideals, has suddenly changed his name to "Power Christian" Principal...but you can call him PC Principal. His first order of business? Bring Jesus back to the school!
Cartman is at the end of his rope though and he, much like the show itself, aren't sure where it may go from here. He thinks that if nothing may change by next Tuesday (the night before the next episode will air, just for reference) he may have to kill himself...and he tells Butters that he will kill him too because obviously that is the kind of demand Cartman would ask of Butters in a situation.
Then you get Randy Marsh, father of Stan, who is rather appalled with the idea of Jesus being in school, so he organizes a bunch of people to go over to the president's house to attack him. However, as I mentioned earlier, Garrison isn't the president anymore. He is there with his new partner, a dog on his lap, watching The White Lotus; he tells them that he gave up all the president stuff.
This is when we see that the show is going to go all in on Trump, but in a way that acts as another great call back to the show's earlier canon: portraying Trump in the same way they portrayed Saddam Hussein in their film South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut...with a series of real-life photos of Trump's head mimicking how they would animate Canadian characters faces. The Hussein connection is further established to the point that Trump is in a relationship with Satan, whom they had also killed off at one point but brought back. There is even one line Trump says about bombing Iraq (which has to be corrected as Iran) that leads some to believe that perhaps Trump is actually Saddam Hussein in disguise as he is clearly being portrayed EXACTLY him to the point where Satan clearly states he reminds him too much of someone he used to date.
Parker and Stone go for broke to bait Trump by presenting him as an overweight old man child with a tiny penis who thinks of himself as far more manly and heroic than he has any right to. All of the portraits we see of him are downright hysterical and clearly mocking the ridiculous "art" we've seen surging around his MAGA base.
Parker and Stone aren't done yet though. They now take a slam at CBS and the handling of the 60 Minutes debacle by showing a broadcast of that series taking place in South Park. The iconic stopwatch opening comes complete with a ticking timebomb and its hosts presenting the show as if they could be shot down at any second; sucking up to Trump as if their lives truly depend on it.
When they cut to the reporter on the ground in South Park itself, he also mocks the residents for being anti-Trump...but this is when Jesus flies in to give his "Sermon on the Mount" where 60 Minutes assumes he is reading them all for filth but instead, Jesus tells them that they are going to get sued if they keep this up, adding "Look what happened to Colbert!".
We get to see one of them, which is a deep fake of Trump wandering through the desert as a narrator talks about how no one will fight for you like Trump...while Trump strips off his clothes and rolls around naked in the sand as he cannot handle the heat or the exercise...complete with his tiny little penis proclaiming "I am Donald Trump, and I approve this message!"
Meanwhile...the episode ends with Cartman and Butters still sitting in a car because...as I also still need to mention...Cartman has decided to kill himself by car exhaust and insists Butters join him, not realizing you need to turn on the car to do it.
So, this is where we stand.
Parker and Stone are in epic meta mode via Cartman as the true centerpiece for what could be at stake for how the show can proceed...and it couldn't be more thrilling to watch.
These are two men who, among many things, attended the 72nd Oscars ceremony 25 years ago wearing dresses while being high on acid. Parker was nominated for co-writing the song "Blame Canada" for the South Park movie...and award he would lose to Phil Collins for "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan...which would lead to them relentlessly attacking Collins on their show shortly thereafter.
These same men who have been making fools of so many people, and even themselves for nearly 3 decades are now billionaires and the big thank you for that deal is a big hearty FUCK YOU to our vicious pig of a "leader" and the corporations who bow down to him.
I gotta say, that is genius.
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