NEW SEASON FOR SOUTH PARK : Subversive Sitcom Comments on Anti-Maskers ...

How to keep it "fresh" after 25 years - ". . .Though it feels like we’re in a flashpoint moment as a nation and perhaps even species, this is basically business as usual for South Park.

Parker and Stone continue to thrive on the non-commentary that their strategy of partial metaphor affords them, hiding behind the joke once it comes time to make a statement beyond the broadly agreeable. . .

Central

South Park returns with plenty to work with but little to say

In its 25th season opener, Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s subversive sitcom attempts to comment on anti-maskers

Charles Bramesco

the Guardian |

"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. . .

[...] It’s all easy enough to watch, especially for the hordes of longtime viewers for whom tuning in has become an annual ritual as reliable as the beginning of a new year.

But familiarity and expectedness have never been aspirational qualities for South Park. You can’t spend 25 years making a TV show without developing some habits and routines, and it could be argued that that’s a necessity in the labor-intensive process of generating a complete work of original animation on a weekly basis. Even so, the danger of Stone and Parker’s subversive streak is the soul of the show. Without that, the buttons being pushed don’t feel so hot, a given topic’s equivalent of whinging about those clowns in Congress.

Looking at the history of the small screen, an unending broadcast run and the guarantee of an easily satisfied audience have led to only one thing: complacency. With Parker and Stone now entering their 50s, the greatest challenge facing them is their own success."