Episodes now play like 22-minute tweets — loud, shallow, and gone before the credits finish rolling. Parker and Stone aren’t fools. They built their careers on precision and nerve, and they can see the well has run dry. That’s why it stings more. They should know when to stop. They could walk away and leave South Park as a show that defined a generation. Instead, they’ve settled for a long, undignified victory lap. Each new season is a weekend-at-Bernie’s performance, hauling the body around for one more cheer, one more trending clip, one more reminder of what it used to be.
Politics didn’t break South Park. They’ve always done politics — and at their peak, did it brilliantly. Now the humor feeds the same apathy it once skewered. It reacts instead of anticipates, scrapes instead of sharpens.
This season set out to ridicule Trump and his orbit. In the process, it exposed something larger: a show once armed with cultural shrapnel now firing blanks, coasting on the ghost of its former glory.