South Park Season 21, Splatty Tomato review

We're here to discuss about the season finale of south park, Splatty Tomato?

4 minutes in and I can't believe how far this show has fallen

Kill yourself.

The brilliant strategy of sound and fury to hide the fact that it's saying and meaning absolutely nothing,

Last of the season? Thank god.

Maybe next season their asspain over Trump winning won't overshadow the entire cartoon anymore.

If they're incapable of moving on they should just end it instead of us being dragged into their grieving process every week. It's so transparent this isn't about 4 kids in Colorado (where was Kenny this episode?) But about a bunch of butthurt California crybabies that can't MOVE ON. Did you ever see this much angst seeping through the television when W was prez?

Basically they've been crying since the election and have the gall to literally tell white people they need to change their attitude.

Man, what is wrong with Trey and Matt, like they just cant do proper payoffs for the arc's finales.

First the dropped plot points from Season 19 and the ones that came out of nowhere on its season finale and us pretending those got developed, like the whole guns thing and making PC principal a reluctant hero despite him being the Big baddie in the beginning (and therefore, SP failing to tackle SJWs properly)

Then the disaster that was Season 20 and the non payoff for the girls vs boys feud and the girls getting away for what they did with impunity (gender wars) and the speech kyle gave at the last episode was just shoehorn in, not to mention the Hilary foreshadowing and the Member berries.

Now this Season and lame payoff for what was set up last week.

The problem here is that South Park's selling point is Commentary, and the entire world has been providing more than enough commentary on the one thing "Everyone" wants them to talk about: Trump. And really, that could almost go well if they actually had something that every other show on Comedy Central and every other network hadn't already said everything already.
They're a show with no new material to work with, and one subject the viewing audience wants them to watch.
Give them a year or two, and we might see something fresh again.

No. The cucks must burn in hell.

I'm convinced the show's been ghostwritten for seasons now with seasons 18 and 19 as a fluke. This was a lazy, awful season finale full of inane cultural references and tired jokes dragged on throughout the episode. Worst of all, they completely fucked up the cliffhanger from the previous episode. South Park is basically animated SNL at this point.

Matt and Trey don't give a shit and likely haven't for years now. They've clearly crossed over from biting satire into humorless moralizing. This season and the previous one both remind me of Plinkett's analysis of George Lucas in his review of The Force Awakens. Matt and Trey are broken men filled with cynicism and contempt for their own creation. They may have their money, but their contract won't allow them escape. I think Trey desperately wants to break away from South Park, but he's trapped in it because it's both his only guaranteed source of income and the basis for his entire legacy as an entertainer. Why else would he star in Despicable Me 3 when he doesn't need the role at all? I'm not buying the "I wanna entertain my daughter" bullshit because it's a flimsy excuse. It's completely uncharacteristic of him to star in anything outside his own creations.

It's also telling that the quality of the show drops whenever they're working on other projects. When they were working on "Book of Mormon" and then "Stick of Truth", the quality from seasons 12-17 plummeted. It's hard to tell what went wrong, but to me, it seems that episodes were ghostwritten by Comedy Central's secondary staff. It would also explain why the quality significantly jumped at season 18 and 19 respectively since they could devote their full energy writing the seasons. Once production for "Fractured, But Whole" started, the quality dropped again.

Well, it's not like the show is going to die any time soon, the fans won't let it. At worst it'll become Zombie South Park.

Remember the formula:

South Park=Simposons-10 years
Family Guy=Simpsons+10 Years

Why would I watch a cartoon where each episode become hopelessly dated after the season's over?

...

Because it at least used to be funny.

It's also very telling that South Park never once criticized Obama in any meaningful way during the entire course of his presidency. South Park's worst seasons coincided nicely with Obama's presidency. I have issues with the shit Matt and Trey downplayed, and the NSA scandal is definitely one of them. Both of them could have raked that Barry O over the coals and instead chose to take a literal victim blaming angle on the American population.

I can't tell if it's because of a certain blindness to oligarchy that he has, complete apathy from Matt and Trey or if they've swallowed the Obama Kool-Aid. It's entirely possible the network gagged them. They may have written some anti-Obama jokes, but the network didn't want to Matt and Trey instilling skepticism in the FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT, so they promptly shut it down. In any case, it was very unbecoming of them to completely miss opportunities to satirize Obama in the 8 years of his presidency.

On another note, the White family was a fucking awful strawman of right-wing politics. The point that all their concerns were entirely superficial and irrelevant to the broader problem of Garrison (ie: Trump) having nuked Canada just reeked of the kind of moralizing they criticized in previous seasons. When the town got caught up in the scandal of PC Principal and Strong Woman, they ignored the obvious problem of Garrison's presidency, causing him to get away when he was in their hands. The message was that White people need to become more oriented towards social justice to end the terror of Trump. Matt and Trey have never despised a sitting President this much since Clinton. Even Clinton didn't get half as much hate as Trump does.

They also didn't touch Bill Clinton, nor Bush.
Not saying what we have now is good, but I mean that in general, they left presidents alone.

All this speculation about office poltics at Comedy Central is pointless, we can only be certain of the results, which is an unfunny, repetitive, preachy and tiresome run of episodes ever since election day. If I want to see someone make fun of Trump I have about 56 other shows to choose from. I don't give a fuck and it's clear South Park has nothing insightful to say either.

The shark has been jumped and the only thing to look forward to is these out-of-touch millionaires cry again when Trump wins re-election. It's a sad day when Family Guy is more watchable than this crap.

That's not true at all. Yes, they cut W some slack here and there, but they also made fun of his decision to enter Iraq with the episode on Saddam Hussein making weapons of mass destruction in Heaven disguised as chocolate chips. They even had an ambassador say to W when addressing the UN, "Are you high, or just incredibly stupid?" Matt and Trey made plenty of jokes at Bush's expense, but they didn't condemn him outright, hence Team America. They made a concerted effort to mock the progressives who really went after him.

The worst Obama got was that he liked Tyler Perry, and even then, the latter was the butt of the jokes rather Mr. Prez himself.

As to Clinton, they called him a huge jackass and made him look like a weak, ineffective President in the South Park movie and the Chinpokomon episode. Clinton was depicted in the least flattering light until Trump came along.

Being rich artists in Los Angeles is a problem if you're trying to depict a rural town hundreds of miles away. Clearly the writers don't care to bridge that gap because as far as they're concerned everyone outside of their bubble is Nazi scum.

Fair enough, but overall they have kept off of presidents. I will agree that Obama got theā€¦.untouchability thing. Even the fucking Boondocks made fun of him more.
But this thing with Garrison is small, petty and pathetic.
I think the Turningpoint for when Matt and Trey became big ol fartbags, was during the Mexicains from the future episode when they couldn'tgive practical answers.
Thats when they let the smartass hippie get the final word.

To be fair, Family Guy finally owned up to being what they are, and have gone the self-effacing route, admitting that they're pretty Shit. Combine that with the fact that Seth no longer cares what happens to the show, and that they're finally doing the Brian Redemption Arc, which should bring him off the MacFarlane Soapbox, and I could see Family Guy being almost good again.
Depends on how well they execute their serious episode this season, and the Road to Finale. I'm not expecting The Vault or Multiverse quality, but I'm fairly optimistic.

I'm so glad they don't include Kenny in the newer episodes. I don't hate him, far form it, I'm just glad that I don't have to see Matt and Trey ruin my favourite character all the time.

So how's the season in general?

Pretty Meh. Cartman's Girlfriend has a fairly interesting Arc, but they use it to draw parallels between an abusive co-dependant relationship and being a Trump supporter.
There's a pretty good moment where she starts buying into Cartman's bullshit, and the episode ends with Kyle saying "Wait, did she just call me a dirty Jew?"

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Check out YouTube video of Ric122's south park season reviews

> somehow only one family, The Whites, is pro-Trump supportive of the president

And if that wasn't a breakdown in logic:
It's like they were hammering away at how he can get away with everything and no one will go after him but then in the last minute he tries to run away when no one chased him out. Since when would the president be safer by himself in the woods than behind the military or I dunno, Air Force One?

I don't think Matt and Trey have ghost writers like some speculate, I think they've just lost it. A combination of years of fatigue and non-interest and becoming what they made fun of in the 90s plus Trump's election has lead to this. What's more revealing is that Heidi's character arc hiccuped all the way through and we only got two episodes of her being fat and cartman-like. The last two episodes established that nothing shook her and nothing was getting through to her. Somehow a walk in the woods undoes all of that? They built up her change and how cartman's influence affected her but all of that becomes undone in less than a day.

Great Job. 10/10 character arc.

I wouldn't be surprised if Comedy Central told Matt and Trey to lay off W after they lost them shekels with that horrible Bush sitcom.

The show got canceled after 9/11, if I recall. Was it due to bad ratings or a drastic change in the political climate? I never saw it, so I can't comment on its quality or lack thereof.


Yeah, that was way too rushed, but frankly, Heidi and Cartman were destined to sour as a couple. The story needed two more episodes to properly complete the arc with this episode building up for the big breakup to be seen on the last episode or the next season.

As you mentioned, this finale cheapened Heidi's gradual descent into adopting Cartman's persona. She was beginning to negatively affect everyone, including Cartman. The Waterbugs episode's ending clearly established that Cartman felt remorse for creating a monster. Matt and Trey failed to revisit the plot thread and complete the arc in a much more dynamic fashion.

Remember that season of Simpsons which is all about Trump? Remember the season after that was still about Trump?

This is the same show that couldn't say they were pro-Iraq-war or not and so made a big musical number about it. The war based on lies that has killed more soldiers than who died on 9-11 and now is a permanent quagmire. The war that cost us a trillion dollars. That wasn't worth any outrage. But since meanie pussy-grabber got elected it has these limousine liberals so riled up they're hallucinating Trump will kill us all and hope if they paint an ugly enough picture of him he will be impeached. See you in 7 years, you disgusting hypocrites.

Caring about things enough to have strong opinions and responses is the biggest sin one can commit in Matt and Trey's universe. It's not cool to care about stuff.


I'm not sure what this formula is supposed to mean.


Having story and character arcs in South Park has always been a terrible idea. At the beginning, it didn't even have any continuity and it was better for it. Forced drama and "character development" has made it even more unwatchable than it already was. I don't know what made them think they could handle season long plots and character studies when they can barely do two parters without fucking it up.

Yeah, that's South Park.

I looked for the thead cause I have to rant too.
I just watched the Stranger Things/ It episode, and it's so loveless.

Back then, the parodies were great, like Dawn of the Dead with bums, or the WoW episode.
Now, currently popular things are just mentioned for the sake of it. The Stranger Things/ It part was just there for no real reason, stuffed between a half assed Trump story that went nowhere, a returning story that's not important, and a love story with PG principal which also didn't have anything to do there. It was just unfocused. It felt like modern Simpsons.

I never thought that could happen, there was a time where South Park got better and better, then the one-storyline-season happened, after that it went downhill. And that female Cartman character is SO shitty. I think she was just a one season message about alpha/ beta males, but for some reason, she stayed. I don't even get it.

The decline is real

My guess is that the (((committee))) or just (((Matt Stone))) told them that trump jokes was good for ratings since they went up last year. But the increase is not only gone but they sunk to a new low just this past season.

That is what happens when you haven't accepted the MSM is full of shit. Most people don't come across and notice proof that the MSM is deliberately lying rather than some bad apples.

That chart could possibly be saying nothing unless it's counting internet views because the decline in ratings correlates with the decline in cable viewership. If your name isn't Game of Thrones, Walking Dead or whatever pop cultural phenomenon, Hulu and Netflix will swallow your ratings.

Some of the hallmarks that would plague South Park's later seasons started in Season 11. The blatant moralizing and lazy, loveless "satire" were quite evident in "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" and "Cartman Sucks". The latter was practically a GLAAD special.

Not to say it was a complete dud. "Lice Capades", "The Snuke", the "Imaginationland" trilogy and "Fantastic Easter Special" were all fun episodes.

Streaming services handle "ratings" differently. Essentially, you the show's parent company pays to be on there. Depending on the service, the shows with the most advertisements is the most profitable.

TV ratings still apply to a show's success, especially one that is singlehandedly keeping CC afloat since 1997.

We had a really good thread talking about why season 20 was shit. However it seems like season 21 has more or less the same problems as season 20. I guess that continuity is less of a problem than before but fuck South Park is beyond redemption.

I couldn't even make it to 0:01 before stopping the video. Fuck you, you hideous sperg.