In our last round-up of South Park, we were talking about how there was some inter-connectivity happening between episodes. Well, unfortunately – at least for now – this has come to a pause (with the exception of a brief shot of the “Cissies” toilets from the recent episodes).
This week, after a turn away from our core cast in “Handicar” followed by a week off, Cartman and the gang have returned to follow a familiar trend of Cartman doing something that upsets the town (without anyone realising it was him), while Cartman blames Butters for the whole thing. It’s something Matt and Trey have done to death – but even after all these years, the relationship between Cartman and Butters is one of the most entertaining aspects of the show. So it almost goes without saying that this episode was a good one.
And naturally, they feed in a pile of social commentary to give it the spice of ‘something new’. In “The Magic Bush”, Trey and Matt bring together the recent rise in popularity of personal drones with references to the Ferguson shooting and subsequent protests. Except in typical bizarro South Park fashion, this time it was the drones who were protesting and shoplifting, after a black drone was shot down by the police. Though the analogy was far from Trey and Matt’s finest work, it was a funny one, and as usual showed off the town to incapable of dealing with the most basic of issues. And that ultimately, all anyone cared about was sex.
That in mind, the episode naturally went in the direction of the recent privacy hacking issues, with Jennifer Lawrence singled out a couple of times, and though it didn’t seem like they had much to say about drones other than the fact they can be used to invade people’s privacy, buttholes and vaginas – which is bad, mkay – the introduction of the “Drone Enthusiast”, as portrayed by Butter’s Dad, was a stroke of brilliance.
No real surprises, but some clever social satire and a few hilarious moments. The sort of episode we’ve more than come to expect from this long running series and can’t help but enjoy.
Review Score: FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
This episode of South Park will air in Australia on SBS2 – Sunday night at 9.30pm.
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