I don’t know if South Park needed a week off, or I needed a week off from South Park, but either way it worked. This week’s episode, entitled “Wieners Outâ€, was gold. It was the first time all season that I legitimately laughed. In fact, I couldn’t stop laughing. Tonight was South Park at its best. It was the perfect mix of lampooning current events, the shows classic and unique humor, and “I can’t believe they just did that”moments.
This week showed the fallout from events seen in the last episode, and tensions finally peaked. The boys of South Park are fighting back against the girls, launching their own protest lead by a furious Butters. He gathered the boys up and emphatically said, “I’m done feeling guilty. I’m a boy dagnabit and I’m proud of my little wiener.”Next thing we know, Butters has pulled his pants down, flaunting his “boyhoodâ€, during the national anthem of the girls’ volleyball game. But wait, it gets better. Next thing we see is Butters and the rest of the boys marching the school halls with their #WienersOut declaring equality. This is when I lost it. Butters has long been one of my favorite characters, but tonight he took it to a new level and I loved it.
The best part of this whole thing is how it pokes fun at how far our “PC culture”has gone. Of course, most people would agree that the boys have taken it too far, but as PC Principal told the girls, “Make no mistake, I want to be very upset, however, as a community, we have all decided that people have the right to protest the national anthem.”He goes on to say that their protest was peaceful and if he tried to stop them he would be body shaming them. The whole thing is just poking fun at how in today’s world there will always be someone who is offended.
Kyle, however, is against the movement entirely and feels the boys have gone too far. He tries to convince Cartman to help him take down Butters, but as we have seen, Cartman is a changed man. He is no longer on social media, he sympathizes with the girls, and he even has a girlfriend (Heidi Turner). Because of all this, he refuses to help. He doesn’t want to succumb to the shaming of women. This can’t be Cartman forever, can it?! When did you ever think you would see Eric Cartman being changed for the better by women? Unable to win, Kyle finally decides to join Butters and the rest in the #WienersOut movement.
Other than the boys’ escapade for social justice, we also saw Gerald meet with the writer of the mysterious note he received at the end of the previous episode. The author turned out to be “Dildo Swagginsâ€, another troll who attempts to recruit Gerald into a secret troll alliance. He is initially hesitant because he refuses to believe he is like them (one of the trolls happens to be the guy from the Warcraft episode) but finally agrees after he sees what the Danish have planned. They are about to launch a website called trolltrace.com that will identify and locate any and all internet trolls.
This plotline was just as funny as the other because it was so ridiculous. I mean Gerald was forced to allow his wife to pee on him in bed in order to keep his trolling hobby a secret. The entire episode, and this plotline especially, truly felt like a South Park episode from one of the first ten seasons. The only thing preventing it from becoming a truly classic episode was the ending. Like most episodes in recent seasons, it just abruptly ends. It doesn’t even attempt to give us some closer or a final joke to ponder, and for that reason, I can’t put it in with the other all-time greats.
In general, though, South Park returned from its weeklong hiatus with an episode that resembled a “classicâ€. I was actually laughing the entire time. It didn’t try and cram too many storylines into one episode like it has been doing for much of this season. Instead, it focused on a couple of things and did them well. Hopefully, this will propel the rest of the season and things will stay this funny and the season long story will finally start to escalate.
Score: 9/10
