South Park
Season 20, Episode 5 – Douche and a Danish
Original Air Date: 10/19/2016
The latest episode of South Park, “Douche and a Danish,” aired during the third and final presidential debate. While most of America was tuned into the debate, South Park offered up a very lackluster episode. The little preview that South Park Studios released earlier in the week gave a glimmer of hope of an intense show ridiculing Trump, we are instead given a very toned down, neutral position on the election.
The biggest gem to come out of “Douche and a Danish” is where the writers point out where certain Trump supporters stand. As with most of society, people tend to favor the side that favors the group to which they belong. Once the issue becomes personal, people get offended and switch sides. “You were cool with fucking immigrants to death but finger in the ass is where I lose you?” While women are clearly the group being marginalized in tonight’s episode, it’s easy to see this applied to any ethnicity, religion, or sexuality (even trolls).
This is where South Park’s ingenious writing really gets shown. Correlations can be seen between the trolls movement with any of these minority groups. They were enjoying their lives until they started getting marginalized and hated on. Once their existence was threatened, the trolls needed to band together in order to survive. The personal story of Dildo Swaggins helped to make the viewer empathize with the trolls. It really brings up the question if trolls are really bad people or if they are just misunderstood in society?
Matt and Trey also laid down some foreshadowing for the rest of the season with Gerald instructing his new found friends on how to troll. Gerald states that you troll one group of people to hate one thing, then supporters troll on the haters which grows more haters. Sound familiar? Sounds like this very thing is what happening in a certain school in Colorado. It makes you think that perhaps Cartman, who seems to be leading the very ideas that are further dividing the boys and the girls, might be trolling everyone?
The other side plots were also advanced this episode. We find out that the lovable delicious memba berries are the cause behind all the problems in America. They cause civilizations to get lazy and stop trying to progress. Instead of trying to fix things, they decide to remember the good times that they had. The memba berries even try to the eater believe that new movies like Star Wars are great even though they aren’t really as great as the original.
The episode ends with our possible troll Cartman sending a VHS tape to Denmark saying that he knows how to fix their issue. What exactly is Cartman building up to? While this episode was very mediocre, let’s hope that Cartman’s grand finale will be epic in the end.
