‘South Park’ Review: “Fort Collins”

South Park
Season 20 Episode 6: Fort Collins
Original Air Date: October 26, 2016

Midseason has arrived at the town of South Park. While the buildup of the storyline has kept the audience in suspense, Season 20 has been lacking a certain luster. I still have no idea what the writers have in store for us, but I pray that it is something amazing. If we look back on this season thus far, it appears that South Park has lost its way. Maybe it’s because I memba the good ol’ days serialized storytelling throughout the season became the norm.

With the game, South Park: Fractured But Whole, releasing in 2017, maybe Matt and Trey are stretched too thin. The jokes this season just don’t seem to pack quite the same punch as prior seasons or episodes. I’m not even going too far back when each episode was standalone. I felt Season 19 delivered fantastically while keeping to serialized approach throughout the whole season. Season 19 touched on so many issues (SJW’s, gentrification, LGBTQIA, cops shooting kids) and was hilarious in doing so. This season’s jokes fail to land majority of the time. While we did get some moments like #wienersout, they do not seem to link up as a full story as they did last season.

“Fort Collins” continues the trend of portraying Cartman as an absolute enigma. He seems to have genuinely changed this season but I can never quite shake that feeling that he is up to something. His dream sequences on Mars were one of the highlights from this episode. Matt and Trey also added a nice touch with certain small details such as martian settlements in the shape of vaginas with balls. Will Cartman revert to his old ways or will be stay this new gentle figure that he is now?

Trolltrace.com has almost become fully online. The Danish are ever closer to being able to triangulate all the trolls in the world with the help of a very smart and funny girl who devised emoji analysis. “Fort Collins” has been the first to get hit. RIP MLKKK. It seems that skankhunt42 will be found out inevitably.

Somehow, memba berries are caught all up in this mess as well. I never thought I would say this but it seems that Randy was truly onto something when he said that the memba berries are the reason that Garrison will get elected. No matter what they do, these memba berries cannot be destroyed. They also have been behind the scenes fueling Caitlin Jenner. It appears that the only thing that can save the turd sandwich is none other than skankhunt42.

Don’t get me wrong, the buildup for the resolution of the plotline is killing me. This episode has me craving for answers on what is too come. So many twists and turns have arisen from this episode with the darker side of the memba berries and Caitlyn Jenner, but when has South Park been about twists and turns?

If I look back on what made one of South Park’s episodes that the fans enjoyed the most (“Make love, not Warcraft”), the reasons why many loved the episode so much was that the viewers, could relate to it. South Park has been known for being able to churn out episodes in a week’s time (see “6 Days to Air”). This allowed Matt and Trey to be relevant and make fun of whatever was current in the news. It is a part of the secret sauce that made South Park so great. With the storyline approach across the season, you no longer need to stay very relevant. Even when they do stay relevant, sometimes the jokes seem forced to fit into the overall storyline somehow.

All that being said, I have faith in Matt and Trey. I know they will deliver before the end of the season comes to a close. If they don’t I’ll just continue munching on my personal huge helping of memba berries.