Although South Park’s original premise hasn’t been the show’s central focus for some time, season 27 of the satirical series needs to revive this theme. When South Park began in 1997, the series was like nothing else on television. Crude, gory, and scatological, South Park fused the zany freewheeling comedy of The Simpsons with an R-rated, profane edge. The show’s focus on a group of young characters was always contentious since, although South Park was about a couple of small-town kids, it was certainly not suitable for children. This remained true as the show continued, although its focus gradually changed.
As South Park season 27’s release date approaches, it is striking to see how much the series has changed. Around season 4, the anarchic focus on gory horror movie parodies and random non-sequiturs gave way to topical satire. South Park’s uniquely fast production process allowed the show to mock current events as they unfolded, and the show began to center social commentary over pure silliness. South Park abandoned its original premise with this shift, and this resulted in some of the show’s funniest, cleverest, and most controversial episodes. However, South Park season 27 could fix the show by reversing this change.
South Park season 27 should be a show about kids again, rather than a show where many of the main characters are adults like Stan’s father Randy. South Park’s recent seasons and specials have been laser-focused on news stories, but they haven’t had much fun with the uniquely immature perspective of the central characters. Not Suitable For Children and Joining the Panderverse, the two South Park feature-length specials from 2023, devoted significantly more screen time to Randy Marsh than they did to Butters, Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny. This wastes South Park’s unique place in the adult animated comedy landscape.
Although Big Mouth and Bob’s Burgers base a lot of their storylines around coming-of-age themes, the former focuses on teenagers and the latter splits its screen time between the Belcher parents and children. In contrast, South Park is the only major adult animated comedy that stars children as its main characters and this makes the show particularly effective. South Park‘s co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have both noted that mocking the absurdity of adult life is easier when a story is told through the perspective of a child. Unfortunately, South Park’s later seasons forgot this pivotal lesson.
Although South Park season 1 was full of gore and swearing, it was also a hilariously relatable love letter to misspent youth. Despite not being suitable for children, South Park has repeatedly captured the immaturity and innocence of childhood at times. Episodes like season 15, episode 9, “The Last of the Meheecans,” season 4, episode 16, “The Wacky Molestation Adventure,” and season 9, episode 9, “Marjorine,” succeed in Parker and Stone’s attempt to make a show about “Kids being kids” complete with a certain “Underlying sweetness.” These episodes address political themes, but never forget that their heroes are children.
Although 2024’s highly hyped South Park video game Snow Day was a critical disappointment, the game did bring back this vital part of the show’s original appeal. The underwhelming South Park: Snow Day turned an imaginary game between some fourth graders into an epic battle and, in the process, brought back some of the simple joys from early seasons of the show. In its early years and the kid-centric episodes outlined above, which were a frequent fixture until around season 18, South Park was a more subversive and gleefully irreverent reminder of childhood’s less idealized realities.
The children of the show swear like sailors and get involved in all manner of family-unfriendly scrapes, but many of South Park’s best stories rely on a cartoony sense of humor that is childish in the best sense of the word. Even Cartman’s infamous villainous storyline in season 5, episode 4, “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” hinges on the idea that a ten-year-old could somehow engineer the deaths of two people and manipulate a world-famous rock band into doing his bidding. At their darkest, great South Park episodes still maintain an element of immaturity that works because of the show’s young heroes.
Season 15, episode 7, “You’re Getting Old,” was a strange outing for South Park. The episode chronicled Stan’s tenth birthday, which saw him fall into a deep depression that he couldn’t shake. The outing explicitly addressed the fact that, like most cartoon heroes, the main characters never age and initially seemed like it might be the start of a serialized storyline where South Park’s heroes finally grew up. However, the following episodes instead returned the show to its usual status quo. Despite this reversal, Stan’s existential malaise ended up affecting the show’s tone going forward in numerous ways.
Although season 16, episode 6, “I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining,” was a funny, light-hearted episode that centered on the boys and their antics, these became increasingly rare as the show continued. When the series began experimenting with serialized storylines in season 19, South Park‘s stories began to focus less and less on the central quintet of young antiheroes and more on adult characters like PC Principal and Mr. Garrison. South Park’s increasing reliance on Randy Marsh had foreshadowed this change, and soon, very few later episodes went back to exploring the fun side of childhood as Randy became a main character.
Centring Randy’s antics is the biggest impediment to South Park recapturing the show’s original focus on childhood. His perspective isn’t as compelling as those of Butters, Kenny, Kyle, Cartman, and Stan, and viewers already have Family Guy, American Dad, The Simpsons, F Is For Family, and Bob’s Burgers if they want to watch a story about a middle-aged suburban father. Randy’s antics were initially funny because he had previously seemed like a mild-mannered, unsuspecting dad, but his character’s zaniness has since become grating.
Bizarrely, South Park acknowledged Randy’s character problems when The Streaming Wars Part 2 asked what became of his original characterization. However, the season and specials that followed this outing continued to focus on Randy’s wacky activities over the show’s original main characters. As a result, South Park failed to re-center the show’s young heroes even though it is their shared perspective that makes the series stand out in the crowded world of adult animated comedy.