South Park: The Panderverse review (/a long vent about ego and story arcs)
The TL;DR: It was a bummer.
Image from South Park Studios wiki
Diehard South Park fan here. I was excited when I heard about this episode coming out, but then when I saw previews I realized that it was made for the purpose of “sending a message” and not for whimsy and ridiculousness like in years past.
If you’re reading this review, I’m going to assume that you’ve either seen it or seen previews, and also watch South Park, so I’m not doing a here’s-what-happened recap.
To put it bluntly, it is blatantly obvious that Trey and Matt are using South Park to engage in the act of mockery instead of satire. You can always predict what is coming next because this episode is dumbed-down, spoonfed to viewers, but they throw in just enough funny parts to tell your memory that you liked this episode fine. (“I. am. working. on. it. SHARON!”)
Unfortunately, it’s easier for me to start with the part I liked the most because they stuck to a character’s canon personality: P.C. Principal. Nowhere near my favorite character, by the way. The boys are sitting there in his office with girl Cartman, saying, don’t you think it’s *weird* that Cartman is a “diverse female” instead of a 9-year-old boy? He breaks the fourth wall with this retort: “If you boys don’t think Eric can be a black woman, then maybe the problem is you.” Nailed it.
P.C. Principal was a clever character to plant a few years ago so that when this whole “appeasing all groups of people who can cause a stink and ruin your money flow” phenomenon undoubtedly blew up, they would experience a sort of immunity by having a character who is all the “wrongest” traits to be in this era of identity scrutiny, but saying all the right buzzwords and phrases, caricaturizing what “being a man who gets the struggles of marginalized people” looks like. (I know Matt and Trey generally don’t care about “having immunity”) P.C. Principal adhering to his personality 100% was a welcomed relief.
All of this is not to say that the concerns of people don’t matter- it’s not about the content at all. It’s about an artist changing their artistic output to be easily consumable by as many eyeballs as possible, for any reason other than “it’s fun”.
The artist becomes cognizant of the elements that their viewers like and feel nostalgia for the most, smashes them all into a time-constrained piece, sacrifices elements like space, quirkiness, and character development, and sends it out to be consumed, probably for lots of money. The same phenomenon happens in the music industry, around a band’s fourth album.
By falling into this trap, not only did they not achieve the goal of explaining why a situation is annoying, but they didn’t make it South Park-silly, either.
The part I hated the most was the ending- it was cheap. “Aww we talked it out and now it’s all better because we’ve accepted each other!” is a cheap ending. Apply a cheap ending to any show or movie and I will not like it. (Peaky Blinders did a cheap ending, too. Everyone’s keeping secrets from each other but they’re getting revealed the next episode! And the wife backstabbed her husband and he had to kill her!)
booooo. Cheap.
The worst part is, South Park are already masters at tackling ridiculous social phenomenons for two reasons that stick out to me: They give you a common enemy who is insufferable and lacks social awareness and boundaries, and they make the characters feel shame.
The biker episode of South Park (Season 13, episode 12) is a perfect example of how to execute what they were trying to do in The Panderverse. In this episode the main point is, “You can be a fag without being homosexual, like those annoying bikers.” The bikers are acting from an ego-validation-needing place, vroom vrooming around at all hours, being rowdy at restaurants, having no regard for anyone around them and thinking they are hot shit, and everyone in South Park hates them.
So the townspeople have a common enemy here, and a totally neutral way to present the point they are trying to make with the episode: explaining why a behavior is annoying and try to make viewers who might be participating in this behavior feel shame. THIS is the era of South Park that nailed it before having to rely solely on pop culture people (Family Guy, anyone?)
This episode had another goal: to demonstrate emotionally detaching from a word. That is generally a healthy practice. The viewer can’t not understand what they’re trying to convey at least a little bit, even if you in your real life don’t like to use the word.
More insufferable characters: Al Gore, Michael Jackson, Towelie, the D&D guy, the teenagers, the Goths… (Goth Edgar Allan Poe episode, absolute banger). The common theme is, the viewer becomes invested in their downfall.
And then regarding shame, you had episodes like, when they all go to Somalia to be pirates and the Somalian man says, “Why would anyone WANT to be a pirate?”
“Every day I dream that I can go to school. Learn about the world. But my mother, she is dyin’ of AIDS, and there is no money for medicine. My father was killed trying to find food for us. Do you know how I feel every time we try to capture a boat? Scared. And not just scared because I might get killed, but scared because if I don’t get something out of it, my family and friends are going to die. I don’t want to be a pirate. I don’t see how anybody would.”
-Galeed, South Park (Season 13, episode 7 — Fatbeard)
…which makes Butters and Ike feel like assholes.
Shame is good for people to feel. It tells us that what we believe ourselves to be and what we are actually being are not in alignment and provides us the chance to course-correct. They’re severely missing this element in The Panderverse and also went ahead and just made everyone insufferable. They don’t explain what is annoying or why. They just mock.
Do me a solid and skip down to the bold paragraph if you don’t want to hear how I would have done this episode, which I write in the next six paragraphs:
It would start with an ad for SoPa/Kenny’s House. The advertisement would be about how “socially progressive” that little spot is and have a montage of every “stereotype” you can think of, all gathered at this place playing pool or something. Then some rich Hollywood asshole comes to South Park and says, “Oh my god, the diversity! The inclusion! How would you all like to be Reality TV stars??”
It ends up being Disney, who has been making the mistake of re-making one single movie over and over with all different identity’ed people each time, and they’re running out of ideas. (“we’ve tried Asian Toy Story, we’ve tried All-Female Toy Story, we’ve tried Furry Toy Story, we’ve tried 80’s R&B Toy Story…” South Park will think of better ones, increasingly more niche)
Make the Hollywood people insufferable, and make it obvious that they’re trying too hard to get people to like them. Make it obvious they’re pandering in everyday-life ways. Like, when someone throws someone else under the bus to make them look good and the subject of their scorn look bad, in order to “bond” with you.
Maybe a Hollywood guy goes up to Jimbo and starts talking about his coworker. “I’ll take care of you if you need anything. See this guy? He thinks he’s great but he’s useless. You know how he got hired? His father was so-and-so-executive’s BANKER. Can you believe it?” And Jimbo replies with something like, “I shot a deer just outside the bank once!” And maybe all the Hollywood guys have matching tribal tattoos, and send each other pages on their beepers from across the parking lot, and the incessant beeping and loudmouthing annoys everyone.
Most importantly, make it abundantly obvious that Hollywood is a large entity thinking with dollars who doesn’t *actually* have any regard for the well-being of humans, and make the lesson: acting from a place of ego for X or Y reason is obvious and will make other people double down because they can’t stand YOU.
Then find a ridiculous way to end it. Maybe Disney cancels filming because Baby Animal Toy Story just caught on and blew up, and they realized it had nothing to do with what humans looked like all along! And they feel shame for being so shallow.
So to wrap it all up, these whole “giving a middle finger” style episodes are drifting more and more into a “formula” that I don’t respect and feel cheated by. I feel the creative product is diminishing. Panderverse is very much another writer wanting to use their highly famous platform to send a message that makes specific people feel a way. The episode in itself is a pander for validation. That part doesn’t need to be there.
Trey and Matt, if you ever read this, I’d love to be an extra idea person if you need a third party who is blissfully ignorant of the bureaucracy that the industry probably entails. I am regarding groupthink the way Jimmy is about ads. Next time you’re in Denver let’s go to Casa Bonita!
