Review: South Park Is Somehow Still Good in the Age of Hyperpoliticization

"It's not that South Park suddenly quote got political. It's that politics became pop," co-creator Trey Parker said in a recent interview.

The animated TV comedy South Park continues to do the impossible: stay punchy and relevant after decades on the air. The latest five-episode season, streaming on Paramount+, once again follows the fourth-graders of South Park Elementary as they navigate a world increasingly obsessed with technology and everything political.

While shows like The Simpsons have suffered greatly from leaning into "ripped from the headlines" storytelling, South Park excels at focusing on the topical. For whatever reason, putting the people of South Park into the middle of ICE raids, right-wing podcaster wars, and controversies over whether Donald Trump is "fucking Satan" just works better. The show is definitely more explicitly political than earlier seasons. But then again, so is life. "It's not that South Park suddenly quote got political. It's that politics became pop," co-creator Trey Parker recently told Rolling Stone. If you don't want to cry about that reality, you might as well laugh at it.