‘South Park’ Takes Aim At Trump, Paramount Days After Signing $1.5 Billion Deal With The Studio
South Park is back for it’s 27th season, and the premiere, “Sermon on the Mount”, takes the beloved series back to its roots in one of its most irreverent and relevant episodes to date.
While South Park has always kept a pulse on pop culture and current events, this episode is impeccable with its timing—tackling events as recent as the past week, after a two-year hiatus during which only three “TV specials” were aired.
Barely days after a $1.5 billion deal for exclusive global streaming rights to the series was finalized with Paramount, show runners and co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are already coming hard for their patron, as well as the current president, in this latest episode.
Cartman loves NPR?
The season kicks off with the “cancellation” of NPR, which is revealed to be a cherished part of Cartman’s morning routine. As he bemoans the loss to friends, he explains how it was the “funniest show ever”, describing the station as the place “where all the liberals bitch and whine and stuff” and laughing as he recounts serious hard news topics.
But this revelation ultimately leads to an identity crisis for Cartman, where the death of “woke” and the general acceptance of “offensive” speech leaves him without any relevance or originality. “I’m not special anymore,” he confesses, before threatening to kill himself and Butters out of desperation, a murder-suicide plot he mistakenly refers to as a suicide pact.
In a way, he becomes a symbolic stand-in for the show itself, posing meta/existential questions about where a show like South Park stands in this political climate, and whether its outrageous dialogue, once obviously only comedically incendiary, loses its edge when more and more public and online rhetoric and hate speech now mirror with sincerity what was once intentionally ironic.
A name change for PC Principal
Meanwhile, Randy and Stan Marsh are contending with the social side effects of woke’s “death”, and PC Principal has become “Power Christian Principal”, summoning the children to a mandatory assembly where he announces Jesus Christ’s return to the school. When Stan shares the news around the family dinner table Randy asks “What’s Jesus doing in your school?” and posits, “I don’t think Jesus is allowed to be in your school.”
Tackling this topic in such an explicitly literal way makes the satire of even funnier. Instead of diving into the minutiae of recently passed state laws (and proposed laws), Parker and Stone go right for the broader debate on the separation of church and state, which plays out via a hilarious exchange between Randy and ChatGPT, who he speaks to lovingly while completely ignoring his wife Sharon who lies next to him, annoyed, in bed.
The next day Stan is accused of “bullying” Jesus by not letting him sit at his lunch table (his defense is that there was no more room), and Power Christian Principal threatens to expel him if his doesn’t accept Christ into his heart, his school, and his lunch table. When Stan rebuts that the threat is illegal, PC Principal says, “This is 2025, OK? And not much is illegal.”
There’s a new president in town
In light of these developments, the townspeople turn into an angry mob and direct their ire at the president, first showing up at Mr. Garrison’s house in an homage to the Trumpian parodies of seasons 20 – 24, and then unveiling this season’s major reveal, an animated Trump with a photo-realistic head.
He talks to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and the Prime Minister of Canada, and dances among supporters to a swanky song whose lyrics are “We’re bringing back Christ / There’s money in Christ / Bringing back Christ / Christ makes the money”. The criticism could not be any clearer. For South Park, ideological shifts tie back to politics, and politics are all tied up in profit.
They elaborate further by depicting the president as ready to sue everyone and anyone at a moment’s notice, from the entire town of South Park, to a painter whose nude portrait of Trump as Caesar doesn’t meet his expectations, to Satan himself, who is waiting for Trump in bed, a bit the show made famous during its portrayals of Saddam Hussein, which Satan references by saying, “I need counseling” and “You remind me of this other guy I used to date”.
Following the media money
Then Parker and Stone jump right into current events, touching on the public outrage over the infamous Epstein list, and depicting 60 Minutes as a literal ticking time bomb in the wake of their $16 million settlement with Trump over their Kamala Harris interview. The newscasters and reporters are visibly anxious and hesitant to speak, starting every sentence with fillers like “Ah—Oh, God” because they are so afraid of causing a new offense.
Meanwhile, back at the school, Jesus ties all of the satire together for the townspeople (and us as viewers) while appearing to distribute bread/communion to everyone. He begins whispering aggressively, telling people to “shut up” and “just eat the bread” while he explains that his presence at the school was not by choice, rather an obligation stemming from a law suit and agreement with…you guessed it, Paramount:
The guy can do whatever he wants now that someone backed down, OK? Eat the bread. Eat the bread. You guys saw what happened to CBS? Yeah, well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount! Do you really wanna end up like Colbert? You guys gotta stop being stupid.
The reference to last week’s announcement that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will not be renewed by CBS/Paramount, just over two weeks after the settlement announcement, is pointed. While the media company cited financial reasons for the decision, many where quick to suggest that this was yet another capitulation to the president (who posted “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired” on his Truth Social account) ahead of the studio’s proposed merger with Skydance, which is currently under review with the FCC, whose commissioners are appointed by, you guessed it, the president.
The laughs are dark and dismal, but absolutely hilarious. Cartman and Butters suicide attempt (sucking car exhaust through a garden hose like it’s a hookah) is squashed in a brilliant moment of dramatic irony when Stephen Stotch announces on a live news broadcast that their family is proud to own an electric vehicle.
Kyle’s father, attorney Gerald Broflovski, negotiates a similar settlement with Trump, dropping the original sum of $5 billion down to $3.5 million. As with Trump’s claim that the new owners of Paramount/CBS have promised him an additional $20 million in airtime/PSAs, Gerald announces that his fellow South Parkers will also have to provide pro-Trump messaging.
We which see Parker and Stone’s take on this idea within the episode itself with a live-action parody within a parody of Trump wandering through the desert like Jesus, stripping off his clothes until a genitalia puppet announces, “I am Donald J. Trump, and I endorse this message.”
South Park is making a bold statement
The sheer cojones and wherewithal that Parker and Stone must have had to pull this together so quickly, speaks to their experience as writers and producers. They are comedy veterans with a track record of taking on everyone and everything, so while this episode feels extremely potent and poignant, in a way it’s just another day at work for a show that’s documented social discourse for close to three decades.
The barely dried signatures on their massive deal with Paramount adds even more weight to the decision. In some ways, it seems like a declaration—We got our bag, but we’re not selling out—as if the sum came with a heightened responsibility to speak out, especially in defense of a brother-in-comedy like Colbert. Die-hard fans will be pleased with a splashy season-debut, and those viewers, like myself, who drop in for the most sensational milestone episodes will tip our hats at this duo, who have done it once again, created a stinging and satirical cultural frenzy out of four animated children in winter gear.
