On Watching “South Park” in 2026
by Sloane DiBari, Editor-in-Chief
Illustration by Margot Sher, Contributor
On September 16, South Park—I mean, uh, South America—debuted its 29th season with “South American Biker Gangs.” When the e-bike trend hits their little Colorado town, old pals Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny take to the streets with every other kid in South America. In a characteristic episode of self-righteous buffoonery, Stan’s dad, Randy, leads a group of other self-styled “cyclist” dads in the charge against the “biker gangs” wreaking havoc on their bike lanes. Shenanigans ensue.
The episode’s subject may be current, but it features longtime South Park staples, too: Cartman and Kyle wage rhetorical war against each other, the racist caricature of Tuong Lu Kim—the City Wok guy—rebrands his business as “City E-Bike,” Randy is a jackass, etc. Also, Kenny becomes a martyr for the cause of getting kids off those damn e-bikes (no one says, “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!”, though).
As such, some critics and fans are gleefully asserting that “the old South Park is back.” In his review of “South American Biker Gangs” for Deadline, Dominic Patten praised the episode’s “whacking of the pompous, the powerful and parents” that South Park has been doing since its 1997 debut. To Patten, Stone and Parker “showed exactly just how good they still are at it…call it South Park or South America, the result was still damn good.”
Was it, though? I guess it made me lightly exhale twice—first when Detective Harris expresses tentative hope that the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto VI will mitigate the menace of e-bikes, then when a news anchor, deadpan, asks a not-so-anonymous interviewee how he would respond to Kyle saying, “That fat fuck can’t even go 15 ’cause of his fat ass,” and “El Gordo” pauses before a perfectly timed “You guys talked to Kyle?”
The closest thing to a solid punchline isn’t even in the episode itself, but in a September 8 X announcement from Stone and Parker: “Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA. We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount -- a Skydance Capitulation.” It’s low-hanging fruit, funny in the way that a Clickhole screenshot is funny; you read the ridiculous headline, you think, “Wow, they really got the big corporations AND the evil orange man there!” You text it to your mom in an attempt to divert her attention from her CNN doom spiral for just one moment, she hits you with a laughing-crying emoji, and it never crosses either of your minds again.
Last fall’s Emmy-winning Season 27 debut “Sermon on the ’Mount” is the closest South Park has come to a true return to form this decade. The episode was easily Stone’s and Parker’s most audacious work in years, with highlights including a full-frontal portrait of a poorly-endowed Donald Trump and a hyperrealistic deepfake of him stumbling around naked in the desert with his marginally less lifelike micropenis as the punchline. It was, admittedly, kinda funny.
Still, “Sermon”—and the entire season’s extended attack on the Trump administration, for that matter—didn’t feel fresh then and it certainly doesn’t now. The new South Park is too pleased with itself and its legacy (note that South Park’s Trump is essentially a reincarnation of the show’s Saddam Hussein) to have any real punch. No doubt that South Park has always positioned itself as a foul-mouthed voice of reason, whose filth made it all the more righteous. Parker and Stone were like the class shitheads who are always smirking at each other and interrupting the professor in their nasally voices, who everyone hopes will get taken down a peg but never do. Even as they’re seemingly invincible, those guys are still the outsiders, and when they win again and again, it provokes something visceral in their sympathizers and haters alike. Now, Stone and Parker are just, like, your Redditor uncles who think they’re the first people ever to deride Trump for having Small Dick Energy. If the kickoff of South America is already even duller, the outlook for the rest of the season is giving nothingburger.
I feel I should clarify that I don’t actually love South Park so much as I’m generally fixated on 2000s pop culture, in which the show played a crucial role. It disgusted some and delighted others, but anyone could admit that none of its contemporaries were as provocative nor as daring. It sparked shock, outrage, and conversation in every direction. It took everything serious and unserious to its logical extreme—not to mention that it influenced American political thought to the point that “South Park Republicans” (i.e. “socially liberal, fiscally conservative,” anti-PC types) were basically their own voting block in the mid-2000s. It’s not like anyone was talking about “Family Guy centrists.”
So when people talk about the “old South Park,” I think of Cartman’s plot to keep Butters in a bomb shelter for weeks just for a chance to go to the real-life Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita (2003); Stan’s plunge into the bizarre world of Scientology, punctuated by gay jokes about its generally untethered figurehead Tom Cruise, fellow celebrity adherent John Travolta, and also R. Kelly for some reason (2005); Cartman’s search for “mature male friends” that lands him a NAMBLA membership (2000).
The outsider character that made South Park powerful in the first place (for better or for worse) is gone. There are too many people in on the joke: too many of the worst guys you know buying Kenny-shaped mugs at Spencer’s, too many parents putting their toddlers in Cartman onesies—and JD Vance, apparently, as demonstrated by an X post following his scathing portrayal in Season 27, Episode 2 (“Well, I guess I’ve finally made it”). Even a batshit insane deepfake couldn’t put South Park back on the fringe.
It’s high time for South Park to retire and for a new generation to mine our seemingly doomed world for incisive, boundary-pushing comedy (preferably without so much punching down). Maybe a couple of you Oberlin jokers will be the new and improved Stone and Parker, but until then, all these dirtbag lefty podcasts and whatever just aren’t cutting it.
