Liam Hoofe reviews the seventh episode of South Park season 21…
South Park season 21 has been one of the show’s finest in years, and one of the big reasons for that, many would argue, is that it has gone back to its roots, putting the focus on the boys and their adventures, and having its social commentary take a backseat. This week’s episode, ‘Doubling Down’ was a bit of a mixed-bag, mostly because it played around with the formula that has worked so well for it so far.
It was exactly a year ago this week that hell froze over, and Donald Trump was elected as The President of the United States, and exactly a year ago this week, that same result threw South Park’s season 20 into a nosedive. Parker and Stone have, wisely, avoided Trump for the majority of this season, in recognition of the fact that satire is extremely difficult when reality is so insane. This week, however, they brought Donald Trump, sorry, President Garrison back into the mix, and it was this that was the episode’s undoing.
The episode’s main plot, though, focused on the relationship between Cartman and Heidi, the show’s only other continued storyline from last season. Cartman and Heidi were one of the weaker aspects of last season, but this year, their relationship has been a real highlight, with Cartman’s dependency on his partner provided the season with plenty of great gags. This week, however, revealed a much darker side to their relationship, exploring the way Cartman was emotionally manipulating Heidi into staying with him, while everyone else around here tried to tell her how evil he was. Cartman’s Machiavellian style antics are often incredibly disturbing to watch, and watching him trick Heidi, a vegan, into eating KFC on this week’s episode, were particularly difficult. It looked, though, as if Kyle had saved the day when he slowly managed to pry Heidi away from her abusive partner and into his arms. Cartman, being the evil genius that he is, though, once again managed to turn Heidi back over to him, in one of the show’s darker moments towards the end. It was great to see Kyle and Cartman back as enemies once again, their chemistry has provided the show with many great moments over the years, and the animated sequence inside Kyle’s head was one of the episode’s finer moments.
During the episode, it became clear rather quickly, that the episode was a thinly veiled dig at the ‘liberal elite’ and the way that they have openly mocked Trump supporters, instead of attempting to understand them or engage with them. One scene, where Heidi finally turned her back on Eric, only to have friends sit around and tell her ‘I told you so’ was one very similar to what many Trump supporters have probably experienced in the past twelve months, and it was a great piece of social satire. The elitism of certain parts of the left is something that many shows are too shy to tackle, so kudos to these guys for having the nerve to address one of the route courses of all the political crisis we find ourselves in. It is moments like that have always put South Park ahead of the curve, and after 21 seasons, not many shows have managed to be as consistently relevant as they have.
This is not where the episode fell apart, though, in-fact, the episode’s main storyline was very well handled. No, the episode fell apart when it shifted its focus to The White House, and basically just reverted to making crude jokes about the Trump administration. The problem was, that outside of an initially hilarious phone-call, the gags began to feel incredibly repetitive, and it felt as though Parker and Stone never knew where they were headed with it. Mr Garrison’s President Trump has been fairly inconsistent from the get-go and has worked much better as a side gag, like in the fantastic ‘Put it Down’ earlier in the season. That being said, there was a nice little cameo from the Member-Berries chucked in.
‘Dumbing Down’ was far from a disaster, and the vast majority of the episode really worked, it’s just a shame that Parker and Stone couldn’t resist dragging the oval office into proceedings, and in the process, turning a potentially great episode of South Park, into a fairly average one.
What did you think of ‘Dumbing Down’? Let us know in the comments below, and let Liam know on Twitter, here- @liamhoofe
Originally published November 9, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
