Naturally, this approach had its benefits and drawbacks. The sheer novelty of watching a season where each episode led directly into the next can't be ignored. South Park has been on the air for two decades now, and creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have to keep taking risks lest the show go down the same route as The Simpsons or Family Guy. The emphasis on continuity also allowed Parker and Stone to continuously build on ideas and gags, pushing the show in progressively trainer and more surreal directions over the course of these ten episodes.On the other hand, that approach didn't allow for a great deal of variety. Each week focused on the same themes and, for the most part, the same subject matter. The episodes tended to blur together after a while because there were so few distinguishing elements. That certainly wasn't a deal-breaker, but it would have been nice to have at east one or two episodes that deviated from the formula. It's no coincidence that Season 19's best episode was "Tweek x Craig," the one that best worked as a standalone adventure in addition to furthering the overarching narrative.
Unsurprisingly, the impending US Presidential election was a major focus this year. Season 19 basically set the stage for a proper election parody already, with Mr. Garrison quitting his teaching job to run for office on a fiercely anti-immigration platform. If it wasn't obvious then that Garrison was being positioned as a stand-in for Donald Trump, it certainly was once he started sporting an orange spray tan and screaming at Hillary Clinton every week. This season also revived the "Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich" gag that so aptly summed up the 2004 Presidential election.
It's interesting to re-examine how the season handled Garrison/Trump in light of the - to put it politely - unexpected outcome of the election. You have to wonder if Parker and Stone have any regrets over the "Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich" revival, though in any case, it more or less faded away after a few episodes as it became clear that Parker and Stone were much more interested in lampooning Trump than his rival. Sure, the season got in some good digs at Clinton, including her lack of charisma and tendency to over-prepare for debates, but she became less and less a focus over time.
The first half of the season focused a great deal on Garrison's political cold feet. The closer he got to actually winning, the more he was terrified at the prospect of having to lead. The political humor was very insightful here, especially as the show focused less on criticizing Trump himself and more on the hypocrisy surrounding the idea that his lewd sexual comments would make voters nervous where his various other offensive remarks didn't.
And then the season was forced to make a hard 180 once the election unfolded and Trump was crowned President-elect of the United States. It's obvious from watching "Oh, Jeez...", the first post-election episode, that some last-minute edits had to be made to account for this real-life "twist" ending. A subplot involving Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby forming a First Gentlemen's Club was dropped almost as soon as it appeared. But South park is nothing if not adaptable. The show's rapid production schedule allowed Parker and Stone to pivot and rework the final few episodes. If not entirely seamless, that transition was nonetheless impressive.
And it helped that the general theme of Season 20 is so universal. If political correctness was the central focus on Season 19, Season 20 was all about the dangers of nostalgia. That really permeated every branching storyline. Whether it was Garrison's rise to power, the brewing civil war between boys and girls at South Park Elementary or the rash of online trolling, this season's conflicts all arose out of a misguided desire to cling to the past and the old ways of doing business.
Nowhere was the nostalgia theme better explored than with the Member Berries. These anthropomorphic little berries were basically the mascots of Season 20, with their constant stream of "'Member Han Solo? 'Member the Death Star?" and their ability to send people into a blissful fugue of reminiscence and complacency. The season was frequently at its most hilarious and most insightful where the Member Berries were concerned. Before the end, viewers were treated to a dance club full of Member Berries and the introduction of their leader, a Godfather-esque figure hellbent on dragging humanity right back into World War II.The trolling storyline was also amusing, with Kyle's father Gerald taking on by far his most prominent role in the show's history. Like everything else, Gerald's story grew progressively more ridiculous over he course of the season, culminating with he and his fellow trolls being locked up naked in a tower while the Danish government prepared to unleash a devastating program called TrollTrace upon the world.
If there's one running story thread that didn't really work this year, it was Cartman's. Cartman was unusually mellow for most of the season, with his betrayal in the premiere basically draining him of his usual spark. It was an interesting shift for the character, but not one that ever truly paid off. Cartman's romance with Heidi and his ongoing quest to prove girls can be funny while simultaneously masking his dark online history never really took off. The good news is that Butters frequently stepped up to fill Cartman's considerable void. Butters becoming the ringleader of the South Park Elementary's meninist movement was easily one of the more inspired developments.
Season 20 had a lot working in its favor. The political satire was as sharp as ever. The nostalgia theme was very clever. The humor never stopped flowing despite the very uniform nature of episodes. Unfortunately, the finale failed to tie everything together. This is often a weakness of South Park - that running storylines don't end as strongly as they began. By the time "The End of Serialization As We Know It" rolled around, there simply wasn't room to properly tie up all loose ends. Certain story threads were more or less abandoned, with the Member Berries basically being shoved to the side with the vague promise that they'll return alongside President Garrison in Season 21. As adaptable as South Park is, there's a sense that the various third act story swerves basically boxed the show into a corner in the end.
Verdict
2016 was a strange year, and it's a good thing we had South Park to put things into perspective. Season 20 proved that South Park has lost none of its edge over the years, as the show targeted everything from Donald Trump to the dangerous allure of nostalgia. Though the finale failed to properly tie everything together, South Park's ability to adapt and course-correct to real-world developments served it well this year.
