South Park: Post COVID: The Return of COVID 2021

[7.3/10] Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but this worked on me. I don’t expect a lot of sentiment from a cynical show like South Park. But Stan and Randy reaching some sort of understanding and forgiving one another in the rain was manipulative but effective. Stan and Kyle getting through to Cartman and their younger selves about the importance of maintaining their friendship got to me. The oversimplified but still potent noiton of cutting everybody some slack given how hard the pandemic was ended up feeling far more stirring than I expected. And all this insanity resulting in Stan and Kyle getting a Good Future:tm:along with their friends and family was downright moving.

Granted, it’s all a little cheap after the B.S. we have to sit through to get to that point. The gags about Butters being an NFT salesman now and using his pitches as a supervillain power gets tiresome quickly, even if it’s a good target. Cartman’s Foundation Against Time Travel shtick is also a go-nowhere storyline. Trey Parker working through his divorce with a cartoon hologram of an Alexa is uncomfortable (though Stan soothing it by ordering a humidifier it recommended is kind of a laugh.) Randy’s obsession with his last strange of Tegridy weed is a yawn. And all the future gags and time travel silliness runs out of gas pretty quickly.

The laughs just aren’t there, and the social insights are missing for much of this too. The special feels ambitious, but scattered trying to do too many things and bouncing around too much for any of the ideas to land with force. There’s a few good comedy bits, like Butters’ pitches running aground on the Alexas’ pitches. And though it’s been a while, I appreciate that this installment more or less wraps up the COVID storylines South Park has done for four specials now. The reach exceeds the grasp though.

Still, it ends things on a high note. I don’t know if Matt and Trey have that much to say about all this, but they do seize on a basic truth about how challenging the last few years have been for just about everyone, and how we could all stand to give one another a little more grace for it. It’s a strangely pollyanna view from a show steeped in cynicism, but it’s nonetheless heartening to imagine a future where Stan’s family is still alive and he’s happy and healthy, where Kyle has a family who are excited to see their Uncle Stan, and where Cartman, for all his fighting to preserve the future, gets the karmic comeuppance of being a grumpy bum. South Park rarely goes for the heart, but when it does, it knows how to pierce it.