8.5/10. I'm impressed at how South Park was able to stick the landing here. It's a little convoluted, I'll admit, but connecting gentrification, PC culture, and advertisements with the idea that this type of sanitized world, in both speech and environment, is the place where ads thrive, was an interesting way to tie it altogether. It's still a little forced, but with all the build up, it also feels earned.
I was a little wary when they brought guns into the story, not because I object to any particular take on the issue, but because this season, the show's second attempt at crafting a season-long plot, was already starting to feel pulled in different directions between the PC theme and the ad conspiracy and throwing in yet another hot button issue into the mix could have made it hard to come to a good resolution.
But instead, it was a delightful argument from absurdity - the way in which everyone having guns nigh-magically solved everyone's problems without anything devolving into violence. In classic South Park style, the kinds of disputes that guns could resolve just kept escalating, to enjoyably irreverent levels. It was, frankly, the funniest way to satirize the gun debate, by taking the "everyone would be safer if they had guns" argument to a ridiculous extreme, and it actually worked well to help resolve the bigger story.
And the finale did a good job at bringing in several details of the season so far, from Kyle remembering that he doesn't give speeches, to Butters and his Canadian girlfriend, to even Tweek and Craig walking together in the hallway. I'd be lying if I said that it was all completely coherent, or dovetailed perfectly, but Matt & Trey clearly made an effort to connect all the various issues and story beats they'd touched on this year, and the end result was satisfying, even if it's hard to nail down a central thesis for the whole thing.
It's clear that the folks behind the show object to ads, and on the line between real content and paid promotions, but it's not necessarily clear what their position on PC culture is. On the one hand, Nathan's speech to Jimmy seems to suggest that they're against it on the basis that environments where we don't allow people to push each others' buttons or offend anyone foster the type of anodyne world in which advertisements seem to flourish. But in the end, PC Principal is still around, and presented as the vanguard against the ads. Maybe it's Matt & Trey acknowledging the complexity of these issues, or maybe it's just them trying to tell an enjoyable, entertaining, and laugh-worthy story regardless of whether it fits into a coherent philosophy, and in that, I think they succeeded.
Season 19 will certainly go down as one of the landmark seasons in this show's storied history. It was ambitious, trying a mode of storytelling that the show had only attempted in smaller bites in prior years, and had some of the series' most salient and resonant social commentary in years. The execution was not quite flawless, but it was still very well done, and delved deeper into the topics the show took aim at than in past years. You'd be hard pressed to label Season 19 as anything but a rousing success.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2015-12-10T05:23:35Z
8.5/10. I'm impressed at how South Park was able to stick the landing here. It's a little convoluted, I'll admit, but connecting gentrification, PC culture, and advertisements with the idea that this type of sanitized world, in both speech and environment, is the place where ads thrive, was an interesting way to tie it altogether. It's still a little forced, but with all the build up, it also feels earned.
I was a little wary when they brought guns into the story, not because I object to any particular take on the issue, but because this season, the show's second attempt at crafting a season-long plot, was already starting to feel pulled in different directions between the PC theme and the ad conspiracy and throwing in yet another hot button issue into the mix could have made it hard to come to a good resolution.
But instead, it was a delightful argument from absurdity - the way in which everyone having guns nigh-magically solved everyone's problems without anything devolving into violence. In classic South Park style, the kinds of disputes that guns could resolve just kept escalating, to enjoyably irreverent levels. It was, frankly, the funniest way to satirize the gun debate, by taking the "everyone would be safer if they had guns" argument to a ridiculous extreme, and it actually worked well to help resolve the bigger story.
And the finale did a good job at bringing in several details of the season so far, from Kyle remembering that he doesn't give speeches, to Butters and his Canadian girlfriend, to even Tweek and Craig walking together in the hallway. I'd be lying if I said that it was all completely coherent, or dovetailed perfectly, but Matt & Trey clearly made an effort to connect all the various issues and story beats they'd touched on this year, and the end result was satisfying, even if it's hard to nail down a central thesis for the whole thing.
It's clear that the folks behind the show object to ads, and on the line between real content and paid promotions, but it's not necessarily clear what their position on PC culture is. On the one hand, Nathan's speech to Jimmy seems to suggest that they're against it on the basis that environments where we don't allow people to push each others' buttons or offend anyone foster the type of anodyne world in which advertisements seem to flourish. But in the end, PC Principal is still around, and presented as the vanguard against the ads. Maybe it's Matt & Trey acknowledging the complexity of these issues, or maybe it's just them trying to tell an enjoyable, entertaining, and laugh-worthy story regardless of whether it fits into a coherent philosophy, and in that, I think they succeeded.
Season 19 will certainly go down as one of the landmark seasons in this show's storied history. It was ambitious, trying a mode of storytelling that the show had only attempted in smaller bites in prior years, and had some of the series' most salient and resonant social commentary in years. The execution was not quite flawless, but it was still very well done, and delved deeper into the topics the show took aim at than in past years. You'd be hard pressed to label Season 19 as anything but a rousing success.