22x08 Buddha Box

[6.9/10] Not a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination. There’s some nice observations and illustrations of the isolating effect of phone use and the way it provides people all-too-convenient breaks from the world around them. It gets a little too didactic in points (though that’s never stopped South Park before), but there’s some solid ideas about our desire to decompress making us more stressed and people taking advantage of self-diagnosed anxiety to justify crappy behavior. (Though I bristled a bit at the implication that no one has legitimate anxiety issues.)

The problem is it’s just one joke/observation hammered out to half-hour length. Cartman being Cartman about it, and taking advantage of the situation, is worth a laugh, but grows stale after a while. And I’m just kind of tired of P.C. Principal at this point. The big with him and Strong Woman and their kids being able to enjoy their forbidden love out in the open because everyone’s glued to their phones is cute, and the adventures of the P.C. Babies continues to be amusing. But P.C. Principal’s schtick itself is a little too tired at this point.

Still, there’s some decent laughs and cultural observations here, which helps make this one solid if not outstanding.