Spoilers below for anyone who hasn't seen tonight's episode of South Park.
South Park has long been known for being one of the most topical comedies on TV, with creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker busting their ass every season to deliver episodes that comment on headline-earning events of the oh-so-recent past. There is no bigger headline in the United States right now than Donald Trump's election victory, so it was a no-brainer that South Park would have some particularly sharp barbs to pepper viewers with. That it did, though the episode wasn't quite as scathing as expected, perhaps due to a complete overhaul in material.
Season 20 of South Park has focused largely on the presidential battle happening between Hillary Clinton and Mr. Garrison, the show's Donald Trump stand-in running on a platform of fucking people to death. It appears Stone and Parker were extremely optimistic that the Democratic hopeful would win out, as the episode was originally called "The Very First Gentleman" and was centered on Bill Clinton. The episode even started with an ill-advised victory party at Clinton headquarters, and when the official results came in with Mr. Garrison as the winner, somebody shot himself in the head in the background. I guess that part was predictably scathing.
Following last night's Trumpified results, the show's creative team went into high gear on revising the episode's content to account for the G.O.P. candidate winning, with the title's change to "Oh Jeez" one of presumably many alterations. The former POTUS did show up throughout the episode, both let us know that Hillary is "pi-i-i-i-i-i-i-issed" and to invite all the school boys to join his Gentleman's Club, which also features Bill Cosby as a member. Can't forget about that guy.
Instead of winning the Presidency in South Park, Hillary Clinton is now convinced that the election was stolen from her, and she brings in the "talents" of Kyle's dad Gerald, who has been operating as the deplorable online troll Skankhunt42. Or does she? Gerald thinks he's digging into the Danish hacking site TrollTrace, but he was inevitably just being set up by the former First Lady via a rick-roll. Never gonna sympathize with Skankhunt42. Never gonna...
This series has been quite harsh to Donald Trump in the past, or at least an unspecified version of Donald Trump, but "Oh Jeez" was less about poking fun at Mr. Garrison, who is now fine with being President, and more about the viewpoint that Garrison/Trump in office will be a travesty for women. We see Hillary threaten revenge on men who have wronged her, we see Bill Clinton's Gentlemen's Club explained as a place for bad boys to reverse their behavior to make women happy, and we also saw old Bill getting real in a chat with boy's rights activist Butters. As he puts it so eloquently, "Women are sick of our shit, son."
But it's Randy, who's now back on Member-Berries after having Caitlyn Jenner vomit some all over him, that gets the episode's most poignant line. While trying to soothe his daughter Shelly that the Giant Douche won't be so bad, he makes this observation about the campaign season.
We've learned that women can be anything. Except for president.
So if South Park is setting itself up for a Garrison-run country that has Hillary Clinton on a coast-to-coast mission to drive out misogyny, I'm all for it. While not as strong of an episode as one that would have aired just a week later, "Oh, Jeez" proved once again that Matt Stone and Trey Parker are unparalleled when it comes to creating scripted television. Even a bad South Park episode is more hilarious than the majority of anything airing right now, and there haven't had any bad episodes in a long time. I cannot wait to see what happens next.
South Park airs Wednesday nights on Comedy Central. If only creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker would come to an agreement with Comedy Central to put out an episode every single week of Donald Trump's presidency. That probably won't happen, but you can head to our fall TV schedule and our midseason premiere schedule to see what the small screen has to offer in the coming months.
