26x05 DikinBaus Hot Dogs

[5.8/10] I don’t know what to tell you, folks. Trey Parker may have gotten old. Where once, South Park came with a certain rebellious, anti-authority streak, the show has now turned its sights on “The younger generation is lazy and coddled, and nobody wants to work anymore”-style critiques. The criticisms of mental health days and working remotely feel like out-of-touch Boomer humor rather than the counter-cultural satire the show’s known for.

Part of me wants to give the show some credit though, since it presents the idea that people like Cartman are lazy leeches regardless of whether they’re employees or in management, and that folks like Butters are hard-working go-getters who fuel the system regardless of whether they’re service workers or angel investors. Throw in critiques of the “Took our jobs!” crowd being just as lazy as the Cartmans of the world and notions of folks at the top living high on the hog of other people’s investments only to declare that businesses can't work, and maybe there’s more to this one than some of the surface-level old man criticisms of “kids these days” seem to suggest.

Even that seems to fall into Ayn Rand-esque bullshit, where there are a few hard-workers who bring most of the talent and dedication that the rest of the world is just drafting off of. I like Butters as a character. It’s nice to see him triumph after being taken advantage of by Cartman, and to have the universe of the show reward him for his devotion and perseverance. But the presentation of him as the lone dedicated employee in a world of lazy assholes feels too backwards and dismissive for my tastes.

That said, in the world of the show, I always like to see Cartman try his crazy, manipulative schemes, only to end up receiving his just deserts. (See also: the Cartmanland episode.) The fact that Cartman gets what he’s ostensibly wanted -- a return to his old house, only for it to suck because he spent all of Butters’ money upgrading his hotdog home, is some nice poetic justice. Plus hey, I’m a longtime South Park viewer, so I’m not above chuckling at the admittedly cheap but nonetheless amusing “DikinBaus”-based humor.”

Still, while it would be naive to expect South Park to maintain its edge after a quarter-century on the air, this is one of the few times I can recall the creative team seemingly like grumpy old men, which doesn’t bode well for the show’s continuing cultural critiques.