South Park (Not Suitable for Children) 2023

[8.0/10] So fun story. When I was a kid, my parents forbid me from watching South Park. This was at the peak of the show’s controversial rep, and they’d read the usual horror stories in the local news about how it was poisoning the minds of today’s youth.

But hey, it was cool! It was a cartoon! It starred kids! Everyone was talking about it! There were t-shirts! One of the WWF wrestlers carried around a giant Cartman plush! So I did what any kid would do. I snuck onto the computer when my parents were otherwise occupied and watched clips online.

Which is all to say that it’s funny (and I think, deliberately self-referential) for South Park, of all shows, to do an episode about content built behind the facade that it’s only intended for adults, with the wink-wink/nudge-nudge of the knowledge that kids will consume and absorb it. Part of the gag here is that, even nearly three decades after its debut, the show is showing penises and gore and other raunchy material that would have caused the pearl-clutchers of the 1990s to blow a gasket, with the knowledge that kids will undoubtedly watch it. The irony does not seem to be lost on the show’s creative team.

Only, for once, South Park seems to have some qualms about the idea of adult content reaching and influencing children. And I don’t know what it says about me, the show, or the way time makes fools of us all that I’ve gone from being a kid who watches puerile comedy behind my parents back to sharing those same concerns about what messages and influences are making their way to kids these days.

The “Not Suitable for Children” special is right to point out that the current culture of online influencers mixes hollow affirmations with conspicuous product placement. They’re right to point out that it blends self-esteem, social standing, and consumerism in ways that lead to uncomfortable arms races and badges of self-worth for young people. They’re right to point out that a raft of pornography makes its way to kids, and they’re right to worry about the effect that firehose might have on minors (or miners).

I want to remember what I thought when was going online and watching ribald cartoons: that kids are smarter than adults give them credit for, that not everybody buys into fads and school reputation bullshit, that young people know when they’re being shilled to, that they’re not so naive or susceptible to manipulation, that they’re swimming in hormones and need safe outlets for them, that they can separate fantasy from reality.

I want to credit those opinions, that I imagined still exist in some form of another with today’s young adults, and I remember how infantilizing it felt to have the grown-ups of the world feel the need to protect us from things deemed “too naughty” or “too real.”

But I’m also cognizant that what was a trickle when I was growing up is now a downpour. I’m cognizant of the horrid shit I saw online and the soulless, South Park-admiring edgelords who practically ran corners of the internet at the time. To date myself even further, I’m cognizant of begging my parents to get me JNCO jeans and No Fear t-shirts, because I thought I just had to have them to be cool like everybody else. And I’m cognizant of the effect a lot of that B.S. had on me, some of which it took a long time to shake off.

So I dunno, I’m a cranky old man now. I clutch my own pearls and worry about shitbags like Logan Paul having a tremendous following among kids in the way my parents worried about South Park. I worry about the garbage that's sold to children via the trojan horse of manufactured authenticity and social status. And as hilarious as it is to show old timey pictures of mineworkers flashing their junk, I worry about kids seeing the ocean of smut out there and not just getting the wrong ideas about sex and sexuality, but deciding they want to try this at home.

Sunrise, sunset. The mischievous scamp who snuck online to watch forbidden cartoons grows up to be the hand-wringing chump concerned about the minefield of unsavory influences shotgunned at today’s kids. And the television show that made its bones on knowingly producing crude and bawdy content it knew kids would watch in exchange for ad dollars is now making hilarious but seemingly sincere polemics about the current institutions that are doing the same. It all comes full circle, I suppose.

This is all to say that, unlike the last regrettable special, this one hit home in terms of its perspective, even if I felt the irony, and a little queasiness, at agreeing South Park’s seeming “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” stance.

Even if you feel more like my younger self, this is also just a quality episode on the merits! I kind of love the Clyde story, even apart from the messaging involved. It’s rare that someone on South Park evokes genuine sympathy, but by god, you feel legitimately bad for Clyde when his parents understandably don’t want him drinking junked up sugar water, when his idol is telling him that sugar water is exactly what he needs to truly be himself, and when there’s unfathomable amounts of peer pressure at school to do just that.

South Park walked that territory before in the “Chinpokomon” episode, with a little more irreverent cynicism and a little less incisive sophistication. But the thrust remains the same. You sympathize with Kyle for feeling left out, and you sympathize with Clyde for the same. The moment when the boys expose his rare bottle of Cred as containing nothing but apple juice is quietly heartbreaking for the poor kid, in a way little is.

You feel for his quest to try to get int he good graces of his peers. You feel for the alienated young people in his palace still trying to belong. You feel for the struggles he goes through to get a different rare bottle and the carnage that ensues. You get him wondering if all of this insanity is worth it. And you feel for him, as Wendy did in the social media episode, giving in and participating anyway because he feels like he can't beat the system.

I don’t know. This episode is something of a tragedy in a way that few South Park episodes are. I may be a crusty, heartless old man now, but I remember what it’s like to be a kid like Clyde, and something about it still hits home.

Thankfully, Randy’s story is there to bring the laughs. I may not be as mature as I think, because even though it’s the same joke over and over, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at Randy trying to get to the top of the OnlyFans charts by flaunting his, shall we say, unremarkable equipment. His obsession with climbing the ranks of influencers, his naivete about his own appeal, and the way he doesn’t care about Sharon showing off the goods or sleeping with other men so long as he’s still getting more views and followers than her is all classic Randy manchild shtick. I don’t necessarily need the “beat my wife” double entendre, but I dunno. “Dumb middle aged dad tries to become an online exhibitionist megastar” is a premise just loony enough to tickle my funny bone.

Along the way, there’s a strong vein of satire. The ecosystem of conspicuous consumption at South Park Elementary mixed with the liquid garbage the Logan Pauls of the world are slinging has bite. The sense of false scarcity and exclusivity are topics South Park has hit before (see also: Cartman’s theme park and the mobile game episode), but they still work here.

The open secret that these various avenues reach kids despite nominally being aimed at adults, and that various forces, both benign and malign, are bidding to bake their messages into that content, is as strong a polemic as South Park’s issued in a long time. And as silly as the presentation is, Randy’s realization that kids see mature content and are inspired to try the same trick is, likewise, as direct a warning as the show’s issued in years.

Apart from the themes, and despite my reservations about South Park reverting to “everything’s a secret giant conspiracy” as the end to all its stories, I love the swerve of the ending here. The twist that it is, in fact, Clyde’s stepmom who’s somehow behind this influencing industrial complex, in the hopes of being a “good influence” on her stepson, is both just wholesome enough and just absurd enough to work for me. It too brings things full circle, and is a more satisfying answer to the episode’s big mystery than I might have expected, one much better than a random boogeyman.

What can I say? I don’t think South Park has lost its “cred” just yet, even as it turns the table a bit, and accuses others of corrupting the youth. But there is something kind of cosmic about the onetime source of so much parental concern, one that fiercely defended unfettered free speech, using its platform to ask if we’re okay with the messages now burrowing into the brains of young folks.

It feels weird for me to be on the other side of that fence too. But maybe all this hand-wringing is for nothing. After all, I watched tons of South Park when I was growing up, and I turned out alright, didn’t I? Uh...didn’t I?