Forecasted: Salt Showers, with Scattered Political Relevance

When Colin Kaepernick declined to stand for the national anthem at... whatever event he was at, I had a very strong response of not caring one way or another. I was so driven not to care that I found myself leaving strident comments of "WHO CARES?" on posts both condemning his supposed disrespect and praising his alleged bravery.

As you'll notice, I don't even know the details of where he was or what was going on. Was it the Olympics? A basketball game? A Kanye West show? I'm not even interested enough to ask you to tell me below in the comments.

I think one reason it didn't bother me is that I never stood for the pledge of allegiance in high school. After all, I'd spent a great deal of my life outside the US, and didn't feel (and still don't) particularly nationalistic. I have very little memory of my time spent growing up in the States, and if pressed, I can't say I identify as American, even though I'm legally a citizen by birth. I'm glad Twitter didn't exist back then, as I'm sure there'd have been a two-sided flame war regarding my early morning laziness. Besides, I'm a strong believer in free expression, and that includes the freedom not to express, which was what Kaepernick was doing by not standing.

South Park is back, and after last year's triple threat of social justice, native advertising, and PC hypocrisy, I'm back on board. This episode, Member Berries, opens with a scene very relevant to my feelings on sportsball-man's refusal to stand: A girls' volleyball match is opening to a packed house in the South Park school gymnasium, with the crowd intensely interested not in the game but in whether the one black girl on the team will sit or stand during the anthem, and immediately losing interest and leaving a total of four people in the stands once the game starts. This is mirrored later on in the episode as a proper football game takes place with the unveiling of JJ Abrams' "rebooted' national anthem, with announcers saying you'd have to be an absolute asshole not to stand during it. The camera, not coincidentally, focuses on a rather familiar-looking football player while they're saying this. In the end, Abrams' "rebooted" anthem renders the sitting or standing debate completely irrelevant, to the frustration of everyone present and to a great deal of those watching.

A subplot, particularly entertaining to anyone that had been following Gamergate or any of the culture wars of the last few years, revolves around an internet troll named "skankhunt42" harassing female students of the school. Everyone seems convinced the troll is Cartman, who is playing hard to a stereotype of virtue-signalling, complete with "Token's Life Matters" shirt and giving a speech about how funny girls are, even managing to lambaste Amy Schumer and Paul Feig in the process. Cartman goes on to fake a discriminatory assault on himself, in the hopes of bringing attention to himself and stoking hostility between the boys and girls of South Park Elementary. In short, Cartman is playing the perfect Social Justice Warrior.

Gaze upon the face of a concerned activist

A couple of storylines that may or may not go anywhere have Congress begging JJ Abrams to reboot the National Anthem (while this is paid off slightly in the episode, it's unclear whether or not it will be continued on later on), and the Trump vs Clinton references showing up again, with Hillary herself as "Turd Sandwich" and Garrison (with his running mate Caitlyn Jenner) as Giant Douche. Garrison's face has become more orange for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

Interestingly enough, the political storyline does a nice job of touching on what must be Trump's internal struggle as he considers the outlandish promises that he's made while being faced with the possibility of winning the election and having to follow through with them, albeit with South Park's trademark absurdist humour.

The episode ends with a suspenseful reveal regarding the internet troll, and the lesson (one that I don't necessarily agree with) that "Sometimes in life, you just have to suck a turd."

This wasn't as strong a start as last year's premiere, but I'm interested to see where it goes. There's been a lot of fodder from all directions for them to work with over the last year, perhaps even too much, and it's yet to be seen whether they can keep a focused story throughout the season like they did last year.

South Park: Stunning and Brave

Yes, I'm reviewing an episode of South Park. What has my life come to?

South Park has been on the air, (nearly) without hyperbole, simply forever. I remember it being  on TV when I was young, and when the movie Bigger, Longer, and Un-Cut came out I thought the show had ended. That's just the way these things work, right? You get a good run, you come back due to fan demand, you make a movie. But South Park kept on going. And going. 

I'd also be remiss if I didn't recommend playing South Park: The Stick of Truth. Excellent game.

So, with a feat few shows have pulled off (and fewer have remained consistently funny – looking at you, Simpsons), South Park enters its 19^th season with “Stunning and Brave.” This episode is going to be related thematically to episodes done by a few other animated series, namely Powerpuff Girls and My Little Pony. The cold open for this episode is perfect, introducing the new character PC Principal -- a muscled-up frat bro quoting directly from a Social Justice handbook -- calling the citizens of South Park out for previous story-lines, and giving not only Butters but Garrison detention for questioning his narrative. 

The crux of the episode revolves around Kyle (I think. I always get Stan and Kyle mixed up) and his dad being called into PC Principal's office for saying he didn't think Caitlyn Jenner was a hero. When Erin wrote about that particular topic, she asked for my input. It was four succinct words: “Not another goddamned Kardashian.” I agree with Kyle in that I'm happy that she's more comfortable in her own skin, but I don't consider her a hero, nor “stunning and brave” like the characters on the show deadpan whenever her name is mentioned. Especially entertaining learning that her personal views are quite the opposite of most people praising her. Oh, and the manslaughter thing.

Three scenes in particular stand out to me. In the first, Randy Marsh, after being conscripted into the PC Bros, is hung over at the kitchen table parroting lines fed to him in almost a cult-like manner. The second has PC Principal physically assaulting Cartman while screaming at him about the verbal violence faced by minorities. And finally, the scene where the PC Bros with Randy “check Kyle's privilege” by waking him in the middle of the night with noisemakers and filling his room with pigs covered in the word “biggit.” The first scene mirrors the cult mentality that a lot of people deep into the Social Justice movement often display, and the second two are analogous activists that attack their own best allies like Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives movement or Stephen Amell (for daring to suggest that maybe stereotyping people from Texas isn't great either) while also doxxing people, harassing them with threatening language, and trying to get people fired from jobs. The fact that the PC Bros are all straight white males who speak over minorities while ostensibly speaking for them isn't lost on me, either. 

The episode ends with an assault on the PC Bros with a baffling 4-pronged attack involving pregnant Mexican women, taco launchers, Syrian refugee children, and Jared from Subway (despite the message, this is still South Park, after all) before it's interrupted by Kyle being shamed into saying that Caitlyn Jenner is, in fact, stunning and brave and a hero simply go make the entire shitstorm stop, as has been seen often on the internet.

PC Principal is sticking around, too, which I'm happy to see. The amount of salt being mined from this episode has reached epic proportions. It's almost as if it was fine when certain people took joy in South Park taking shots at religions, at corporations, at conservatives, etc, but when they skewer people on their own side, it's suddenly “NOT COOL BRO.” I look forward to where they take this PC Principal storyline, and I think I'll be watching the show regularly again for the first time since Satan and Saddam Hussein had a musical number in a plush bed in hell.