While South Park’s six-episode season 25 was a mixed bag, stronger than the show's weakest outings but still burdened with a few episodes that seemed like filler. The show’s shorter run did not stop the topical satire from taking on everything from Ukraine, to gentrification, to racism and cultural appropriation.
However, South Park season 25’s scattershot writing meant that not all of the show’s satirical blows landed. Despite the season’s extreme brevity, at least half of the episodes included in South Park season 25 had all the hallmarks of padding, with even perfectly able outings such as “Help, My Teenager Hates Me!” being middling efforts for the show's usual standard. In 2022, South Park’s strongest jokes came instead from its two-part feature-length special The Streaming Wars, released months after season 25 ended.
Like season 25, South Park: featured some weak gags and ill-considered material. However, the two-part special was also more consistent in its messaging, faster-paced, and more inventively plotted than South Park season 25, with the special boasting a level of focus that was absent from the six-episode season earlier in the year. Thus, although South Park season 25 was one of the show’s shortest outings ever, it is worth asking whether or not this was a bad thing before South Park season 26 arrives. If South Park's feature-length specials are stronger in of both character writing and comedy, then the show could be better off prioritizing these in the future and producing more of the show’s shorter seasons as a result.
Why South Park Season 25 Was So Short
As part of the show’s historic August 2021 deal with Paramount Plus, South Park’s creators promised 14 feature-length specials like The Streaming Wars parts 1 and 2 as well as a further six new seasons of the series. The pre-pandemic South Park season 23 consisted of ten normal episodes while 2020—2021’s season 24 consisted of four feature-length specials. South Park season 25, meanwhile, featured 6 episodes and 2 specials (The Streaming Wars parts 1 & 2). Since the longer, more ambitious Streaming Wars saga was a bigger undertaking, it is reasonable to assume that South Park season 25’s run was cut short to allow the creators to focus on the special. This would explain why there were no normal episodes in season 24, with South Park’s creators instead working on four feature-length specials that comprised the entire season (although the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on television production schedules likely also played a role in this decision).
South Park’s Specials Are Getting Better
With the special managing to both improve Randy Marsh’s characterization and fix South Park’s Tegridy Farms plot, The Streaming Wars was the most cohesive feature-length streaming outing of the show so far. The two-part special improved on the two-part "Post-Covid" saga while the "Post-Covid" saga itself was an improvement on "The South ParQ Vaccination Special," with a clearer satirical throughline and a more ambitious story than its predecessor. Meanwhile, the first special "The Pandemic Special" remains the weakest of the bunch, providing further proof that the creators of South Park have been fine-tuning their ability to tell a longer, more immersive story over the last two years and rediscovering some of their ambition and wit in the process.
South Park’s Regular Episodes Are A Mixed Bag
There is no doubt that the creators of South Park haven’t lost their touch entirely when it comes to the show’s regular outings. Season 25 featured some classic South Park outings like "Back To The Cold War," a superb skewering of the international media’s hawkish reaction to the prospect of war. However, even in its six-episode run, South Park season 25 found time for weaker outings like "Credigree Weed St Patrick’s Day Special," whose muddled attempts at anti-cancel culture satire managed to say very little despite dominating the episode’s plot. South Park season 25 also included middling efforts like "Help My Teenager Hates Me" and "The Big Fix," weaker outings that would have been fine in a stronger season but stood out due to the season's brevity. Meanwhile, South Park season 23 was often outright bad, containing the transphobic and outdated "Board Girls," the pointless "Tegridy Farms Halloween Special," and the show’s weakest holiday outing so far, "Christmas Snow."
Why South Park’s Specials Beat Its Regular Episodes
Unlike the show’s regular episodes, South Park’s specials allow the show to comment on current events with more specificity and structure. The Streaming Wars satire of cryptocurrency and the celebrities who promote it, for example, packed more of a punch than many of season 25’s weekly outings. The special's longer production process allowed the creators of South Park to observe the NFT/cryptocurrency bubble for some months before mocking the phenomenon on the show, resulting in sharper satirical blows. Although the special arrived after the initial NFT craze had largely died down, the brutal dismissal of celebrities promoting the trend as soulless, dignity-free sellouts was as strong as South Park’s best satire. South Park’s strongest jokes come not from the show’s ability to comment on the news as it happens but from the show’s ability to take a definitive stance on issues (something missing from the more anodyne quick-response satirical institution Saturday Night Live).
Particularly when South Park season 25’s mistakes, resulting in a shorter, sharper South Park season 26 and more feature-length specials sooner.