The Why South Park's Early Seasons Had So Many Aliens (& Why It Changed)
Season 26 Brings South Park’s Earliest Joke Back
The first South Park season 26 trailer promises to return to its roots by bringing back a gag from the show’s very first episode, implying that the show could be moving back to the more irreverent tone goofier tone of earlier episodes. It is not yet clear whether season 26 will continue South Park’s weakest storyline, the Tegridy Farms plot, as the trailer gives away almost nothing about the next outing’s storyline. However, the brief trailer for season 26 does see Butters on the receiving end of an anal probe, something that happened years earlier to Cartman in the aptly-titled pilot of the series, South Park season 1, episode 1, “Cartman Gets An Anal Probe.”
While a joke about being unwillingly probed might be problematic and somewhat dated by 2023, it suggests that South Park season 26 will return to courting controversy with comedy that leans into the show's gross-out origins. This isn’t necessarily a major surprise, as South Park’s feature-length streaming movies have featured less intensely topical satire than average episodes of the show in recent years thanks to their slower production process. Not only that but, with even The Simpsons season 34 breaking TV rules to ensure the series remains relevant, it is imperative that a once-edgy show like South Park tries something new to keep up with its competitors.
South Park Season 26 Returns To The Show’s Roots
The fact that South Park season 26’s first trailer focuses on gross-out comedy rather than up-to-the-minute political satire could be evidence that the show will return to its roots in the outing. This makes a certain degree of sense given that South Park’s early seasons have fallen into the realm of classics for devoted fans, and the initial critical reception that South Park seasons 1 through 3 received upon release in the late 90s has softened thanks to nostalgia. With HBO Max’s Velma making even Scooby-Doo R-rated, South Park's edgy early years can be seen as instrumental in reshaping the landscape of television animation.
Why South Park Season 26 Needed This Change
However, in recent seasons, South Park has not always been able to celebrate its impact on the industry. In about half of season 25’s episodes, South Park’s creators struggled to come up with relevant satirical plots, and this outing only lasted a paltry 6 episodes. Fans can be reassured that South Park season 26 is revisiting a formula that it knows works (even if that might bring fresh problems more akin to their poorly considered transphobic jokes). South Park, like most television comedies, needs character comedy and unexpected surprises to keep viewers invested, and the increasingly stale political takes of season 25 already proved that South Park needed to change its approach.
South Park is at its strongest when the show keeps the comments of co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker at the forefront of its direction. Per Stone and Parker, the duo originally set out to make South Park a show about contemporary life “from the perspective of eight-year-old kids." In recent seasons, South Park has not included much of the scatological humor and inventive absurdity that this premise implies in the series, although the show’s early seasons had these qualities in spades. South Park season 26’s trailer seems to promise that the show has worked out how to bring back the inspiration of the show’s earlier, sillier seasons.