<em>South Park</em> Doubled Down With Roasts of Trump, ICE, and Kristi Noem

Leave it to South Park to use a masturbation pun to say something insightful about keeping your soul intact. A few short weeks after South Park pulled its knives out against Donald Trump—seemingly inspired by parent company Paramount bending a knee to the presidency by cancelling Late Show with Stephen Colbert to seal its billion-dollar Skydance merger—the infamously offensive, crudely drawn animated series extended its carnage to a rotten culture Trump 2.0 hath wrought.

Manosphere podcasters, Jubilee "debates," ICE raids (again), rising costs of living, even a nod to our death by a thousand monthly subscriptions—all of it is wrapped up together in "Got a Nut," the second episode of season 27 (sheesh). Oh, and Superman's dog Krypto is shot down over a Mar-a-Lago that looks an awful lot like Fantasy Island. South Park is back in more ways than one, with its signature libertarian venom spewing to a specific side of the political aisle that arguably deserves it most—because if we don't, we're doomed.

Episode 2 begins with Clyde eclipsing Eric Cartman's spot as South Park Elementary's resident provocateur. Clyde has made a name for himself in the manosphere as an obnoxious podcast host who drops "truth bombs" on women, Black people, abortion, and "the Jews" between sweaty gulps of sponsored health supplements. Cartman is livid that someone has stolen his schtick; watching him blow a gasket over #RespectClydesAuthority is easily one of the episode's funniest punchlines.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mackey is let go as school counselor due to widespread budget cuts. Because a monthly "nut" (so coined by Clyde) is more expensive than ever, Mr. Mackey accepts a job with ICE, taking orders to round up Mexicans under Kristi Noem. Speaking of barking, creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone are obviously disgusted by Noem, depicting her as a trigger-happy puppy murderer with a sentient, detachable face, necessitating a team of plastic surgeons to fix her up like an Formula One pit crew. These two plots collide in Mar-a-Lago, overseen by the new Saddam-flavored Donald Trump. (South Park seems determined to run with their new Trump as a hedonistic dictator until their feet bleed.) The Florida resort is straight-up Fantasy Island; J.D. Vance is Tattoo, a genius take that will most likely fly over South Park's sizable zoomer audience.

Where the season 27 premiere felt freshly ripped from the headlines, the second episode takes broader swaths at the moment's milieu than any one news item. (We are mercifully spared from hearing any more about Sydney Sweeney's jeans, though my gut tells me that's a sleeping giant set to wake up soon enough.) Still, South Park is keen to keep up its momentum as one of the few outspoken critics of the Trump regime left standing. It doesn't matter that South Park has never been part of the #Resistance, and has gleefully agitated liberals and leftists for a long time. What matters is that South Park still has daggers for teeth, and at a time when mainstream Democrats are too chickenshit to offend anyone, let alone the opposition, it's a welcome opportunity that South Park can—and when provoked, will.

Call me crazy on this one, but I have to put it out there: Is South Park turning Eric woke? These last two episodes have planted seeds for a major shift in the show's mascot. For decades Cartman has been the avatar of ironic TV, a (literally) two-dimensional cartoon character whose outrageous appeal comes from the fact that he's so awful, so abrasive, even so immature (even for a fourth grader) that you can't help but love him a little. The one constant in South Park has been the certainty that Eric Cartman is out for himself. Even Kenny's million deaths haven't stuck; Cartman scheming for his own benefit has.

Cartman was birthed into a world where offending people was not the norm, but a norm. His notoriety sprung from how you didn't see or hear people talk like Eric Cartman outside the confines of Comedy Central. There was even a time when Cartman began to fossilize, becoming a relic of late '90s bawdiness. (A.k.a. When no one blinked South Park shared airtime with Girls Gone Wild ads.)

28 years later, plenty has changed. People do talk like Eric Cartman now, and they have become the president. While I don't expect Cartman to actually advocate for trans rights, bodily autonomy for women, and/or properly-funded public education and transit—well, stranger things have happened in South Park. Cartman's whole deal has been to be the needle sticking out from the plywood. What happens to Cartman when others steal his thunder? How do you resist the flow when the flow is going your way? Cartman might have been listening to NPR for the wrong reasons, but he still wants them on the air. I have half a mind to think that Cartman—and all of South Park—will go "woke," at least on its own terms, and for no reason other than it will offend some people.

Now that's what I call a master stroke.