South Park Takes on Charlottesville
As we return to our favorite foul-mouthed fourth-graders, they are asking their Amazon Tap (Alexa) to “add big hairy balls” to Cartman’s shopping list. The last time we saw them was Dec. 7 of last year, and it was certainly one of the weaker seasons of South Park’s 20 year run. They parodied big stories in the news such as the presidential election, trolling, and Collin Kaepernick’s protest. However, lots of people, from fans to reviewers, felt that the season was lacking in quality.
They start this season with the protesters of Charlottesville directly in their crosshairs, whom they’ve depicted as a bunch of confederate flag-toting rednecks whose dialogue consists of mostly “dey took er jebs (translated into “they took our jobs” for those who speak real English).” This isn’t their first appearance, however, as we’ve seen them before in season 8 in the episode “Goobacks” when a bunch of darker skinned people who didn’t speak English were coming to South Park and taking their jobs by doing them for less *wink wink.* Since they’ve returned it’s obvious that they’ve come back to protest a group that has taken their “jebs,” but instead of their anger being aimed at immigrants, people of a different race or any group of people at all, it’s aimed at Amazon’s Alexa and other various devices with similar functions. On their way to Best Buy to protest Amazon, Google and Apple, they pass Randy Marsh’s taping of his new show “White People Renovating Houses.” After two separate occasions of them ruining Randy’s show, he goes to confront them because “every time they (you) go around waving confederate flags it makes the rest of them (us) look like idiots,” so Randy decides to come up with a solution.
Cartman would learn of that solution when he returns home to find his beloved Alexa replaced with a Jim-Bob, a person with thermometers, a yellow pages book, three piles of books, a rolodex, a calendar, a calculator, a watch, and a guitar strapped to his body who is ”doot doot awaiting requests.” The best moment to come out this scene was definitely Jim-Bob singing his rendition of Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble.” Randy’s Darryl was less responsive to his requests as Darryl refused to add “Carrera subway tiles” to his shopping lists resulting in an argument between the two. When Randy later goes to Darryl’s house to talk to him, the creators used a “low barren wall” as a metaphor for these type of people. When Randy says, “the only way for progress to be made is for the wall to be broken down,” Darryl tells him “if the wall was broken down the entire second story would collapse tearing down the foundation of everything he knows. Randy explains to him that “things are different now, and it’ll be harder but he can change and that he has to demolish what’s there and start over.” Randy finds a way to solve the problem by using “adjustable steel lally columns to temporarily jack up the second floor so that the low barren wall can be replaced with a 4×6 level structural beam.” Darryl lets Randy take out the wall and renovate his house, and Darryl loves the results. Randy had won Darryl over and before ending the episode he reassured all 50 states of America that “no matter how bad the country gets, you can always count on White People Renovating Houses.”
