Randy turned into the lead character with City Part of Town, S19E3, September 2015. Possibly my favorite episode in recent years. Cartman kinda had an apotheosis moment with S18E9-E10, in the Cartman Brah arc where he becomes a YouTube star commenting on the show.
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The Great Weirding on South Park is marked by 6 clear evolutions 1. Randy elevated, Cartman trancended 2. Principal Victoria —> PC Principal 3. South Park gentrifying 4. Garrison morphed to Trump and *sidelined* 5. Season arcs >> episode arcs 6. Climate skepticism 180
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I initially didn’t like Garrison as Trump, but with the sidelining, it now seems like a brilliant move. It would have been bad if he’d remained a foreground character. It also kinda finessed the show’s flirtations with transphobia elegantly since that was the old character arc.
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This is actually a good generalizable playbook for surviving the great weirding with identity integrity
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1. Let go inner asshole child, embrace inner asshole adult 2. Fight woke with ironic overcompliance 3. Lean into and own globalist coastal elitism 4. Go around the culture war, not through 5. Play the longer game 6. Do a 180 on one major belief
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S20 (2016, tracking the election) is still kinda too hard to rewatch, same as the Osama bin Laden episode right after 9-11. I haven’t rewatched either since the original. Speaks to the power of looking unflinchingly at the zeitgeist, even if it makes your artistic response weak.
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Oh forgot a 7th item. 7. Death of Satan Generalized playbook version is: 7. Kill Satan. The 19th century merely killed God and Time. The 21st century has topped that by killing the devil. Much bigger achievement.
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Another point: the
#cancelsouthpark promotion demonstrates just how confident they are that they’ve gotten inside OODA loop of the great weirding. Kudos. They’ve stayed true to artistic vision despite taking positions that would have gotten lesser shows actually canceled.Show this thread -
Unlike the sad losers who whine about being censored they’ve managed to say exactly what they want, thumb their noses at both the alt right and wokeleban, and keep telling an entertaining story. They never lost sight of the importance of actually entertaining.
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While I think Rick and Morty has taken over artistic leadership of the genre of adult satire cartoons, South Park I think has cemented its position as the boldest show and only indexical perspective for the era. Ie it offers the only successful viewpoint on the weirding
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