Season 21 Episode 7 — "Doubling Down"

Here’s an episode that has a message and boy do they know how to cement it. “Doubling Down” focuses on the topic of abusive relationships and how they can be compared to people’s relationships with politicians they may regret voting for. The episode is full of Cartman and Heidi relationship hi-jinks and despite the fact that I didn’t want more relationship drama in the show, I have to say they pulled it off really well in this episode.

The episode makes an interesting point about how some people will “double down” and go back to their abuser if they’re scolded by others about their decision, and they link that pretty well with the aftermath of the 2016 Election. All of Heidi’s friends at school are ripping on her for dating Eric Cartman, the fat racist kid at school. Even though Heidi breaks up with Eric at one point during the episode, her friends STILL won’t let her hear the end of it. Heidi defends herself saying stuff like “I was just following what I believed at the time” but it’s not enough for her girl friends or for anyone else at the school. The mocking causes her to go back to Cartman, almost to spite everyone else so they can’t say “I told you so!” This plot line is very reminiscent of how people seem to be treating Trump voters nowadays, even if they regretted voting for Trump in the first place.

The episode seems to say that the more people mock someone’s choices or decisions and the more condescending you are to people with different political opinions as you will cause that person to turn around and go right back to their “abuser” as a way of trying to prove that they didn’t make a mistake at all.

It’s a heavy topic for “South Park” to touch on but they did it exceptionally well, they even had a few scenes in the White House and how Mr. Garrison/Trump is an abusive ass to the staff at the White House, particularly Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell. They all show signs of fear and are scared to speak out or ditch the White House due to Garrison’s presence, painting the link between abusive relationships and Trump supporters.

But was the episode funny? That’s the most important question, at the end of the day “South Park” is a comedy and while they handle drama and heavy social topics very well the episodes always have to be funny. This episode focuses a lot more on the message but they always have great little moments in the dialogue, Mr. Garrison as the President has the best lines in the entire episode. There’s also a really great moment when Cartman finds out his friend Kyle has been dating his ex-girlfriend behind his back and it’s a great homage to the “Pink Elephants on Parade’ scene from the movie “Dumbo.”

(skip to 0:42 for the "Dumbo" sequence)

Season 21 Episode 8 — "Moss Piglets"

This episode seemed to promise something to the audience but didn’t deliver in full by the time it aired. All the promotional material showed fan-favorite characters Jimmy and Timmy along with their rivals Nathan & Mimsy. Nathan & Mimsy have only been in two episodes but they’re some of my favorite characters, they have the relationship of a classic Looney Tunes bad guy and his bumbling sidekick. Nathan is the scheming villain while Mimsy is his bumbling henchman.Their portrayals can be seen as pretty offensive since they’re developmentally disabled children, but “South Park” doesn’t shy away from anything. There’s no such thing as *too* controversial for “South Park,” meaning they portray the handicapped like Looney Tunes in some episodes (Season 14 episode 7 and Season 18 Episode 4)..fortunately for those easily offended, this episode didn’t focus on these kids as much as I thought it would.

The episode opens up with the school preparing for the Special Ed Science Fair and as usual Nathan & Mimsy want to one-up Jimmy and Timmy by sabotaging their project so they can get first prize. It’s a classic premise but it ended up being the B-plot of a bigger story. The episode actually focuses more on Cartman and Heidi, showing the harm Cartman is causing to Heidi who doubled down last episode and stayed in the relationship. Now Cartman has begun fattening her up and in this episode, she’s basically a female Cartman. She’s mean to her friends at the bus stop, she’s rude at school and she tries to manipulate others to get out of her responsibilities. Watching this back-to-back with “Doubling Down” is actually kind of disturbing because you see what Heidi has been going through and now she’s almost at the point of no return.

The best part about this episode is easily the twist near the end, “South Park” always tries to do a “there’s something bigger going on…” twist that turns the episode in a whole new direction. Basically, Jimmy and Jimmy have been studying tardigrades, or “water bears” that can survive for generations. They're actually a real species and thei Wikipedia page is a really interesting read.

A bunch of men in suits start swarming the school and offer limitless resources to help the experiment with the “water bears” continue. We find out later in the episode that the men aren’t from the government or anything, but with the NFL and they want tardigrades so that they can fill stadiums again with fans. They explain that all the anthem protests and “protests of THOSE protests” is causing attendance at NFL games to dip. I thought it was a great twist and seeing Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones rip his glasses off and announce “we’re not the government, we’re the NFL!” was the highlight of the episode.

I don’t quite get why they named the episode “Moss Piglets” considering they never once said it in the episode. They instead refer to the tardigrades as water bears in all their scenes, so the episode really should’ve been called “Water Bears.” Maybe they’ll explain more once the season commentary track is released.

I have a feeling these last two episodes are going to conclude this Cartman/Heidi story arc and hopefully, things will all be back to normal for Season 22, a lot of people will agree that they’ve exhausted season-long stories and relationship drama.

The 2nd to last episode airs on November 29th followed by the season finale on 12/6, see you then.