The 21st season of "South Park" premiered on 9/13 and I could not be more excited to see where the creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone planned to bring to this season. I always found it interesting that "South Park" first premiered on the year I was born, essentially making me the same age as "South Park."

I started really getting into this show at around 12-years old and I’ve followed it religiously every year since. Recently, the format of the seasons (how the 10 episodes are aired) are set in stone way before the premiere. There are 3 pre-planned “dark weeks” where no new episodes will air. These break weeks occur after the 3rd, 6th, and 8th episode. I think having those dark weeks in the season would be perfect opportunities for me to write about that recent batch of episodes during the break.

Following "South Park’s" 20th season, I was interested in how they were going to play it all out. Last season was completely serialized, each episode following the next in one over-arching story. Many fans of the show were angry about this and wanted more standalone episodes. I still like Season 20 and thought it delivered a lot of laughs and cool ideas but it ultimately left a lot of people disappointed.

Season 21 Episode 1

“White People Renovating Houses”

While some may say it’s tackling the subject too late, I think the way South Park handled the neo-nazi, Confederate, tiki torch Charlottesville protests was really well done and satirical. Using their classic Hillbilly/Redneck characters, South Park turns the frustration of neo-nazis and white supremacists towards technology. The episode sets up the fact that everyone owns Amazon Alexas or Google Homes, which (somehow) puts working class citizens out of jobs. Marching with unnecessary Confederate Flags (they’ll wave the flag to catch a bee in the room, or even to cool down soup at a restaurant) and tiki torches, the rednecks march down their streets chanting “You will not replace us!” and "Amazon: Took 'er jerbs! Google, Apple: Took our jobs!"

The ultimate “solution” to help bigoted Confederate flag wavers at the end is equally hilarious and fits the standard ridiculousness of a South Park episode.

In addition to this subplot, Episode 1 tries to tie up loose ends that Season 20 left us which included Eric Cartman tied in a relationship with a schoolmate. This episode deals with communication issues in relationships along with how to separate yourself from an abusive partner.

Obviously, at the end it’s played for laughs and all the drama throughout the episode was just to get Cartman out of the relationship and turn him back into the fat, rude little boy we’ve come to love for 21 years.

Season 21 Episode 2

“Put It Down”

Now, this is an episode that starts off sort of “meh” but once they reach the theme/message near the end it all comes together so perfectly and excuses whatever was lacking in the first act of the story. The story mostly follows Tweek and Craig, two boys who were basically forced into being in a homosexual relationship with one another in Season 19. This episode, “Put It Down” follows their relationship... mostly how Craig constantly has the job of calming down the hyper, paranoid Tweek from freaking out about the looming threat of North Korea and their nuclear missiles. The President doesn’t make it any easier, occasionally egging North Korea on and singling out Tweek in particular on Twitter.

This is a hilarious parody of how Donald Trump conducts himself on Twitter, but it’s also a satire about how people will worry themselves to death over politics. The relationship between Tweek and Craig definitely blossomed this episode and showcased how much the two need each other. Craig who is always calm attempts to comfort Tweek and finds a solution to make him not so anxious: a fidget spinner. It doesn’t go as well as he hoped.

The B-plot follows Cartman already back together with Heidi. This originally frustrated me because most of the runtime of the last episode was spent breaking them apart, but it turns out Heidi had something against Cartman the whole time, an embarrassing voicemail. It’s revealed that Cartman claims to be struggling with suicidal thoughts after his breakup, after getting made fun of by his friends for his whiny, tear-filled voicemail Cartman decides to embrace his feelings, goes full “Logic” and raps about suicidal awareness to try and get himself noticed at school. Unfortunately for Cartman, it’s “Distracted Driving Awareness” week at school, which starts to overshadow his suicide awareness cause. Unfortunately for the town of South Park, MANY children die in this episode due to distracted drivers, what are they distracted by? The President's Twitter page.

The episode ends with a Distracted Driving PSA but it’s pretty much directed at Donald Trump’s Twitter usage via the ole “bait and switch” technique that South Park loves to utilize. Tweek and Craig both perform a song for their school and community. The song “Put It Down” turned the episode from good to great in the last 2 minutes. This episode does a pretty good job making fun of Trump’s unprofessional tweets but South Park also manages to make fun of the people who will blame him for literally anything. The episode states in its own unique "South Park" way that if a child dies because he was run over by someone distracted by the President’s tweets, the President would be blamed immediately for that. I think this was an interesting middle ground to take with the issue and the realization of what they’re doing has a nice build throughout the song.

We all agree

Here today

That if we’re ever leader of the USA

We’ll put it down

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Season 21 Episode 3

“Holiday Special”

This episode was exactly what fans look for when they express the desire for a return to “Classic South Park.” The plot revolves around an absurd concept paired with an old-fashioned “kids just being kids” topic. It’s a great blend of relevant political humor and typical South Park shenanigans. “Holiday Special” begins with an ongoing riot at South Park Elementary where the kids have just been informed that they’re no longer going to get the day off of school on Columbus Day. It’s revealed that the parent protesting Columbus Day who managed to convince the school board to lift the holiday was Stan’s father Randy Marsh. Preaching that Columbus was a genocidal conqueror, Randy makes it his duty to make sure nobody glorifies Columbus on October 9th.

The 4 boys make it their mission to reinstate the day off of school, attempting to expose Randy’s past and discrediting him to the school councilperson who enforces the school calendar. It’s such a relief to see an episode where the 4 boys are just hanging out and working together to accomplish a goal rather than having them be spread out doing their own thing like it’s been for the past couple seasons. A simple idea like kids wanting their day off school, regardless of what holiday it is works perfectly and it’s that simplicity that people have been missing from South Park. 4th graders don’t think too much about the politics or the morality around Columbus Day, they just want to stay home and play video games!

This episode includes a great parody of DNA testing sites like 23andme. The commercial for South Park’s version “DNA And Me” is one of the best skits they’ve done in a while, showcasing a bunch of white people proudly sharing the fact that they’re actually 3% Cherokee or 7% Navajo. The satire is so perfect and you can just hear the smugness in the character’s voice delivery, it’s a bit more obvious when they start expressing “I’m 4% victim!” and “my people are oppressed!”

Overall, I rate these recent 3 episodes very highly. It looks like it’s going to be a very promising season. They found a good balance between leaking hints of continuity (Tweek and Craig’s relationship, Heidi Turner, Mr. Garrison being President) but supporting it with standalone stories. That’s what was missing in the past couple seasons, Season 20 was endless build-ups and little payoff. I look forward to see what they tackle when episodes return October 11th.