South Park, "Go Fund Yourself"

South Park made headlines by trolling the Washington Redskins and the team’s owner Dan Snyder during their actual game this past weekend. It was an effective way to grab peoples’ attention and let everyone know the show hasn’t lost any bite, but unfortunately, the season premiere it was advertising didn’t live up to the promise.

On the show, the boys of South Park are seeking a name for their startup company and decide on “Washington Redskins,” which in their world as well as ours they are legally allowed to do. Not stopping there, the episode prominently displays (and vulgarly defaces) the team’s official logo, as if Trey Parker and Matt Stone are just daring Snyder to try and sue them. While the show’s version of Snyder and his team are painted as the marginalized “proud people” whose name is being misused, the rebuttal from Cartman sounds quite similar to the real Snyder’s reasoning for not changing the team name despite the recent pressure to do so.

It seems to try to address the issue the way “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” addressed racism, but the results are not nearly as sharp. Clearly, the episode is more interested in trolling the NFL. Which they do, to ends other than the Washington name controversy, from the empty and ineffectual rhetoric of Roger Goodell lately, to a few little digs at Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. The more concise and direct commentary is on crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter (which judging by the episode, Stone and Parker think are a waste of money), but it’s such a small part of the plot and plays second fiddle to the NFL stuff (plus, is that really an issue people care even a little about?).

Sadly, all the gags were only about as funny as about a million memes sports fans post online to make fun of opposing teams and players. I laughed at some of them, but it’s a little disappointing to sit for a whole half-hour episode and only get stuff similar to the junk on your Twitter feed. Even more so when the subject had so much potential for satire, and yet this was all they settled for.