South Park, "Tweek x Craig"

Man, does this episode seem lost.

The show’s more or less taken it upon itself this season to sort out all the thorny social issues and debate that has dominated online cultural conversation recently. Well, this episode comes off like that one person in every comments section who leaves a long-winded, pseudo-scholarly response full of hot-button buzzwords, but clearly has no idea what they’re talking about. Tonight, Matt Stone and Trey Parker bit off way more than they could chew and were unable to connect all of it (or really any of it) into something meaningful, or left much room for humor.

And the worst part? The long-ago episode which focused on the same two characters (season three's “Tweek Vs. Craig”) is a favorite of mine, among the first dozen or so episodes of the show I ever watched. When I saw this week’s title, I thought just maybe we’d be getting a sequel to it. But, no dice.

This time, Craig and Tweek are lovers, not fighters. Or so everyone thinks, as the new Asian students at South Park Elementary obsessively produce artwork depicting them as lovers. As they try to prove they’re, in fact, not homosexual, the town around them (specifically, the adults) deal with it in different ways.

There are some seeds of ideas (gay rights supporters placing same-sex couples on a pedestal instead of treating them like anyone else, the out-of-touch ignorance of well-meaning middle-aged people in these changing times), but they never grow into anything, funny or otherwise. The recurring PC Principal character points out the particulars of consent, for no good reason but to make sure the show’s goaded every last touchy subject on the Internet. Also, pointless and not very funny. And the plot elements involving Asian students and Randy’s confusion about Asian countries don’t seem to have any purpose at all (and aren't funny).

Well, actually, the reason they're there is pretty obvious: it’s an extension of the main plot impetus, which was really an excuse for a fan art contest. Maybe their intentions were good, but to me, this stinks of a gimmick. It sort of reminds me of how another long-running adult toon periodically outsources its title sequence to others to generate some viral buzz. And frankly, the thought that South Park has followed in its footsteps to a late-period phase of creative autopilot crossed my mind.

I hope that’s not the case. But this episode contains almost everything bad about the show besides its floppy-headed Canadian running gag: namely, stupid surreal humor (to be fair, the show’s pulled this off many times, but when it misses, it really misses), and straining for timely relevance or satire without having a clear grasp of the issues, at the expense of humor. Cartman’s seeming psychosis managed a few laughs (the final toilet scene particularly), but they weren’t that big. And this whole part felt detached from the rest of it, like even the creators knew this entry was severely lacking in the humor department and they threw this in hastily to try to rectify the problem.