10 thoughts on South Park – PC Principal Final Justice

10 Thoughts, News, Reviews, Shows, Top Story, TV Shows

That’s it. It’s over. One of the most fascinating and innovative seasons of South Park has come to a close. And what a season it has been. Parker and Stone managed to tie up every loose thread throughout the season and give a huge, bombastic finale to the ten episode season. The ads were defeated. PC Principal was exonerated. And fucking Leslie finally shut up. It was an episode for the record books.

Here are some thoughts.

south-park-pc-principal-final-justice-review_k4hh.640

1. So it turns out PC Principal is a total badass

Our opening scene has PC Principal wandering through an arctic wasteland and entering what appears to be a gentrified neighborhood in Alaska. He enters a bar and starts monologuing about PC rhetoric and all the men in the bar proceed to attack him. And he just tears them apart. Literally. The whole thing feels very Liam Neeson action movie-ish. In a good way.

2. Oh right! Butters has a girlfriend

We catch a glimpse of Butters face timing with his Canadian girlfriend about the state of affairs in his town. That was a plot line that I had completely forgotten about. When it was happening, it seemed like it was going to be really important to the plot moving forward. But if the new direction South Park is taking is any indication, it will probably play a role in future episodes.

3. The ads are gentrifying!

Okay. Let’s break it down. Because it’s slightly confusing. Someone (I’ll get to that later) framed Principal Victoria for saying an off-color Bill Cosby joke that go her fired. This brought in PC Principal, who touched off a town-wide sentiment of PC culture that inevitably led to gentrification. The person behind all of it was Leslie. Only she’s not a person. She’s an ad. The whole purpose of the plan was to gentrify the whole world so only sentient ads could afford to live in the crazily priced housing. Seems convoluted. But okay.

South-Park-PC-Principal-Final-Justice-645x370

4. So… what are they saying about guns?

In order for the boys to stay safe, they decide to buy some guns. In fact, everybody in South Park has bought guns in order to protect themselves. This leads to face-off after face-off with people pointing guns at each other. The joke is that every single one of these altercations ends peacefully and with everyone coming to an understanding. I get the tongue-in-cheek nature of the commentary. To a certain extent, the show is making fun of the “good guy with a gun” theory. That is, if everyone has a gun, everyone is safer. But instead of displaying why that’s ridiculous, they showed what that might actually look like if it were true. And of course the result is ridiculous, but the satire is a little subtler than the show usually goes for.

5. Classi

Classi (spelled in a way that is impossible for me to type) is Nathan’s high class hooker girlfriend, to go along with his fancy new apartment he got for selling out his species. But after Nathan slaps Classi and tells her to shut up, she beats the crap out of him. “I ain’t no Mimsy, motherfucker!” she shouts at him. Then she helps Jimmy escape and they abscond to the gun show. I really hope Classi sticks around for next season.

6. The gun show made me laugh out loud

The entire town has come out for the South Park Gun Show. The conceit of this “gun show” is that it’s like a dog show, with people from the town parading their guns across the stage to polite applause from the audience and announcers narrating the whole thing. “This next contestant has a gorgeous little pickenese glock 17,” that sort of thing. It was a nice commentary on how our culture fetishes guns. But after all the major characters convene on the show, I was expecting a mass shootout to take place. But again, guns solved everyone’s problems. And after everyone has converged, only one question remained. Who set up principal Victoria and started this whole mess?

south-park-s19e10c13-not-no-mimsy_4x3

7. It was Mackey!?

Huh. That was not what I expected. And it was because he was tired of being bossed around by principal Victoria. That seems like a pretty flimsy excuse.

8. PC Principal and Leslie finally get their showdown

After the season long joke of PC Principal telling Leslie to shut her fucking mouth, she finally did. This time for good. After he punches a whole right through her head, revealing the greenish blue glow that is the brain of a sentient ad. And boy howdy, was that some stellar payoff for a season long joke.

9. Uhm… so what was the deal with Whole Foods?

Apparently, Randy understood something that no one else in the town understood. He brought everyone to the Whole Foods and told it to leave. Which it did. Which confuses me. Maybe I missed something, but was the Whole Foods also a sentient ad? Was it a different kind of alien? It literally lifted out of the ground and flew away…

10. And what’s going to happen next season!??!

PC Principal is still in charge. Garrison and Caitlyn Jenner are still running for office. It looks like nothing much has changed in the world of South Park. Does that mean next season is going to continue the continuity? Will the PC wars rage on? Find out next season on South Park!

Wow, it’s over already?

What am I gonna do now?

Colin is a writer and actor based in Brooklyn, NY.