‘South Park’ Is Taking Another Week Off, and Fans Are Blaming Paramount

South Park is dominating the zeitgeist and scoring huge ratings, but the show’s schedule continues to be as hard to pin down as the legendary ManBearPig. 

After a delayed start to Season 27, Episode Two (featuring Kristi Noem’s canine murder spree) surprised fans by airing two weeks after the premiere, even though nobody seemed to be aware of the allegedly planned hiatus. And while many viewers may have been expecting to get a new episode this week, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the show is taking another week off. 

Instead, Comedy Central will celebrate “South Park Day,” with a day-long marathon of “fan-favorite episodes” to mark the show’s 28th anniversary. And in the 10 p.m. slot, where the new episode would normally be slotted, they’ll be airing the 1997 pilot “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe.”

So instead of a new episode, we’re getting the oldest possible episode?

Even before this announcement, people were confused about when Episode Three would drop. As Forbes pointed out, Esquire reported that the show would air on August 13th, while IMDb claimed that it would be released on Friday August 15th for some reason.

South Park skipping a second week so early in the season is undoubtedly irregular, and seemingly frustrating for many fans. As for an explanation, it’s certainly possible that Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s famously compressed production schedule could be the cause of these back-to-back delays. As The Hollywood Reporter noted, Parker and Stone are known for “creating entire episodes in just six days,” frequently delivering episodes just “hours before Comedy Central’s deadline.” And this “pause” will give the production a bit of “breathing room,” especially in the wake of the show’s “unprecedented” back-and-forth feud with the Trump administration.

But over on Reddit, fans seem to be placing the blame squarely on the show’s corporate overlords.

“I feel like this is intentionally being done so Paramount Plus subscribers keep extending their subscriptions,” one user theorized after news of the new schedule dropped. “It’s greed,” another concurred. Some suggested that Paramount was simply trying to make their nut, à la Clyde and Mr. Mackey.

One fan questioned whether or not all of season 27’s episodes will be released bi-weekly, and a number of people speculated that Paramount might opt to do just that, thereby “milking” South Park for as long as possible purely so that people will remain subscribed to their streaming service where new episodes are uploaded the day after airing on Comedy Central. 

Is this their master plan to recoup that $1.5 billion?