‘South Park’ Is Running Into the ‘Veep’ Problem But Much Faster

We’re only three episodes into South Park, and some viewers are already getting tired of the Trump jokes. Not because they don’t hate Trump, but because they’re expecting every episode of South Park to build on the last episode’s joke. It needs to be smarter, more raunchy and more outrageous than the news cycle. If Kristi Noem gets dubbed the puppy-murdering ICE Barbie in real life, then she needs to shoot an un-tally-able amount of dogs in South Park. If Trump is embroiled in the Epstein drama in real life, then he needs to run the island that’s sex-trafficking Dora the Explorer on South Park. 

The threshold for the kind of “oh-my-god, they went there” comedy that South Park has really owned for the first two episodes of the season already started to fall a little flat by tonight’s third episode of Season 27, after an anticipation-building two-week break, too. Using Trump’s mugshot again just doesn’t hit as hard the third time. 

Also, South Park is running into the Veep problem, which is that the reality that they’re satirizing is getting harder and harder to parody. A big example is Trump’s national guard takeover of D.C.; in reality, you see armed federal agents on every corner downtown. On the show, you get those same federal agents moving around D.C., just in a more Third Reich fashion. 

Another example is when Trump is given a parade of presents and compliments by world leaders and major powerbrokers like Apple’s Tim Cooke. In reality, they may not be literally lining up to hand the president gifts at once, but the constant capitulation and ass kissing isn’t too far off from South Park’s portrayal. 

For Veep, it took a few years for the crass jokes and hyperbolic scenarios to be outpaced by the actual headlines. On that show, there was an entire season where a character’s main political platform was abolishing Daylights Saving Time and math. Just a few short months later, that became a real campaign platform for a real politician. 

Admittedly, I don’t think we’ll ever get footage of Trump trying to fornicate with the devil, but it might be a while before we get another episode that relies so heavily on making fun of the Trump administration. And that won’t be because the Trump administration and its enablers doesn’t deserve to be made fun of. It will be because it’s hard to make a funny joke about such an incredibly absurd set of circumstances.