Why ‘South Park’s New Schedule May End Up Hurting the Show

Will Satan end his toxic relationship with Donald Trump? Is Tegridy Farms truly dead? Will Kyle get more than two lines of dialogue this season?

South Park fans will have to wait until September 3rd for the answers to these questions, owing to the show’s new bi-weekly schedule, which is continuing for at least the next two episodes. 

As we’ve mentioned before, people have been understandably suspicious that this new arrangement has less to do with the show’s production demands, and more to do with their corporate overlords keeping South Park fans subscribed to Paramount+ for as long as possible. And who knows, maybe they’ll get super-into Criminal Minds and decide to stay subscribed indefinitely.

Obviously the longer break between episodes could have some major benefits, even aside from enabling Paramount to recoup some of their Kelsey Grammer losses. For one thing, it allows Trey Parker and Matt Stone to make the show within a less ulcer-inducing timeframe — although they’re apparently still employing their trademark down-to-the-wire methods this season. It also turns each week’s episode into a much-hyped TV event, which is a double-edged sword. 

This worked extremely well for the first two episodes, beginning with the season premiere, which was allegedly delayed due to behind-the-scenes corporate merger shenanigans, then dominated the zeitgeist with its no-fucks-given approach to parodying Donald Trump.

And the two-week gap between episodes one and two was almost as entertaining as the show itself, thanks to the White House’s official comment on the allegedly irrelevant cartoon, and the fact that ICE tried to use a screengrab from the teaser as a recruitment tool. Which may not have been the best idea, in retrospect.

But the potential downside to this new schedule was very much evident after this week’s episode, “Sickofancy,” aired. While the show included references to the militarization of Washington, D.C. and featured the return of Trump’s microdick, much of the episode was about Randy Marsh’s attempt to join the tech industry using ChatGPT and a shitload of ketamine.

The episode was… fine? It really just felt like an average episode of South Park, which most people would have been totally happy with in any other season. But some viewers were angry that the show wasn’t better, purely because of the extra-long wait. 

“Not worth a two-week wait,” one Redditor complained. 

“Not the worst but not very good. Definitely not worth a two-week wait,” someone else argued. 

“Honestly thought that was a pretty weak episode, most definitely not worth 2 weeks of waiting,” another fan chimed in. 

Beginning the season with zeitgeist-driving political commentary, and then extending the wait times between episodes, has created a sense of expectation that didn’t exist for the show before. At least not to this degree. Like, would fans have enjoyed last season’s "Japanese Toilet” in the same way if they had been breathlessly anticipating its arrival for 14 days?

With the South Park streaming rights battle over, presumably the show no longer has to make those legally-not-an-episode “exclusive event” specials, like The End of Obesity and Joining the Panderverse. But by padding the schedule with extra weeks, they’ve essentially turned every upcoming episode into a special. 

Maybe they’ll mess with viewers by giving us another Terrance and Phillip TV movie.