‘South Park’s Bi-Weekly Schedule Is Coming From Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Not Paramount

South Park’s 27th season began more than a month ago, yet only three episodes have made it to the air so far. And episode four won’t drop until early September, thereby running the risk of being completely upstaged by pumpkin spice season.

This is because the show has a new, wildly ill-defined schedule, which has found episodes dropping on a biweekly basis, much to the confusion of fans. It was recently confirmed that the next two episodes will follow the same pattern, releasing on September 3rd and 14th. And now Deadline is reporting that the entire 10-episode season will include two-week breaks between shows.

While a number of fans were quick to place the blame on Paramount, which no doubt want to keep South Park viewers subscribed to their streaming service, according to an anonymous source who’s “close to the South Park producers” this arrangement is actually the result of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s workflow, not corporate greed. 

Although things “could shift,” according to the outlet, the “current South Park production plan is to stick with such a schedule and have Season 27 run to around December 10th.” Which is certainly a far cry from the “just dump it all in one day” model employed by some streamers. And while South Park has historically been able to crank out new episodes in just six days, this season has been a little different thanks to its focus on U.S. president, and Satan’s significant other, Donald Trump.

“What they’re doing means this year’s episodes need more time than usual to put together, to finish,” the source claimed, referring to the show’s headline-grabbing takes on modern politics. “So much happens right now in just one day with Trump. No one’s going to sacrifice getting it right, even if we have to push getting it to air, and if that makes the season longer, so be it.”

And the corporation that just agreed to shell out a small fortune in order to stay in the South Park business is seemingly totally cool with this arrangement. “We’re not going to argue with what’s working, ” a Paramount insider told Deadline. “The numbers are great, the show is getting a lot of attention — if they want to give us a 20-week season for 10-episodes, that’s okay.”

As we mentioned recently, the biweekly schedule hasn’t exactly been a slam-dunk with viewers, and will no doubt put more pressure on each episode to be a zeitgeist-driving act of up-to-the-minute political rebellion, rather than merely a 22-minute cartoon diversion.

Of course, it’s also possible that Parker and Stone are using the extra week to ensure that their Mexican novelty restaurant side-project is stocked with sopaipillas and free of poop smells.