South Park: Post-Covid Review: Cartman Returns, 40 Years in the Future

“It shouldn’t be like that. People should be friendlier in the future, ”says Randy Marsh towards the end of the new special South Park: Post Covid. This is the final blow of a joke that runs through the entire hour-long television movie set in 2061.

Post-Covid, is now continuing to stream Outstanding plus, reminds the viewer at every opportunity that the film (which at 59 minutes can hardly be distinguished from a 47-minute special episode) is set in the future. Post-Covid takes place in a world where children stare mindlessly into VR headsets, cryptocurrency is mandatory and doorbells sing about the future. Whenever someone announces a social change, like insects replacing meat on menus, they make sure they do so in the future, to which Stan and Kyle say, “I know.”

Image: Paramount Plus

“We’re where a lot of people are, which kind of sucks the future.” Post-Covid Writer and director Trey Parker told the story The Hollywood Reporter back in October. People should be friendlier, however Post-Covid shows a world that is very similar. Technology can change and some individual circumstances can change, but the world has gotten stuck in a pattern that just cannot be resolved.

Stan and Kyle (voice of Parker and co-creator Matt Stone) take center stage Post-Covidto lead a boring, miserable adult life. Stan’s job as an “online whiskey sampler” gets exactly one line and has entered into a kind of marriage with a personified Amazon Alexa (Delilah Kujala) who mainly yells at him not to be so pathetic anymore and at the same time about great offers inform headphones.

Kyle’s life isn’t quite so sad, but he doesn’t seem to have achieved anything either. The only two people in the South Park gang who really put their petty childhood feuds behind them seem to be Cartman and Kenny. Against all odds, Cartman became an Orthodox rabbi. Kenny has become a famous scientist who travels the world and improves humanity. Until, which will certainly not be a spoiler for anyone who has watched South park before that he dies.

Image: Paramount Plus

It is Kenny’s death that drives the plot of Post-Covid, but in many ways the jokes are the main showcase here. If you don’t like a joke Post-CovidAnother will come in five seconds. If a joke about the supposed popularity of woke comedy seems hackneyed, don’t worry: in a few seconds you’ll be hearing how selfish unvaccinated people are. And if that pisses you off, then there’ll be a joke about how masks look like diaper chins.

Parker and Stone are enormous maximalists who blow every situation to its logical end point. This leads to many Post-Covid‘s stronger jokes, like any store with a “plus” or “max” at the end of its name that promises more and more outside while selling the exact same crap inside. It’s also pretty cathartic to watch Zoom’s headquarters burn down just around the corner in anticipation of the ultimate coronavirus defeat.

Sometimes it can feel like throwing jokes against a wall and seeing what works. Did Cartmen convert to Judaism to mess with Kyle, or did he actually find a good Jewish wife in Yentl (Mona Marshall)? Maybe a bit of both? And even if so, what does Kyle owe other Jews? It’s a fun concept that isn’t explored enough beyond kids named Moishe, Menorah, and for some reason Hakim, plus some poorly pronounced Hebrew.

Cartman’s best gags, like pretending he’s a Robot named AWESOM-O 4000, were always worked out to the point of absurdity. Would he really spend 40 years of his life and a family messing with Kyle? Instead of seeing that, the audience turns to Randy Marsh’s retirement home for Blade runner Gags and a hunt for a strain of marijuana that could end the Covid pandemic.

Lots of the blink-and-you-missed gags in Post-Covid are fun and it is smart to see the future careers of children. But none of the arcs in the special really stand out, perhaps because in contrast to the first one South park Movie, Bigger, longer, and uncut, it’s a two-part. (The second half of the special doesn’t currently have a release date.) And Post-Covid is the first of Parker and Stones’ 14 film deal with Paramount Plus, so the duo are in no rush to offer the same narrative structure that their first film offered.

Larger, longer and uncut really wanted to become a film musical from which Oklahoma-same “Uncle Fucka” to the Music man-like, Oscar-nominated “Blame Canada. ” Post-Covid feels more like a long, experimental episode. The opening scribble, in which a narrator pokes fun at the uncertainty in naming the project, speaks to the confusion about what Post-Covid should actually be.

In the end it just says that the boys should become friends again, and that’s enough for now. Regardless of the format, parts of South park will always work. The headline-ripped gags will come and go, but the shitty friendship between the guys will always be what the best parts of South park.