South Park: The Complete Twenty-Second Season

Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 22nd season of their long-running animated Comedy Central series opens with an episode ostensibly designed to shock: "Dead Kids" finds the series’ desensitized fourth graders continuing their lessons as an active shooter attacks the elementary school, while Stan’s dad blames his mom’s hysteria about the situation on menses. The town’s Catholic congregation cracks the child molestation jokes one would expect in "A Boy and a Priest"; "Tegridy Farms" finds the Marsh family moving to work at a marijuana farm; and "The Scoots" parodies the ride-share e-scooter trend. The global warming allegory two-parter "Time to Get Cereal" and "Nobody Got Cereal" brings a version of "Al Gore" into the fray, and the season-ending story arc in "Unfulfilled" and "Bike Parade" sends up Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Stock characters such as stoner anthropomorphic towel Towelie, Sasquatch-like monster ManBearPig, Satan, and talking excrement Mr. Hankey pop up often, as the show continues to get by on constant swearing and base humor that tiredly rides the tails of current events. This season’s "mock cancellation" hashtag advertising to #cancelsouthpark actually seems like a good idea to me. Compiling all 10 episodes from 2018, extras include episode commentaries and deleted scenes. Optional. (J. Williams-Wood)