South Park season 21 to stray from Donald Trump, politics

When South Park season 21 premieres later this year, don’t expect the show to continue to be as political as it’s been. Instead, signs point more to the series getting back to some of its roots, which include being stupid, over-the-top, and offending almost everyone with equal measure.

As for why this is so important in the first place, apparently a good bit of it has to do with the show’s identity, and it continuing to be the same show that it’s been rather than one that tries to highlight the world of politics on a weekly basis.

In speaking about this further, show co-creator Trey Parker had the following to say to the Los Angeles Times while in promotion of Despicable Me 3, which he has a role as an evil mastermind:

“This season, I want to get back to Cartman dressing up like a robot and [screwing] with Butters, because to me, that’s the bread and butter of South Park: kids being kids and being ridiculous and outrageous, but not ‘did you see what Trump did last night?’ Because I don’t give a [you know what] anymore,” Parker told the Times. “We probably could put up billboards — ‘Look what we’re going to do to Trump next week!’ — and get crazy ratings. But I just don’t care.

“It’s also just gotten boring. We weren’t ever really that show. We would do an entire season, and there would be one moment that played off something that had just happened, and people would go, ‘South Park is the show that does that.’ And that’s just not true. We’re not.”

One other interesting case that can be made here is rather simple, and it’s that there is very much an over-saturation going on at the moment of Trump spoofs. While many of them are funny, there is such a thing as a tipping point where you go too far and all of it just feels tired. With South Park, the show that it needs to be is the one that stays true to itself — what always made the more political / timely episodes fun is that they were few and far between, and sometimes they can be relevant without focusing on something that is necessarily the most timely thing in the world. One of the best examples of that is the episode that they did about Scientology — it was current enough for it to get headlines, but it wasn’t so current that it drew all sorts of attention to itself prior to it airing. Nobody else was doing it at the time, so that extra dose of cultural relevance helped it to stand out further.

Once the new season gets a little bit closer to premiering, we figure that we will share a little bit more in the way of news then.

What do you think: Should South Park season 21 go in a direction that is a little bit more in tune with some of the show’s roots, or do something a little risky? Share now in the attached comments. (Photo: Comedy Central.)