Early on in its 27th season, South Park has garnered more controversy than it has in years (possibly ever), along with some of its highest ratings.
Last week’s episode took aim at the Trump administration’s brutal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids, poked fun at secretary of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s penchant for puppy murder and cosmetic surgery (Noem has since climbed atop her moral high horse and accused the show of sexism), and, of course, Donald Trump himself. Along with Trump’s martial takeover of Washington DC, this week’s instalment, titled Sickofancy, takes aim at artificial intelligence (specifically ChatGPT) and the larger tech-bro industry.
Picking up where we last left off, the show’s resident doofus, Randy Marsh, sees his beloved Tegridy Weed marijuana farm raided by border patrol agents. They kidnap all of his workers (“Hey! Those are my Mexicans!”), leaving him with only one employee, the ever-stoned Towelie (a talking bath towel, naturally). Despondent, Randy turns to ChatGPT for advice. The sycophantic, soft-voiced app draws up a new business plan for him and Towelie to implement. With the help of a single Mexican whom they spring from an Ice detention centre and plenty of recreational ketamine, they rebrand to Techridy, “an AI-powered marijuana platform for global solutions”.
Meanwhile, in Washington, President Trump takes a break from receiving lavish gifts (as well as assurances that “you do not have a small penis”) from politicians, business titans and foreign leaders to remake the capital into a dystopian police state festooned with his own image (which includes his less-than-impressive member).
The two storylines converge when Randy attempts to bribe Trump into legalising marijuana nationwide by bequeathing Towelie to him. It’s all for naught, though, as ChatGPT’s advice proves useless and he ends up having to sell Tegridy Farms and move his family back to the suburbs (the end of an era for the show, which has heavily featured this subplot for seven years, much to the annoyance of some fans).
Parker and Stone’s take on AI – that it is dumbing us down, robbing us of person-to-person connection and giving us really, really bad advice – is refreshingly clear-eyed, if not particularly incendiary. The larger skewering of tech bros is solid, although it’s slightly disappointing that Elon Musk never gets brought in for any of it, even though the running gag about ketamine addiction is clearly aimed at him. That said, the digs at Apple CEO Tim Cook and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg help fill that gap.
The Trump material remains roundly funny and it’s clear the show is building to a big conclusion, most likely involving his unwilling partner and lover Satan (who is finally taking steps to free himself from the abusive relationship).
This episode is unlikely to cause as big a stir as the previous two. But watching South Park satirise the horrifying militarisation of Washington DC in real time – Union Station, which features in the show’s central montage, was the scene of a fascist photo op featuring vice-president JD Vance, defence secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller – is another reminder that no show has ever worked harder to have its finger on the nation’s pulse.