{"id":126908,"date":"2025-08-07T17:40:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T17:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126908\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T17:40:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T17:40:14","slug":"from-puppy-murder-to-racist-podcasts-south-parks-anti-deportation-episode-is-utterly-ruthless-tv-south-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126908\/","title":{"rendered":"From puppy murder to racist podcasts: South Park\u2019s anti-deportation episode is utterly ruthless TV | South Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago, South Park kicked off its 27th season with one of its angriest, most politically daring episodes. The animated sitcom, long a magnet for controversy, incurred the wrath of the current US administration for its brutal and graphic send-up of Donald Trump<\/a> as a petty, micro-penised dictator, as well as parent company Paramount\u2019s cowardly capitulations to him.<\/p>\n

Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker received immediate backlash not only from online conservative fans (who make up a good portion of their audience) but the White House itself, which released a statement calling South Park<\/a> hypocritical and irrelevant. That latter charge was especially poignant, given that Stone and Parker just inked a new deal with Paramount for five more seasons, plus streaming rights, to the tune of $1.5bn.<\/p>\n

Tensions have only risen in the two weeks since the premiere aired. During that time, the show released several stills from the follow-up episode, which widens its sights from Trump to his media mouthpieces and foot soldiers. Figures from both groups \u2013 rightwing activist Charlie Kirk<\/a> and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) \u2013 boastfully shared these images on X, with the latter sarcastically thanking South Park for helping them in their recruiting efforts. (The show responded on X by asking DHS \u201cWait, so we ARE relevant? #eatabagofdicks\u201d.)<\/p>\n

All of this is to say that the new episode, titled Got a Nut, is coming in hot. And for the most part, it lives up to the hype.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The episode follows two different stories: in one, the show\u2019s resident bigot, Eric Cartman, is outraged to learn that fellow fourth grader Clyde has risen to prominence as a white nationalist podcaster who makes offensive claims about women, Jewish people, Black people and other minority groups to goad them into debating him in exploitative viral videos (\u201cWOKE STUDENT TOTALLY PWNED\u201d). Of course, Cartman isn\u2019t angry on behalf of any of those groups; he\u2019s mad that Clyde is ripping off his gimmick and reaping all the rewards. He decides to muscle in on the act, styling his hair after Kirk\u2019s signature coif (\u201cthe stupidest haircut I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d says one character), trolling college girls on social media and proclaiming himself a \u201cmaster-debater\u201d.<\/p>\n

The other storyline sees South Park Elementary\u2019s kindly counsellor Mr Mackey out of a job thanks to government budget cuts. Desperate to find a new way to \u201cmake his nut\u201d, he reluctantly joins Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Alongside his fellow masked goons \u2013 a collection of inexperienced, illiterate miscreants \u2013 and under the leadership of DHS secretary Kristi Noem<\/a>, Mackey ends up taking part in violent raids at Dora the Explorer concerts and the literal gates of heaven, where he helps round up every Hispanic in sight (per Noem: \u201cOnly detain the brown ones! If it\u2019s brown, it goes down!\u201d).<\/p>\n

Both stories eventually intersect, as Clyde and Mackey are rewarded for their work with a trip to Mar-a-Lago. The country club is depicted as a gross, white trash version of bizarre 70s\/80s US wish fulfilment drama Fantasy Island, with President Trump and vice-president JD Vance standing in for Ricardo Montalban<\/a> and dwarf actor Herve Villechaize\u2019s characters. Younger viewers may not get this reference, but they don\u2019t need to: the visual of an ice-cream-suited Trump kicking around a dwarf version of Vance (his already big face puffed up to resemble the popular meme of him) is hilarious all on its own.<\/p>\n

Trump gets off easy here compared with Vance, but the show saves its harshest vitriol for Noem, who spends all her time viciously gunning down cute puppies (including the beloved Krypto from the new Superman movie) and struggling to keep her overly Botoxed face from melting off her skull. It\u2019s a ruthless scouring of Noem, and you can feel Stone and Parker\u2019s disdain for her in every frame.<\/p>\n

Masked goons galore in South Park Got a Nut. Photograph: Paramount<\/p>\n

As per South Park tradition, the central characters come to realise the errors of their ways, with Mr Mackey delivering the episode\u2019s moral straight down the lens: \u201cIf you\u2019re doing something you don\u2019t really believe in just to make your nut, you\u2019re gonna find that you just get sadder and your nut just gets bigger, m\u2019kay?\u201d<\/p>\n

Herein lies the issue with the episode. Got a Nut posits that the individuals who serve as Trump\u2019s most gung-ho operatives are acting entirely cynically, doing and saying things they know are wrong for an easy pay cheque. Certainly, that\u2019s part of it (see the signing bonuses and sponsorship deals the episode highlights), but it is dangerous to underestimate how many of these people fully believe their own rhetoric.<\/p>\n

But of course, it would be silly to expect a half-hour episode of South Park to encapsulate every facet of Trump\u2019s dystopia. Luckily, we\u2019ve got plenty of episodes left to look forward to (48, minimum). Just as exciting will be the surefire backlash coming from Trump and his base, who are utterly incapable of not taking the bait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two weeks ago, South Park kicked off its 27th season with one of its angriest, most politically daring…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":126909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-126908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114988713552947411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}