South Park Season Finale Review: States Full of Swingers

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The Star Wars franchise was purchased by Disney this week.

Therefore, South Park, in its standard fashion, decided to use something else as a framework to tell the real story they wanted: the presidential election. Thus was the story of "Obama Wins!"

Cartman's Vote

Yes, it seemed almost too obvious that the election wouldn’t actually be the real story and between Hurricane Sandy and then the coming election, we might have forgotten about the aforementioned deal. But Matt Stone and Trey Parker did not.

Cartman would naturally be evil enough to get involved. And he’s so malevolent that he doesn’t even obey the rules of space-time: he wound up being in Ohio at 5:00 p.m. Central and Nevada at 3:00 p.m. Pacific... which is the same time!

The episode definitely felt like it was structured to be something that would work regardless if either of the major two-party candidates won. If Gary Johnson or Jill Stein came out on top? Maybe not.

If Nate Silver had won, then it wouldn’t matter, we’d all be assimilated into the Borg already anyway. But, really, there was some cheeky use of pronouns and perspective to make sure that the major plot points would work with either candidate, though some lines definitely had to be prepared specifically for Obama.

Still, the overall plot, much like the last election episode, was meant to be something that would work no matter what. And showing Romney as a duck works because ducks are silly little birds with large orange beaks and are always funny; it would have worked better for Obama as a “lame duck” president. Quack. Mickey Mouse’s reappearance as the head of the evil Disney empire was a bit lacking; I would have like to see him wrecking things again like the last time he was on, if only because that would be a great recurring element, if every time he was on, he wound up just destroying everything.

The humor came in from the way that they were willing to mine laughs from the same joke. “General Tso’s Chicken” puns were used over and over to the point where it was so silly, it only got funnier. Morgan Freeman showing up to explain things just kept escalating and getting more ludicrous. Even just seeing Cartman flying around and laughing at flight attendants asking people if they wanted “warm nuts” before saying that it was getting old. It served as the perfect metaphor for the episode: hammer at a silly joke till its dead and no more. This episode handled that extremely well.

Thus ends the 16th season. It had its ups and downs overall, but the second half really felt like it was regularly cutting and entertaining, and something I looked forward to every week. Until next spring, South Park, I bid you adieu!

Remember to visit our updated South Park quotes section, everyone!

Obama Wins! Review

Editor Rating: 4.1 / 5.0
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User Rating:

Rating: 4.3 / 5.0 (43 Votes)
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South Park Season 16 Episode 14 Quotes

Cartman: Pretty sweet, huh?
Kyle: What the hell is this?
Cartman: What's it look like? Hundreds of thousands of votes from all the swing states.
Kyle: I don't believe it.
Cartman: No really, there are states full of swingers. Bunch of perverts if you ask me.

Flight Attendant: Would you like some warm nuts, sir?
Cartman: Haahaha! Warm nuts, she says!