“Over in the film channel, we feature Second Opinion reviews for movies where two writers are equally passionate about different takes on a film. So I thought, let’s extend the same to Best Episode Ever. Bibbs offers his counterpoint for ‘South Park.’” – Fred Topel
Like many gradual changes, it’s hard to pinpoint when exactly “South Park” became a cultural institution, and not just a TV show about children kicking babies and making the brilliant observation that Barbra Streisand isn’t quite as cool The Cure’s Robert Smith. But it happened. “South Park” isn’t just an animated series, it’s one of the most valuable historical documents of our era.
Future generations will look back on the turn of the 21st Century and try to rationalize and explain all our baffling cultural fascinations and political preoccupations. And when they come up short, as surely they must, they will look to “South Park,” a show that captured not just the historical bullet points of the era but also the very real hysteria that accompanied every major and minor event of the last two decades. It’s that aspect of Trey Parker’s and Matt Stone’s show that will, I believe, ensure that this series passes the test of time.
Moreso than its witty writing – although that will certainly help future generations get through installments like “Fat Butt and Pancake Head,” which hopefully won’t make any sense in a few generations – “South Park’s” consistent plea for rationality in an age defined by irrational overreactions to every current event is what defines this series. And its “best episode ever” really should be an episode that highlights the show’s predominantly moderate attitude, spoke volumes to audiences of the present, and will enlighten future audiences about what the hell was going on back in the 1990s and 2000s.
To that end, it seems perfectly acceptable (if not wholly debatable) to declare Episode 12.12 “About Last Night…” the ultimate pinnacle of “South Park’s” topicality and significance. The episode aired on November 8, 2008: less than 24 hours after Barack Obama was first elected President of the United States. And it accurately predicated that Barack Obama would be the victor.
Documented online at SouthParkStudios.com, the daring decision to call the election one week in advance could have backfired. Given the broadly satirical tone of the show it would have been an easy enough plot point to retcon, but any such creative decision proved unnecessary. At a time when Republicans were terrified that an inexperienced new president would sink the economy, and Democrats were eager for a change – arguably any change – to the political status quo, tensions were at an all time high. Some believed it would be a close race. Of course we now know that it was anything but.
“About Last Night…” suggested a soon-realized future in which Barack Obama was elected president, and in which the ensuing panic from John McCain supporters and the entitlement from Barack Obama supporters would create a perfect storm of mania. The particularly brutal campaign seemed custom-made to polarize the country. In some respects, it seemed like a crime. But who would profit from a country divided and distracted on a single night? Why, Barack Obama and John McCain, of course. Provided that they were really jet-setting international jewel thieves.
While Randy Marsh uses Obama’s election as an excuse to act on every antisocial impulse, believing that the promised “Change” would go into effect immediately and swing national favor onto long-suffering underdog liberals, and the Stotch family prepares for the coming apocalypse, the key political players in the 2008 presidential campaign all unite to steal The Hope Diamond. The world’s most secure gemstone can only be reached from a secret presidential escape tunnel leading from The White House to directly underneath the Smithsonian (obviously). The intelligent teleplay employs a series of reversals as the public personae of figures like Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama are suddenly, hilariously reversed: the seemingly dimwitted Palin is actually a brilliant British sai-twirling criminal mastermind, and the down-to-earth matriarch Michelle is a foul-mouthed computer hacker rebuking Obama’s advances at every turn. John McCain wears a series of increasingly ridiculous disguises, because only breaking into a security system dressed as a football player could make him look hip after publicly forgetting how many houses he owned a few months prior.
The fever pitch of the 2008 election didn’t culminate in nationwide riots, nor did they send conservatives running for the safety of Cold War bunkers. But that was the national mood regardless. A feeling of intense elation from the Left, and a feeling of paranoia from the Right. Future episodes of “South Park” would deal with the very real sociopolitical fallout from the events of “About Last Night…” but this was not an episode about historical context. It was about, well, last night: a landmark in American history that everyone needed to laugh about after a year of painful media squabbling. A moment when everyone in real life was still reeling from an enormous victory or painful defeat, and needed to see those overwhelming feelings satirized in a clever way. A moment when we could finally stop treating every player in the political landscape as potential threats and see them as the broad archetypes – or a total subversion of whatever archetypes they appeared to embody – we all treated them as.
In the end, Randy loses his job, his TV and angrily declares that he knew he should have voted for McCain. “Last night” meant nothing the morning after. We were all still screwed, and still responsible for our own lives. History appears to be proving that punchline prophetic.
