What's the deal with...South Park's Midseason Finale?

In my second "What's the deal with..." post, I will be examining last night's puzzling South Park episode.

South Park is currently in its fifteenth season. It was recently voted the greatest animated program of all time by the reader's of Entertainment Weekly, beating out Family Guy and The Simpsons. South Park has done what few shows can, which is maintain an audience, stay relevant, and stay fresh for fifteen seasons. A feat, few (if any), other television shows have ever achieved.

I'm a fan of South Park. As a kid without cable I remember only being able to watch when I was on vacation. One of the first episodes I ever saw was the classic Thanksgiving episode featuring Timmy and Gobbles in a Helen Keller musical. Coming to college, I enjoyed being able to watch new episodes each week with the rest of the guys I was living with. It was a quintessential college experience.

But in the first episodes of this season, South Park didn't quite seem to be hitting the mark as well as it once had. South Park has always been known for it's biting social satire, mixed with incredibly outlandish, childish, and grotesque humor. It was a balance that no other show has even tried to achieve. What other show wold dare combine the ideas of battling the growing popularity of Jersey Shore by asking for help from Al-Qaeda? I think what few people realize is that South Park became Saturday Night Live. I mean this in the best possible way. For years SNL used absurdist humor to comment on what was happening in the world. South Park was able to do the same, without celebrity guest stars or musical guests. As SNL wandered into a dangerous level of mediocrity in the past decade South Park executed brilliant social commentary in ways SNL could only dream of.

This season though the marks have been weak and the humor uneven. The South Park team is also famous for their ability to make an episode in a short amount of time, and some might argue they missed an opportunity to capitalize on the death of Osama Bin Laden, and this past week's Anthony Weiner scandal. Take last week's episode for example, where Butter's was mistaken for having multiple personalities, it's not really a topic on the American minds. And while the first half of the show had been laughing constantly, but in the second half the jokes just didn't seem to click.

Which us to last night's midseason finale, titled "You're Getting Old". Stan turned 10 and became a victim of cynicism.  A condition diagnosed by his doctor as: everything he sees, hears, and eats will seem like shit. It was episode where half of the noise was simply farts. They also seemed to take a shot at something called Tween Wave music, which I still don't fully understand (if you know please explain in the comments). A crappy brand of kids music that Randy, desperate to reclaim his youth, insisted that he enjoyed. This in turn caused a riff between him and his wife Sharon.

Awww yeeeaaaah! O-BA-MA!

The episode as whole was pretty terrible. I kept waiting for the plot to turn around, or to suddenly reveal itself to be something else, as it so often does. However this episode just seemed to be missing the mark. South Park has thrived on potty humor in the past (Mr. Hanky anyone?), but this episode was as shitty as the music it was making fun of.

And as I watched the clock slowly tick down, and it seemed the episode would not be salvaged, something happened. Sharon confronted Randy about his wild behavior, not just in this episode, but in past episodes that have focused on Randy's desire to be young again. Watching this was extremely odd, because even when characters in South Park take on a serious tone, they rarely have anything serious to say. I kept watching thinking I had to be missing something, that there was some grand joke staring me in the face that I just couldn't see. But what was really happening was a serious conversation between to people, and the startling realization from Randy and Sharon that they were both unhappy about their lives. That they weren't enjoying themselves any more. And suddenly it became more than a conversation between Randy and Sharon. It became a conversation between South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and their fans.

As the show ended with Stevie Nick's "Landslide" playing in the background. We watched as Stan's friends deserted him because they didn't want to be around someone who thought everything was shit, and Sharon and Randy separated. This was another moment about this episode that caught me off guard. South Park can often make you forget that you actually care about these characters. It was an oddly touching and sad moment that reminded me of the shockingly violent end to the Somali Pirates episode a few years ago.

So what does this ambiguous ending mean? Is South Park on it's last leg, and this is Stone and Parker's way of letting us know? Or is it simply a set-up for a new direction the show will take? It's hard to say. Stone and Parker are notorious for pulling the rug out from under their fans. On the other hand they are finding success elsewhere with their Broadway Musical The Book of Mormon. Perhaps they really do want to move on and avoid becoming like the shows they have lambasted in the past.

If South Park does end, expect them to pull out all the stops, maybe even trying to get one last crack and Mohammed, before leaving our favorite third graders behind. Regardless, South Park will live on in reruns on Comedy Central for eternity, and if Parker and Stone come back a few years down the line with fresh ideas, I'm sure they'll be welcomed back with open arms.

What do you think? Time to move on from South Park? Or do you never want it to end?