Liam Hoofe reviews the sixth episode of South Park season 20…
South Park Season 20 is heading towards the home straight, and with only 4 episodes left to go all the pieces are falling into place for the season’s grand finale.
Episode 6 ‘Fort Collins’ kicked off with a Martian inspired sequence that saw Cartman exploring Mars. Except this wasn’t your typical version of Mars, this one was full of neon flashing rollercoasters, and huge vagina inspired space stations. Turns out this is now what Cartman thinks about in his post internet world. The sequences were inter cut around the episode and worked as an effective insight into Cartman’s thoughts.
Last week I retracted previous statements about Cartman and Heidi being dull and this week’s episode took the pair up a further notch. With Denmark threatening to leak everybody’s internet history Cartman has gone into panic mode – he worries that Heidi will find out what he said about the Ghostbusters reboot and will not be able to forgive him. I suspect however this is likely to be the least of his problems when his history is inevitably leaked. Cartman’s arc this season appears genuine, I believe he really wants to change. These revelations, however, will likely be the catalyst for his return to the dark side as the season wears on.
Cartman’s panic though was really just there for comedic relief in an episode that had a lot bigger fish to fry, namely the presidential election and Denmark’s on going obsession with unmasking internet trolls. The ending of this week’s episode, where Hilary Clinton was given information on Gerald indicates that the show is going to use this subplot to tie into the recent e-mail scandal, with Denmark effectively playing both Russia and Wikileaks in the coming episodes.
Denmark’s attack on Colorado was another highlight in an episode that rarely lost steam. The hysteria that followed Denmark leaking everybody’s internet history actually seemed more plausible than ludicrous. The wife throwing her husband out, people fighting in the streets and the father of a disabled child getting revenge on her bullies all seem like they could have been picked out of a Black Mirror episode on the same subject and the show’s handling of this sequence was superb.
The real stars of this episode however were the memberberries. The episode took them from being a lovable little sideshow into potentially the season’s big bad. Having been tortured by Randy and Mr Garrison the memberberries escaped and began to unveil their master plan towards the back end of the episode. This provided the show with its funniest moments, most notably the road trip scene with the memberberries listening to, and reminiscing about Toto’s Africa.
Fort Collins did decide to ignore the war between the boys and girls this episode though, with Cartman only briefly referencing it whilst he interrupted Kyle on the toilet, another on going joke this season that becomes funnier every time we see it.
Remember a few years ago, when everyone though South Park was finished and had no new ideas? Well Season 20 continues to prove that wrong, with Fort Collins being another great episode in what could well go down as one of the show’s greatest ever seasons.
Liam Hoofe
Originally published October 27, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
