‘South Park’ Fans Are Worried That the New Season Will Already Be Dated by the Time It Comes Out
South Park recently released a trailer for its 27th season which will officially kick off on July 9th — more than two years after the last season ended. While there have been several feature-length specials in the interim, that’s still a pretty long hiatus for a TV show not named Severance to take. Oh, and apparently South Park is a drama now.
Fans are no doubt excited for the show’s return, but some were also surprised to see that the trailer contained so much footage from the new batch of episodes. After all, South Park is famous for its tight production schedule, which has, in the past, enabled the show to comment on current events with relative immediacy. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s stressful process was memorably documented in the TV special 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park.
On Reddit, one fan questioned if the trailer is “an indication they’re taking less of a 6 days to air approach for this season?” while others joked that it could have been entirely made up of “fake scenes.” Some suggested that Parker and Stone haven’t maintained that schedule “for years.”
Obviously, not every episode of South Park is thrown together in less than a week, but while one might expect that the episodes that get planned out well in advance are the ones that aren’t tethered to current events, the footage from the trailer was full of references to topical issues such as Trump’s threats against Canada and aircraft accidents.
Suddenly, people seem to be concerned that the show known for its quick response times may offer up stale takes. “Three months out will be kind of dated for Diddy and bird flu jokes if they actually produce episodes like those shown here,” one person posted. Another bemoaned that the show has gone from “same week turnarounds” to “jokes that are dated before the trailer even drops.”
It wouldn’t be too surprising to learn that Parker and Stone have wholly abandoned their famously unhinged production schedule, considering that they also have drastically scaled back the number of episodes delivered per season, citing Mick Jagger-like old age as the primary reason for the change.
But by seemingly planning out their satirical targets months in advance, South Park does run the risk of succumbing to the same problem that’s plagued other animated shows: not being able to keep up with the news. Remember how The Simpsons gave us a COVID allegory in 2023?
And Futurama dedicated an entire episode to NFTs, which aired after most of us had already forgotten that NFTs were ever a thing.
Either way, we’ll have to wait until July to see if any of the show’s hot takes need reheating.
