South Park's Gun Violence Finale Was the Smartest Episode of Its Smartest Season

We're in a crisis, and we're all staring down the barrel.


A few years after Columbine, South Park co-creator Matt Stone sat down with Michael Moore to talk about the mass shooting that took place in his hometown of Littleton, Colorado. Stone spoke about the insensitivity of the NRA holding a pro-gun rally in Colorado not long after the April 1999 massacre, an idea that, in and of itself, sounds like a South Park episode. Many believe that the mass shooting at Columbine kickstarted our current national mass shooting epidemic. At the time it took place, South Park had only been on the air for a couple of years. Nearly two decades later, it's an American cultural phenomenon. Mass shootings are, too. Stone and Trey Parker were nearing the end of their 19th season when, again, a mass shooting rocked their home state the day after Thanksgiving. Five days after that, 14 people were gunned down 70 miles from where Stone and Parker work in California.


South Park has come a long way from the crappy little construction paper cut-outs that it consisted of 267 episodes ago. Just take a look at the present intro, with its digital graphics and new characters. The show has gone from two guys doing dumb, funny shit with paper to a scathing, satirical institution. But in recent seasons, South Park had plateaued. The rhythm had become stale. That all changed this fall with season 19–South Park's most ambitious yet. The little town of bigots, starkly opposed to progressive ideas, physically and morally transformed this season. South Park's storytelling capabilities did, too. Parker and Stone constructed a complex, 10-episode narrative with a cohesive story arc and recurring themes. It was brilliant.

Let's sum it up so we can talk about last night's finale. The town has done two main things this season: gentrify and embrace PC culture. There's now a vibrant downtown area around Kenny's house (with a Whole Foods). There's a new principal, PC Principal, who aggressively loves "nothing more than beer, working out, and the feeling that you get when you rhetorically defend a marginalized community from systems of oppression."

South Park's one-off episodes have often taken on single issues, like the royal wedding or Kanye West. But in season 19, everything is connected: gun control, inequality, politics, freedom of speech, and a feeling of collective anxiety. At the end, this season has been pretty much devoid–with the exception of Caitlyn Jenner as a recurring character–of pop culture references.

So, the ending.

Late in this season, Parker and Stone introduced the source of the gentrification and the appearance of PC culture. Advertisements are controlling our actions, our wants, our consumption of the truth (nothing new there). And as the townspeople investigate, they arm themselves in the only way that's practical against any unknown threat: with guns. Throughout the episode, instead of solving simple issues, the characters point guns at each other. Cartman wants to stay up and watch a movie, so he points a gun at his mom. "I'm not going to tell you again Eric, it's time for night night," Cartman's mom says, pointing a gun back at her son. Stan's family is having an argument at the dinner table and out come the guns. Staring down the barrel of these deadly weapons, they all have rational conversations, and they solve their problems with words. It leads to some tense moments, where the gun is pointed at a child, at a parent, at the viewer. But not a single bullet is ever fired.

South Park, the TV show, has changed in nearly two decades. South Park, the fictionalized town, has also changed. Colorado has changed. (Denver's LoDo, LoHi, and RiNo neighborhoods look a lot like South Park's gentrified areas.) But in the show, as in reality from Columbine to San Bernardino, and everything that has happened in between, one thing hasn't changed. We're still an anxious, lonely, and isolated nation, and we're still destroying ourselves and those around us with guns.

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