In their second-to-last episode of South Park's 18th season, show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone finally took one of my biggest criticisms of this year's work to rest. After introducing in the season's second episode, "Gluten Free Ebola, the concept of every event in this season being interconnected for ten straight installments, Parker and Stone have done little-to-nothing to take advance of this. That is, until this week's "#Rehash."
After last week's holiday hiatus, South Park finally focuses, once again, on Randy's alternate identity as pop singer Lorde, and their struggles to perform live alongside Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea in a "Women of Rock" concert, supporting South Africa's Gluten Crisis, after Stan spends the family's savings on Canadian Freemium games. Despite Randy/Lorde's insistence otherwise, knowing their auto equipment will not transfer to the stage and hinder the performance in front of millions of fans, they perform anyway, to less than stellar results. But that doesn't really matter, for Randy/Lorde's last-minute effort to "rub his clit" on stage to gain the audience approval gains the artist the all-desired comments. "It's not about the music, Lorde. It never was. It's about comments, and sister, you got them," his producer scorns over the phone with the artist, chaining to a series of identity issues along the way.
Randy isn't the only one with moral doubts on his mind in the Marsh household, though, for Stan struggles with understanding why his brother Ike and his friends would rather watch people on YouTube comment on playing video games than play them themselves. While Ike and so many other five-year-old youngsters watch online stars like PewDiePie, who makes a cameo in this week's episode, Stan wonders what has happened to the living room, a vacant area in the house now only "old people" hang out in. As this happens, Cartman—of course—takes advantage of the situation and becomes a YouTube superstar himself, to glowingly surreal results as the episode continues.
With its cliffhanger ending, it's evident this is just one half of the creators' master plan for the finale. So, with that in mind, it's hard to get too critical on what the show creators have accomplished here. The attempts to squish together commentary on our societies need for technology and our ongoing desire to "rehash" things people loved before are what loosely connecting these two subplots together. While, ideology, they are fairly sound, conceptually they feel a bit uneven, at least this week. Perhaps the following week's continuation will solve this, but this week's episode felt kinda discombobulated.
What makes these two subplots feel more disorientated is how the Randy/Lorde subplot is far more inspired and comically rich than the other. While it may have some higher thinking in mind, it feels like an episode solely centered on how poor female role models Cyrus, Minja and Azaula are, while also exploring the industry's desire to recreate holograms of passed celebrities, could have carried its own episode. Not only is this where the season-long references fit best, but these segments get the best moments and most original storytelling. The best example being an awkward dinner sequence with the Marsh family, discussing why Randy/Lorde rubbed his non-existent clit on stage in front of millions.
Additionally, this subplot provides "#Rehash" with its best feature: the return of their Michael Jackson character, now in hologram form. While, sadly, in only small doses, Jackson continues to be a great cannon for the South Park oddball comedy style, and gets some rich moments all the way, especially as his storyline escalates to another hologram celebrity hunting him down.
Like the video game-watching commentary, all of this is meant to be a head-shaking, cross-armed examination of how technology dependent our society has become. Which is a great set-up, and one meeting some of its potential this week. The biggest problem seems to be that, like their last episode returning from a week-hiatus, "The Magic Bush", there are just one too many things going on inside this episode to make a truly great installment. This week's episode is better than that one, though, and perhaps with their extra episode, they can make this all gel in a nice, season-ending fashion. We'll have to see what becomes of the Marshes and the living room next week.
Image courtesy of INFphoto.com