Non-Spoiler Review
I had a hunch that South Park was going in this direction after last week’s dark “Dead Kids”. Combine that tone with #CancelSouthPark, which now sits behind the closing credits each episode, and it sends a strong message of not giving a fuck. I think that after the past couple of years, a lot of people have criticized South Park for trying new things like serialization and telling larger stories, but I think what may have lit a fire under Trey Parker and Matt Stone was the sentiment that they’ve lost it or, far worse, that they’ve gone soft. This season feels like a monumental middle finger to all those people. “You think we’re soft? Fuck you!” And if that is the case, then I couldn’t be happier with the results.
“A Boy and a Priest” has a simple enough set up. All the parents of South Park suddenly love going to church and say they feel fantastic after leaving, and we discover this is because they constantly crack jokes about child molestation during Father Maxi’s sermons. Father Maxi is dejected and disillusioned until one special little boy, Butters, reaches out and touches him in a special way in a special place. If you found that wording a little gross, then you will no doubt find this episode of South Park disgusting. Let’s just say this newest episode involved a Catholic Priest Cleanup Crew and one of the greatest montages in South Park’s long history that depicts the budding relationship between Butters and Father Maxi.
The episode itself doesn’t seem to offer too much commentary except on how our society treats something as horrible as widespread child molestation in the Catholic Church with jokes and a casual disregard for the actual victims, not unlike how the adults were too over school shootings last week to react to them anymore. But what this episode does have is a great deal of dark, dark humour, humour that is so wrong on so many levels that it can only come from South Park. I laughed from start to finish, even having to pause it several times to collect myself. There are some callbacks as well to the Season 6 episode “Red Hot Catholic Love”, which too took on the child molestation in the church not long after the Boston Globe broke the story. But the crux of the episode is Father Maxi’s dilemma over his handling of the Church’s crimes, and the enabling, flippant manner in which The Church cleans up after itself. With a lot of jokes about kids and cum.
To call this episode a step down from last week’s excellent 22 minutes is an insult to how good of an episode it was. But that’s what makes South Park so difficult to rank. One episode is great because it’s incredibly intelligent. Another episode is great because it’s ridiculous. Another is great because it’s too true a depiction of our world. Another episode is great because it goes there: this is one of those episodes.
RATING: A-
Thoughts w/SPOILERS
I never thought I’d see a group of priests using a power cleaning tool called a “Kumby” to scrub the evidence away from anywhere a priest’s cum might have been, whether that be the rectory, altar, or the mouths and asses of little boys at Clyde’s birthday party. “Clean that table. He’d have mounted the boys there,” says a Clean Up Crew Priest, while scrubbing the scene where Father Maxi played a board game with the boys. The priests say “cum” so many times in reference to children that it borders on lunacy. Later on in the episode, they debut the Kumboni, a souped up super Zamboni they use to clean up the campsite shared by Maxi and Butter’s of Father Maxi’s cum. As if I couldn’t be laughing hard enough by the time this thing came out, Father Maxi ended up using it to run over the other Priests, which turns their bodies into a gory mess of blood and bones as they imploded beneath the Kumboni. These scenes were just too much. It was great.
The usage of Butters naivety, ignorance, and kind soul, are put to use well in this episode. He gives Father Maxi advice on how to deal with all the ridicule he’s taking in Church because of all the other Priests. Butters only wants to help Father Maxi because he knows he’s a good man, and credits Father Maxi’s sermons with helping him through tough times where he was ostracized and bullied. The montage of the two of them was hysterical and innocent enough until, on a bench at Stark’s Pond, Maxi puts his arm around Butters, and Butters puts his hand on Maxi’s leg…which both managed to be touching and gross and hilarious all at once.
As Parker and Stone have done a lot in recent years, there is some self-reflection through the townsfolk (who are Parker and Stone) mocking and laughing at the situation. Why do we, and by extension they, make light and mock such serious situations like this? Is it because we’re dicks? Is it because we’re that emotionally detached these days? Or is it that our way of dealing with such dark shit? I think it’s a mix of all three. In a strange way, that may be the reason why South Park has felt to have lost its edge in the past two seasons for so many people. Reality itself has become so damn preposterous and loony, how can you satirize it more than it exists? It makes me glad that South Park decided to take on this subject, rather than the Kavanaugh saga…because that entire thing is just a maelstrom of ridiculousness, from those involved, to the media, to the people commenting on it, and it has just straight up seized North America like a priest seizes an altar boy’s penis.
Father Maxi reflecting on the “Red Hot Catholic Love” episode was a nice touch. He admits he knew about the molestation and how he tried to help 16 years ago before admitting it isn’t a few bad apples in the Catholic Church, it’s a few good ones, and that the Church itself is cancer. And that was a pretty strong statement by Parker and Stone. I could see some staunch Christian sitting through all the jokes about child molestation and laughing, but blowing a fuse at the Church itself being cancer.
I felt a lot of empathy for Father Maxi’s plight in this episode. I am sure there are many priests in the Churches who are good men, who are altruistic and compassionate, and would never do the horrid things their compatriots do, but they too have to deal with the shame and the backlash, they too are guilty by association. After nearly giving up, Maxi understands that the only way to beat the cancer in the church is to drive over it with a souped up Kumboni in front of a few abducted, half naked little boys held in bondage in front of a campfire. Is it enough that the good priests stand up and fight against the guilty priests? Is the entire church tainted? Does the church need to be Kumdozed to the ground? In the end, he’s forced to become a hero to atone for his previously ineffective and naïve approach towards ameliorating the rampant sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and he take matters into his own hands by committing mass murder with a Kumboni.
Kumboni.
KUMBONI!!!!!
I’m sorry. I can’t stop saying Kumboni.
I’m Canadian.
And yes, my head is flappy with beady eyes so full of lies.
A closing quote from ‘A Boy and a Priest’:
“Get any evidence the priest might have left behind!”
“There’s something over here, but I can’t tell if it’s cum or frosting.”
“It’s an eight-year-old’s birthday party. Of course it’s cum!”