This first part of the review is spoiler free.
I found this episode to be lacking, if only because the last two episodes were so good. In many ways it felt like a set up episode that was more important in terms of what they do with the rest of the season, rather than being a strong, individual episode. Sometimes episodes like this are best judged when revisiting the season. Sometimes not.
The set up is basic. Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Pageant budget is slashed by half, and, angry at more and more people as his ability to put on a great Pageant is stripped away, Mr. Hankey starts sending out angry, racist, and homophobic tweets that personally attack the people of South Park. As everyone begins to hate him, he looks for someone to defend him. In the B plotline, we see a continuation of the prior season’s romance between PC Principal and Vice Principal Strong Woman, where Strong Woman gives birth to extremely PC quintuplets, and PC Principal is clearly the father. The two icons of PC Culture struggle to conceal that they did “the most Un-PC thing imaginable.”
The basic notion of the Mr. Hankey plotline is how we as a society now seek to ostracize anyone for being a piece of shit, or at the very least if we think they’re a piece of shit. Does a racist tweet or a tweet you think is racist, mean someone should be shunned from society and forever be a pariah? Or is an accusation tantamount to guilt or at the very least is being accused justification enough to cut the line and let someone adrift? Parker and Stone don’t really take a side on this stance, and some reviews have criticized the episode for that, but I think that’s a big strength of the episode. The main weakness of this episode is just that it wasn’t very funny, and to top that off it wasn’t overly interesting or clever.
The PC Principal/Strong Woman subplot is the best part of the episode and was responsible for most of the laughs I had. Seeing the PC babies start to cry when someone says something “problematic” was hilarious. And it’s a reminder of the genius of South Park…in the same episode where they seemingly espouse Rosanne, Brett Kavanaugh, James Gunn, and Norm McDonald, which is arguably the liberal/PC stance, yet here they are mocking liberals for being cry babies. There is nuance in this episode that shows how important bi-partisan beliefs are, that you can be against both sides, while also agreeing with both sides, depending on the situation.
Also, the closing scene was the hardest I’ve laughed yet this season. And that made me give this episode a more lenient rating because if the entire Mr. Hankey plot was a set up for this joke, then I approve.
RATING: B-
SPOILERS w/Thoughts
As I said in the non-spoiler section, the basic notion of the Mr. Hankey plot is how we treat people these days for being a shitty person. But a bigger aspect of the episode was Kyle defending Mr. Hankey. He doesn’t really want to. And he fears also being “stained” and being seen as a shitty person too for defending his long-time friend. “Let’s see how that works out for you in 2018,” Cartman angrily says to Kyle for his role in defending Mr. Hankey. And that’s pretty representative of interpersonal conflicts when it comes to these hot-button instances. Kyle doesn’t defend Mr. Hankey because he believes Mr. Hankey is right, but Mr. Hankey is his friend and he accepts the stain of poo on his face to help a friend who doesn’t do anything to help himself.
Is it worth defending someone you like (or merely don’t hate) if it’s just going to make people hate you? It’s as if we as a society have developed not only a resounding method of ostracizing people, but we’ve also developed a good method of preventing any significant means of defending them. If you wanted to make someone angry in the past few weeks, all you had to do was suggest you think Kavanaugh deserves to be on the SCOTUS for non-scandal reasons, let alone suggest that you think he’s innocent, or heaven forbid if you suggest Ford was mistaken in who attacked her or, even more even heinous, if you suggest that she was lying or was being used by the DNC to harm Trump and the GOP. Much akin to the heated fury surrounding Trump leading up to the election when no one thought Trump would win because not nearly enough people were supporting him, I imagine most people who supported Kavanaugh were silent about it, not wishing to garner the hatred of so many people and being labeled a ‘rape apologist’, much like why most Trump supporters only professed their support at the ballot box so they wouldn’t be branded a “racist, sexist, homophobic, white supremacist”.
This episode is really about freedom of speech and expression. Is there freedom of speech if there are such caustic repercussions from society that we’re forced to censor ourselves for fear of mob rule punishment? What are the limits of freedom of speech and who gets to decide them? And who decides the consequences for going beyond what is deemed appropriate? And whether or not it was intentional by Parker and Stone, there is a stark hypocrisy on display by the people of South Park. They banish Mr. Hankey for some offensive tweets. He’s too shitty to have around. They are fine with Cartman, who is a literal racist and has tried on multiple occasions to take on the mantle of Hitler and exterminate the Jews. But Mr. Hankey…he made mean tweets! We must put a stop to that tyrannical tyrant!
PC Principal and Strong Woman now have quintuplets that are all decked in PC Principal sunglasses and all start crying when anyone says anything offensive or “problematic”, or see a Speedy Gonzalez T-Shirt. Everyone thinks these PC babies are adorable and can’t get over how PC they are. The real heart of this plot though is the unrelenting shame Strong PC Duo feel, and their shame is conflicting. PC Principal feels he is a piece of shit for taking advantage of a vulnerable, female employee and that’s not PC bro; Strong Woman is offended at the notion she was ever vulnerable or taken advantage of because she’s a strong woman: PC Culture is loaded with conflict ideologies like that. Together they decide that Strong Woman must be a Strong Single Mother and never let the town, or their children, know that PC Principal is actually their father, because the shame of their unspeakable act of being consensual adults who had feelings for each other may cause irreparable damages on their super PC children. Co-workers sleeping together isn’t PC at all.
What we see here are two star-crossed lovers who cannot be together as a family because they’re afraid of the social backlash that will destroy them if word gets out. But the truth is, while people were extremely upset over Mr. Hankey’s incendiary tweets, I don’t think anyone would really care about their romance. This really brings both plots together in a satisfactory way. It also shows that if your political ideology won’t let you live in happiness or be with who you love, then maybe it’s a flawed ideology in need of some serious reformation. And it's funny that they think having feelings for each other and having sex as co-workers is the most "un-PC thing they could do" while Mr. Hankey is tweeting out, "The Mayor of South Park is a tit-less whore". Actually, I think the most un-PC thing they could do was having a hunchbacked Strong Woman's water viscerally break in front of all the school children.
Lastly, we have the final scene where the episode title “A Problem With a Poo” becomes really clever. Mr. Hankey is sent out of town via a “Poo-ber” (which turns out just to be a Lyft car). Stan wonders where Mr. Hankey will go. Randy answers, “He’ll have to find a place that accepts racist, awful beings like him. There are still places out there that don’t care about bigotry and hate.” The camera pans down to the statue of Jebediah Springfield, surrounded by various, slightly altered Simpson’s characters (for copyright reasons, I suppose). When Mr. Hankey arrives, they’re overjoyed and Apu tells him to make himself at home, before #cancelthesimpsons appears on the screen. I freaking lost it when this happened.
While South Park definitely isn’t above taking a potshot at a fellow animated series, this is a brilliant scene because we have the most controversial cartoon ever, full of racism and bigotry, sending away its (kind of) racist bigots to The Simpsons, because of that documentary about how Apu is super racist. Of course, South Park can’t agree with that sentiment because of Lu Kim, who is a super racist character. I’ve read a few reviews that seem to suggest Parker and Stone agree with Apu being problematic and thinking The Simpsons waves away criticisms. But I would argue Parker and Stone think that was entirely overblown. And part of me thinks that wasn’t a jab at Springfield, so much as a show of solidarity for not bowing the crying PC babies.
Closing quote:
“Can they ever know that I’m their dad?”
“We did the most Un-PC thing imaginable. We can never let them know the debaucherous, sickening circumstances that brought them into this world.”