South Park: Season 16 Premiere

South Park: Season 16 premiered Wednesday night with the 23-minute episode “Reverse Cowgirl” and the show’s creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are back to their old selves again. The episode’s premise is refreshingly simple; it focuses on the age-old debate between men and women: toilet seat up or down? You can’t help but think, “How have they not done this before?” The episode began strongly and ended a little too muddled for my tastes.

The story revolves around one of the show’s more ancillary characters, Clyde. His mother keeps nagging him for not putting the toilet seat down after use. Clyde’s forgetfulness leads to his mother accidentally falling into the toilet and flushing at the same time, creating a vacuum that sucks out her insides and kills her (Yeah, they went there). Clyde’s mother’s death leads to a debate at her funeral over the proper way to leave a toilet seat and eventually a slew of over the top satirical happenings in the not-so-quiet small town of South Park. The TSA (Toilet Safety Administration) installs seat belts on everyone’s toilets and monitors and inspects everyone before and after using the porcelain crown, and the boys join Clyde in a lawsuit to sue the long dead inventor of the toilet through a “Sue-ance” (A séance intended to summon Sir John Harrington and sue his ghost for causing the death of Clyde’s mother). 

The episode is a classic South Park-ian satire of airport security, the legal system, and the classic debate between the sexes. But while the show begins intelligently enough, it quickly progresses and branches off into multiple sub-plots, stretching itself too thin for a 23-minute episode. However, all that being criticized, it definitely has its moments. Stan’s father Randy is given a ticket by a police officer for not using his seat belt in his own bathroom. Later in the episode he is subjected to a cavity search and scan by three TSA security guards before he can take his morning constitutional.

Part of the original appeal of South Park was the innocence of potty-mouthed children dealing with adult problems. In my opinion, Butters is the last innocent character on the show and perhaps some of the cleverest moments in “Reverse Cowgirl” come from him. During the debate over whether to leave the toilet seat up or down, Butters points out that he always makes a “number two” by sitting on the toilet facing the tank. He remarks that it makes more sense because the flusher is right in front of you, and you have a shelf to put your coloring book and chocolate milk. This becomes the plant for the payoff ending when Sir John Harrington’s ghost is summoned to court and reveals that it is the proper way to sit on a toilet, and if everyone sat the correct way there wouldn’t be any problems.

Unfortunately “Reverse Cowgirl” felt like there were just too many “cooks in the kitchen.” The episode was great for a few laughs but the story lacked a certain polish expected of South Park. With a few redrafts before production it probably could have been one of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s more classic episodes. Still, the breakneck pace that the South Park staff has to work with has put out some surprisingly well-crafted episodes, and perhaps we are just holding them to a very high standard. It’s been 16 seasons, and they’re still finding fresh things to flush in our faces.