South Park’s Cold War Plot Subverted Viewer Expectations
It would have been an obvious and uninspired move to make Mr. Garrison a war hawk in South Park season 25, so the choice to turn Mr. Mackey into the unhinged character was an inspired subversion of viewer expectations. South Park, like many satirical shows, has a disappointing tendency to reach for low-hanging fruit on occasion. Sometimes, this results in a weak episode, whereas at other times it has bigger consequences.
For example, South Park’s transphobic episode “Board Girls” (season 23, episode 7) undid all of the surprisingly thoughtful commentaries of “The Cissy” (season 18, episode 3) with a few thoughtless, tasteless, and embarrassingly outdated stereotypes. Where South Park’s treatment of Britney proved the show could be insightful about unexpected topics and tell compelling stories from fresh perspectives, lesser episodes leave the show feeling out of touch and cringe-inducing. This made it all the more unexpected and impressive when South Park season 25 took an under-utilized supporting star of the series in a clever new direction.
In the opening scene of “Back to the Cold War” (season 25, episode 4), the always-outrageous Mr. Garrison is talking to his class and exposes that he has no idea about the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Mr. Mackey then bursts in and corrals the kids into an absurd scare-mongering nuclear safety drill, becoming an unhinged Russophobe before the cold open is over. Much like The Simpsons successfully revisited a classic episode by rearranging the roles each character fulfilled, Mr. Mackey being the one to get caught up in McCarthyite paranoia was a clever twist that few South Park fans would expect when the less level-headed Mr. Garrison is almost always the one involved in plots like this.
Even though South Park’s former Trump insert Garrison couldn’t have cared less about the crisis (and PC Principal seemed unfazed), the usually comparatively placid Mackey became an absurdly jingoistic nationalist overnight. The gag perfectly encapsulated how crises leave even usually rational people to look for a “good guy and a bad guy”, as Mackey later put it, despite, as Mackey’s mother noted, “people dying” when the fires of war are wilfully stoked. Mr. Mackey’s status as one of South Park’s more sensible supporting stars meant that the show’s satire of an ongoing conflict worked despite being difficult to pull off (like Rick & Morty’s season 5 satire).
It remains to be seen whether South Park will be able to keep up with current events as they unfold while keeping the show’s satirical points sharp. The series has been accused of missing as often as it hits in recent seasons, but some fans felt that its move toward serialization revitalized South Park. Others thought the show’s format switch to longer standalone specials in 2020 and 2021 helped South Park’s satire, meaning season 25 could be primed as a comeback for the long-running, infamously inconsistent adult animation.