South Park: Season 22 Episode 3 "The Problem with a Poo" Review

"Sometimes, PC babies don't even know what they're crying about."

-Townsperson

Episode 3 of South Park's 22 season follows Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo as he spirals in popularity with the town.  After his budget for a special Christmas event gets cut, Mr. Hankey goes on a Ambien-fuled Twitter rant insulting almost everyone in town.  Only Kyle is willing to stand by his friend to help Mr. Hankey find redemption, but the Christmas Poo fails in every attempt and only makes the problem worse.  Eventually, Kyle is forced to abandon Mr. Hankey, who is kicked out of town and moves to Springfield, the town where The Simpsons takes place.

At the same time, it's revealed that Vice Principal Strong Woman is pregnant after her fling with PC Principal.  She chooses to deny that affair ever happened and claims there is no father.  But after she gives birth to quintuplets, all of whom are PC babies, her story becomes less believable.  PC Principal  becomes the nanny to the PC babies to be a part of their lives, but Strong Woman is adamant the babies never find out about their father, as the lack of PC-ness in their conception would be too much for the babies to handle.

What Works:

The PC babies storyline is by far the strongest part of the episode.  All of the interactions the various townspeople have with the PC babies is just hilarious, with the line at the top of this piece being the strongest of the episode.  The PC babies are a great addition to show and I can't wait to see what happens with them next.

The interactions with Strong Woman and PC Principal are also great.  Their storyline last season was fantastic and I'm really happy to see it continue here.  I like seeing these extremely opinionated characters forced into situations that are uncomfortable for them and they are both really fun parts of this episode.

I have some problems with the Mr. Hankey storyline, which I will get to, but the one thing I did love was the closing joke about The Simpsons still accepting racist and objectionable characters like Apu.  It was a great reference to the controversy surrounding the character and a solid way to end the episode.

What Sucks:

As I said above, I had some problems with the Mr. Hankey storyline.  It felt very unfocused with what it was trying to say.  It mainly focused on the controversy surrounding Roseanne Barr, which is something I had already forgotten about.  It seems pretty dated for South Park to be focusing on.  I know the larger scope of the episode was focusing on the downfall of many formerly beloved actors and entertainers, but I think they could have done something more fun with that than a parody of Rosanne Barr.

There were also some references to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which simply didn't work.  His confirmation hearings were ripe for parody and South Park just fell flat.  They didn't spend enough time at the hearing scene and the jokes weren't as solid as they could have been.  The whole thing felt like a missed opportunity.

Finally, when Mr. Haney was being forced out of town, I wasn't quite sure how I was supposed to feel.  It seemed like the town kinda felt bad about kicking Mr. Hankey out because of all the joy he had brought to South Park over the years, but Mr. Hankey was just so unlikeable in this episode.  He was given many chances and continually made things worse.  This wasn't just one mistake, this was many.  Mr. Hankey totally got what was coming to him and when the tone of his final scene in South Park felt somber, it didn't match what we saw in the rest of the episode.  If they really wanted to do this right, they should have had Mr. Hankey make one mistake and have the rest of the world come down on him like a ton of bricks.  Have South Park start off wanting to help Mr. Hankey, but, as the pressure mounts, they all abandon him.  That would gives us a reason to be sad at his departure and would be a much more interesting critique of our culture.  Instead, we got to see a character get what he deserved and we shouldn't feel bad about it, yet the show wants us to.

Verdict:

"The Problem with a Poo is probably the weakest episode of the season to this point, but its still pretty funny.  The PC baby storyline is gold and I love the final joke of the episode.  The Mr. Hankey plot gets too muddled in what it is trying to say and gets confusing in terms of how we are supposed to feel.  All that said, this episode has still got it going on.

 7/10: Good