South Park: Season 22 Episode 4 "Tegridy Farms" Review

"Don't forget to bring a towel."

-Randy Marsh

After Shelly Marsh gets in trouble for sending inappropriate pictures to the recess monitor, Randy has had enough and moves his family out of town to run a hemp farm together.  Randy grows such quality product that he is approached by a representative from a vaping company who wants to sell his product, but Randy looks down on vaping and refuses.  As the company starts buying out nearby farms to run Randy out of business, he has no choice to take but to take down the vape company with his fists and a little help from a familiar towel.

At school, Kyle discovers his little brother, Ike, and the rest of the kindergartners are all vaping and buy their materials from Butters, who is working for Cartman.  As Kyle tries to stop Cartman and Butters, he is dragged deeper into the underbelly of vaping as Cartman and Butters try to find a way out of the business and pay off the money they owe.  They end up at the vaping company at the same time as Randy with explosive consequences.

What Works:

When Towelie showed up at the Marsh farm, I audibly groaned.  Towelie is a very hit-or-miss character.  He's given us some gold over the years, but also gave us the worst episode of all time, "A Million Little Fibers", but in this episode, he was the best part.  Watching him test Randy's product was hilarious, as was seeing the end result with him crumpled in the corner talking about chickens wearing suspenders, but my favorite part of the episode is where he is revealed to be with Randy as they fight the vape company representative.  It's a classic and badass moment and a highlight of the season.

Most of the things that sold me on this episode were the smaller jokes.  For example, the opening scene where Mr. Mackey is explaining the inappropriate picture situation is beyond absurd.  You can't help but laugh at Randy's reactions.

I love the joke where anytime someone puts on the hemp hat, "Two Princes" by Spin Doctors plays.  It's a great joke and that song playing while Randy beats up a bunch of vapers is great.

Finally, Cartman and Butters planting the body of a dead hooker near their vape dealer was great.  I totally wasn't expecting the scene to go in that direction.  It's by far the best part of the Kyle/Cartman/Butters storyline and really funny.

What Sucks:

As I said above, it was the smaller bits that worked for me in this episode.  I really didn't care much for either of the two storylines.  I'm all for Randy going off on some stupid tangent and dragging his family down with him, but I don't think we got enough out of it this time around.  We get a few funny Randy moments, but the rest of the Marsh's are mostly sidelined once they get to the farm.  Their reactions to Randy's antics are part of the reason Randy episodes are typically so funny, but we only get one scene with Stan hating his dad.  We don't really see Shelly or Sharon at all.

I didn't love the Kyle/Cartman/Butters storyline.  It's  a classic setup: Cartman is doing something morally terrible and dragged in Butters as well.  Kyle finds out and tries to stop them only to get dragged into the mess himself.  We've seen it done plenty of times over the years, but this time it didn't really click for me.  It felt like "been there, done that", but it's been much better done in the past and this story didn't really do anything new.  Apart from the dead hooker scene, it felt like a by-the-numbers South Park story and wasn't that interesting.

I guess it all goes back to the vape/hemp subject matter, which I don't find all that interesting.  I've seen plenty of vape jokes before and South Park's spin on them wasn't anything special.  In the past, South Park has managed to take topics I'm not particularly interested in and made them engaging, but they weren't able to do that here.       

Verdict:

There were plenty of smaller funny moments in "Tegridy Farms".  The return of Towelie may be his best appearance of all time, the opening scene with Mr. Mackey, the "Two Princes" song, and the dead hooker scene were all hilarious, but the main storylines weren't particularity interesting.  They were less interesting versions of things this show has done before.  It's not a bad episode by any means, but it is my least favorite of the season so far.

 6/10: Okay