South Park: Season 22 Finale "Bike Parade" Review

"Everybody loses, you guys!"
-Eric Cartman



The season 22 finale of South Park sure had a lot going on.  After getting the mall zombies to work for Amazon, Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman all receive the things they need to finish their bike for the bike parade, but Kenny's father forces him to go to a talk by Josh the Box about Marxism and decides to quit the parade, which prevents the others from using their 4-person bike.  Stan, Kyle, and Cartman decide to get the parade canceled so that everyone loses. 

With Amazon not shipping enough stuff and so many stressful protests happening, Randy's weed business booms and he and Towelie devise a way to get more people their weed by using e-scooters.  

With all of the small business closed down because of Amazon, South Park faces a Christmas without any presents.  Santa Clause arrives to save the day, but when he learns that the town forced Mr. Hankey to leave, he abandons them to their fate.

After orchestrating the murder of Josh the Box, Jeff Bezos takes over South Park and refuses to cancel the bike parade when Stan, Kyle, and Cartman arrive.  Fortunately, Randy and the rest of the town arrive, all high, having come to the agreement that none of them will work for Amazon.  The town reverts back to "normal".  They have the bike parade and Ned is revealed to have survived the ManBearPig attack.


What Works:

There was a lot going on in this episode and it took me a while to process what I was seeing, but I will say the episode was very funny.  There were lots of great one liners with an all-time classic coming from Santa Claus.  We ever get an extremely dark joke about Cartman shooting up the school that was really hilarious.  Stan trying to calm Cartman down might be my favorite moment from the episode.

Randy's speech to Bezos at the end was all over the place, but the revelation that he and the rest of the town were all facing the wrong direction was fantastic.

I really liked the meta-commentary about the show.  People and TV shows are getting in trouble all the time these days for doing something offensive, but South Park has been insanely offensive for decades now and they never get in trouble.  No matter what they do, they can't get canceled.  It's a really interesting point.  This season has been one of the most offensive in the entire run of the show and there has been basically zero controversy.  


What Sucks:

Like I said, this episode was all over the place.  There were a lot of storylines going on and I can't really say it had a satisfying conclusion.  South Park has never been able to tie up these season-long stories very well and this one is about par for the course.  Apart from the meta-commentary about how they can't get canceled, I don't know what the point was for some of the storylines.

The Amazon protest storyline was particularly bizarre.  I wasn't a big fan of the previous episode and the conflict they set up really didn't go anywhere.  It just kind of ended because everyone got high.  I guess I was hoping for something more than that.


Verdict:

"Bike Parade" was a very funny episode, but it wasn't the most satisfying from a storytelling perspective.  There were plenty of hilarious moments and the meta-commentary was interesting, but the episode was very unfocused and too much of it felt like it didn't have a point.

 7/10: Good 



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