South Park: Season 22 Episode 7 "Nobody Got Cereal?" Review

"Um, it looks like Satan is here.  Should I start to worry?"

-Mr. Clarkson

The 7th episode of season 22 of South Park wraps up all of the story threads from the previous episode.  Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman manage to break out of jail and attempt to hide out from the police, who still believe they are responsible for all of the recent deaths in town.  As ManBearPig continues to rampage through South Park, killing everyone he runs into, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, and Satan are all visited by both Al Gore and the spirit of Al Gore, who convince them to try and stop ManBearPig, but both Al Gore's are very bad at explaining how to do so.  Satan tries to take on the beast himself, but is killed in the process.

Stan realizes his grandfather, Marvin, and the other old people in town made a deal with ManBearPig years before hand and the beast is back to collect on what he was owed.  The old people were given luxurious cars and expensive ice cream, but spared no thought on how this would impact future generations.  

Sgt. Yates finally comes to terms with ManBearPig's existence and gets the police to back off.  Stan and the other boys enter into negotiations with ManBearPig, who agrees to leave if the residents of South Park give up soy sauce and Red Dead Redemption 2, which they refuse.  Instead, they simply delay ManBearPig's return by screwing over other parts of the world.

What Works:

My favorite parts of this episode were the interactions between Stan and Marvin.  There is some really funny dialogue between the two of them and I love watching Stan swear at his grandpa.  I've always enjoyed the rare interactions between these two characters and this was some top-notch writing.

The fight between Satan and ManBearPig was nothing short of epic.  The animation was spectacular and I can't believe they killed off Satan.  Hopefully, he will return to the series as he's one of my favorite characters, but it was a great scene and showed off just how formidable ManBearPig is.

What Sucks:

A lot of the jokes from this episode were used in the previous one and they got stale pretty fast.  I haven't played Red Dead Redemption 2, but I still really enjoyed the jokes in the last episode, but they were very repetitive here and not nearly as funny.  The same was true of the Al Gore storyline.  They were more repetitive jokes that weren't very funny and the spirit of Al Gore stuff wasn't all that interesting.

I thought this episode wrapped up a little too quickly as well.  What happened to Ned?  Is he dead or did ManBearPig take him somewhere.  It would have been nice to get some closure to that storyline, especially from Jimbo.  They even mention Ned again in this episode, but they never say he was killed, just dragged off.

I guess I don't think this storyline warranted two episodes.  I think it could have been condensed down into one and it would have been much better.  Take all the best parts from these two and you've got a stellar episode, and while I really liked last week's episode, "Nobody Got Cereal?" was definitely lackluster.

Verdict:

"Nobody Got Cereal?" had some great moments with Stan and Marvin as well as the Satan/ManBearPig fight, but the jokes were very repetitive, it could have been wrapped up better, and simply didn't need to be two episodes.  It's still a decent episode of South Park, but probably my least favorite episode of the season so far.

 6/10: Okay