#s27

I don't know what it is about this season so far that is just utterly frustrating. I sang a lot of praises during e1 for taking off running out of the gate, and maybe the bar got set too high for what is ultimately turning out to be a very mid-tier season. Besides some more political punches, many of which have already been said during the last 2 episodes, there really hasn't felt like much has happened in terms of a plot. The best part about SP is marrying that satire with an entertaining story, and personally I am not getting enough story to make me feel inclined.

I think there's a few other factors at play that are really causing a drag-- first being the premiere schedule. Switching to an every other week airing is slowing down the pace and making things very difficult to keep up with. I wonder if M+T are also feeling that drag and it's causing the episodes to get a little aimless. They work best under a deadline and I worry two weeks in between is giving them a little more room to breathe than what they know what to do with. Two, there seems to be a soft serialization of sorts going on, but the endings are left so open and vague and inconclusive that it doesn't actually feel like that-- it feels like they ran out of time or things are unfinished. Things are happening in an episode and yet nothing is happening and nothing is *ending*, which becomes a problem when wanting these episodes to stand alone. We might be building up to something good but in the meantime I am missing something to really sink my teeth into. Big ol' nothingburger.

Episode specific thoughts:

Plots where Tegridy Farms is threatened and Randy runs around and does stupid things to save it for 20 minutes and suffers no consequences have gotten so old that I can't even care too much about this episode in the first place. I knew exactly what we were getting into 1 min into the episode and nothing surprised me. Been there, done that a million times now. Rehash, rehash, rehash.

Ding dong the witch is dead! Fucking begging for this to be the actual real ending of the farm arc. It overstayed it's welcome years ago. It could have been much more poignant if it had said what it needed to say and then ended.

The irony of doing ketamine in Tweek Bros is not lost on me. Part of me thinks it was an intentional nod, and part of me thinks it was just happen chance they decided to go for the "tech bros being oboxious in coffee shops" troupe.

Nobody is in a happy relationship and both Sharon and Satan deserve the divorce arc.

Main 4 have hardly had any lines this season save for Cartman's masterdebater mini-arc last episode. I'm not asking for much or expecting them to always be the center of an episode, but they really haven't interacted with each other at all? I'm especially feeling a lack of Kyle when these sorts of topics would be the first thing for him to take issue with. He is arguably the most underutilized character of the season thus far.

Interesting with how pro AI Matt Stone is that they'd dunk so hard on chatGPT. I wonder if his opinions on things are changing or if he just specifically hates chatGPT and nothing else.

Please stop showing me that man's dick. That was a funny joke once but now it's just making me roll my eyes.

Honestly I'm pretty content with Phasoraid's design so if i do redesign him it'll likely only be minor things..

Extras under the cut

Anyways, I feel like that could open up a bunch of new premises for SVU cases- hopefully breathing some fresh air into the series.