South Park: The Streaming Wars Revisits Risky Story Strategy
According to its promotional materials,South Park: The Streaming Wars could see the series bring back its divisive serialized storytelling. South Park has been experimenting with serialized storytelling ever since season 18 aired back in 2014. The experiment has been met with mixed reviews by critics and fans alike.
On the one hand, trying to serialize stories has allowed South Park to leave its comfort zone for the first time since the series transitioned from being a raucous gross-out comedy to a more politically-charged social satire around season 4. Serialization also let South Park tell more complicated and ambitious stories than ever before. However, plots like South Park’s Tegridy Farms saga proved that serialization can make once-funny characters tiresome and one-off gags grating.
Related: South Park’s Best Spoof Parodied A Forgotten Stephen King Movie
Despite this, the brief trailer for the upcoming special South Park: The Streaming Wars proves that South Park isn’t done with serialized storytelling just yet. The promo sees Cartman complain about living in a Coney Island Hot Dog, one of the few serialized story details that were carried from one episode to another in South Park season 25. Cartman’s antics in “City People" (season 25, episode 3) left him and his mother renting the Hot Dog and, despite most of the season’s episodes being self-contained adventures, in “Help My Teenager Hates Me" (season 25, episode 5), they were still stuck there. This proved South Park’s riskiest storytelling strategy was still present in season 25, something that has been re-affirmed by the trailer forSouth Park: The Streaming Wars.
The fact that the special relies on Cartman’s frustration with this setup proves South Park is
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