South Park returns with the brand new episode, “Sora Not Sorry,” premiering Wednesday, November 12 at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT) on Comedy Central. Stream next day and catch up anytime on Paramount+, get started for free at ParamountPlus.com. Check out a first look at the all-new episodes below!
In “Sora Not Sorry,” Butters’ Al revenge plan backfires, igniting an epidemic of fake videos at school that leaves Detective Harris struggling to tell fantasy from reality.
If they gave an Emmy Award for “wildest comeback of a long-running animated series,” South Park would be shoo-in. The show’s 27th season (and the tense battle for Paramount+ to secure U.S. streaming rights on the eve of Paramount Global’s acquisition by Skydance has repeatedly grabbed headlines with no-holds-barred digs at President Donald Trump, VP JD Vance, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and other major figures associated with the regime.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone delved into their latest season, which sparked major surges in viewership on both Comedy Central and streaming. According to Nielsen, the show’s viewership over the past four months has more than doubled its last season in 2023. With the network’s parent company canceling another Trump-targeting show, CBS' The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (defended by top brass as a purely financially motivated decision, the timing of which came after the host went after his home network), and Disney-owned ABC’s shepherd-crooking of Jimmy Kimmel in the face of FCC threats (quickly reversed), it raises the question: How to the South Park boys get away with it?
Although audiences may assume some level of censorship behind the scenes — especially in a hostile media environment — Stone revealed that that isn’t the case.
“I know with the Colbert thing and all the Trump stuff, people think certain things, but they’re letting us do whatever we want, to their credit,” the scribe told NYT. (In turn, Colbert has praised South Park for its censure of Trump, calling the show’s deepfaked PSA video of a naked Trump “an important message of hope for our times.”) The duo point out that they self-describe as “equal opportunity offenders” against “extremists” on either end of the political spectrum.
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| South Park’s season 27 premiere finds Donald Trump in bed with Satan. |
The article details how just a few weeks before season 27’s launch, Parker and Stone’s unflinching sights fell on Trump as their negotiations were seemingly slowed up the looming Skydance deal, which required the administration’s OK. They told NYT they decided to lampoon the President in the first episode “to show our independence somehow,” and the initial one-off character struck a “vein of comedy.”
Naturally, the White House was seething over the matter, with Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers telling Deadline post-premiere: “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history – and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”
Unfortunately for Trump and his administration, however, the relentless deluge of jokes has led to a ratings bump and renaissance of sorts for the long-running animated show.
It’s a winning formula that Parker and Stone will be sticking by for the time being.
While the creators continue to discuss going back to South Park‘s regular, if outrageous, schoolboy-centric stories, Parker said they’ve realized “there’s no getting away from this.” He added, “It’s like the government is just in your face everywhere you look. Whether it’s the actual government or whether it is all the podcasters and the TikToks and the YouTubes and all of that, and it’s just all political and political because it’s more than political. It’s pop culture.”
South Park creators Parker and Stone will be honored as Hall of Fame Award winners at this month’s World Animation Summit (Nov. 17-19) in North Hollywood. Visit animationmagazine.net/summit for more information and to register to attend.
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