South Park season 20 was a car crash. A fascinating, high-speed, multi-car pileup that happened in real-time on national television. Most people remember it as the "Trump season," but that's actually a bit of a reductive way to look at what was essentially a massive structural gamble by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They tried to do something the show had never done in two decades: a serialized, season-long narrative that relied entirely on the real world staying predictable.
It didn't.
When you look back at the 2016 run, you aren't just looking at a season of a cartoon; you're looking at a time capsule of a specific cultural panic. The Member Berries. TrollTrace. The Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich rematch. It was ambitious. It was also, by Trey Parker’s own admission in various interviews later, incredibly exhausting and maybe a little bit of a mistake.
Why South Park Season 20 Felt So Different
For nineteen years, South Park was the king of the "reset button." You could blow up the world on Wednesday, and by next week, Kenny was alive and the school was standing. Season 19 toyed with continuity through the PC Principal arc, but South Park season 20 went all-in. It was one long movie broken into ten parts.
The plot was a three-headed monster. You had Gerald Broflovski secretly acting as the world’s most vile internet troll, Skankhunt42. You had the boys dealing with a "gender war" in the school because of that trolling. And then you had Mr. Garrison’s slow, orange-tinted descent into a presidential candidacy he didn't actually want.
The pacing felt... weird. Since they write each episode in six days, they were essentially trying to build a bridge while standing on the edge of the canyon. If a news story changed on Tuesday, the script changed on Tuesday. This worked for "About Last Night" in 2008, but trying to maintain a coherent narrative thread for ten weeks while the 2016 election was melting down the internet was a different beast entirely.
The Member Berries and the Trap of Nostalgia
"Member Star Wars?"
"Member Chewbacca?"
"Member when there weren't so many Mexicans?"
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The Member Berries were the season's breakout metaphor. They represented a toxic brand of nostalgia—the idea that we’re so obsessed with the comforts of the past that we’re willing to ignore the rot of the present. It was a sharp critique of the "reboot culture" in Hollywood, but it quickly morphed into a political commentary on the "Make America Great Again" slogan.
The problem was that the Member Berries never really got a satisfying payoff. They were a symptom of a larger cultural disease that the show couldn't quite figure out how to cure by the finale. By the time we got to the end of the season, the berries were just... there. They were a vibe more than a plot point.
The Election Night Pivot That Changed Everything
This is the stuff of TV legend now. The episode "The End of Serialization as We Know It" wasn't supposed to be the vibe of the finale. More importantly, the episode airing the night after the election—"The Very First Gentleman"—was originally titled "Members Only."
The South Park crew had banked on a Hillary Clinton victory. Everyone had. When the results came in, the writers' room at South Park Studios supposedly went into a controlled freefall. They had to rewrite massive chunks of the episode in a few hours to reflect the reality that Mr. Garrison (the Trump surrogate) had actually won.
You can feel the whiplash.
The show shifted from a satire of a political circus to a show that felt genuinely stunned. It’s one of the few times in the history of the series where Matt and Trey felt like they were reacting to the world rather than mocking it from a distance. The cynicism wasn't just a comedic choice anymore; it felt like a survival mechanism.
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Gerald Broflovski and the Darkness of Anonymity
While the politics grabbed the headlines, the most "South Park" element of the season was the transformation of Gerald Broflovski. Seeing Kyle’s dad—a character we’ve known for twenty years as a sensible, if slightly pretentious, lawyer—sipping red wine and listening to Boston while ruining lives online was brilliant.
It hit on a truth that most media misses about trolling: it’s not always about a "sad guy in a basement." Sometimes it’s a successful guy who just likes the "lulz." Gerald didn't have a political agenda. He just liked being a "dick."
His arc with Dildo Shwaggins (the other troll) and the Danish government’s "TrollTrace" program provided the season’s best tension. It asked a terrifying question: what happens if the internet loses its mask?
The Fallout: Why They Went Back to Basics
If you watch Season 21 and beyond, you’ll notice a hard pivot back toward episodic storytelling. They didn't abandon continuity entirely, but they stopped trying to write a novel.
South Park season 20 taught the creators a lesson about the dangers of being too topical. When you tie your show’s internal logic to the 24-hour news cycle, your show becomes dated the second that cycle moves on.
Honestly, watching season 20 today feels like looking at a fever dream. It’s dense. It’s angry. It’s occasionally brilliant, like the "Doubling Down" episode where they compare being a Trump supporter to being in an abusive relationship. But it’s also cluttered. The JJ Abrams stuff, the SpaceX subplot, the Cartman-has-a-girlfriend-now arc—it was just too much for ten episodes.
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Was it actually bad?
Not really. It just wasn't "fun" in the way South Park usually is. The show usually provides a release valve for the nonsense of the world. Season 20 felt like it was just adding to the noise. But as a piece of experimental television? It’s incredible. They took a multi-billion dollar franchise and used it to live-blog a national nervous breakdown.
How to Re-watch South Park Season 20 (The Right Way)
If you're going to dive back into this season, don't look at it as a collection of episodes. Look at it as a historical document.
- Watch it in one or two sittings. The serialization works much better as a binge than it did on a week-to-week basis. The threads stay fresher in your mind.
- Focus on the Cartman/Heidi relationship. It’s actually one of the most nuanced things the show has ever done. It starts sweet and becomes a devastating look at how toxic personalities can ruin a good thing.
- Pay attention to the music. The use of "Smokin'" by Boston during Gerald’s trolling sessions is one of the best needle drops in the show’s history.
The season didn't "break" South Park, but it definitely changed it. It forced Matt and Trey to realize that sometimes, the world is too weird to satirize in real-time. They found the limit. And that, in itself, is worth watching.
Next Steps for Fans
To truly understand the evolution of the show post-Season 20, you should track the "Tegridy Farms" arc that began in Season 22. It represents a different kind of serialization—one that focuses on internal character changes rather than external political events. Also, check out the 6 Days to Air documentary if you haven't seen it; while it was made before Season 20, it explains the grueling production process that made the 2016 pivot so difficult to pull off.