South Park Aims Its Weaponized Juvenility at Fox News. It's Kind of Ingenious.

[demmiblue]

The series’ latest episode poses a real question amid the crudeness.




It has been nearly 30 years since the very first episode of South Park premiered on American television, and much has changed in that time. We’ve had technological advances and new fashion trends. Our politics became unrecognizable. So I’m fairly certain that if I were to time travel back to 1997 and mention the words TikTok and Labubu, as well as a chyron reading “TRUMP CONFIRMED FATHER OF SATAN BUTT BABY,” to twentysomething creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, I might make their heads explode. (If that chyron didn’t serve as enough of a content warning for this article, consider this your final notice.)

While five different men have served as president of the United States over the course of the show’s lengthy run, they’ve all been the target of its often obscene satire at one point or another. Still, it’s our current leader who has come in for the most extreme and surprising depiction. In the latest episode of South Park’s 27th season that aired Wednesday night, the Comedy Central show continued its headline-grabbing attacks on Donald Trump and the ecosystem that feeds him. This fourth episode, titled “Wok Is Dead,” once again has Trump wreaking havoc as he continues a sexual relationship with Satan. As always, the series remains shockingly fast with its parody. At one point, we even see Satan sulking in the barren, paved space that was formerly the White House Rose Garden. But this time, it’s Fox News who receives the fiercest criticism thanks to an incredibly juvenile joke that is repeated across the episode, but is likely too crude for Fox News to actually quote. It’s ingenious, really.

As the episode opens, the girls at South Park Elementary are warring over Labubus, the plush collectible gremlins that have taken the world by storm. The viral craze is confusing the school’s new counselor, Jesus Christ, who, if you’ll recall, took over from Mr. Mackey, when he was fired and forced to join ICE and round up Latino angels in heaven. (Seriously, what are these words coming out of my keyboard right now?) When the hapless Butters is conned by one seemingly flirtatious girl, Red, into attending her birthday, he’s convinced that if he’s going to stand a chance with her, he will need to secure the one thing on her wish list: an exceedingly rare Labubu. So he heads to the one place in town selling them: the local Asian pop-up store. Longtime viewers of the show will instantly recognize that this shop has “popped up”—like a Spirit Halloween selling even cheaper crap—in the old City Wok restaurant first introduced back in 2002. “The whole country changed,” owner Tuong Lu Kim tells Butters. “Didn’t you hear the news? Wok is dead.”

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Yes, this episode is as juvenile as the three that have preceded it this season. Yes, it’s going to likely (again) upset the administration and conservative media, who will decry it with good reason as puerile. But amid the stupidity and crassness, the show is actually posing a real question: Who are the real evildoers? The little girls summoning demonic forces through Labubu rituals? Or those in media and culture who have not only made way for the forces of hate, destruction, and torment that have enveloped our politics, but have openly reveled in doing so? Whether for ratings, corporate greed, or plain old culture-war antagonism, a far-right media apparatus has shamelessly supported and brazenly engineered some very real darkness among us. They’ve celebrated cruelty with the zeal of giddy tweens, and mocked the righteous indignation of those with any shred of humanity left. Donald Trump may be “fucking Satan,” but as we hear from the set of South Park’s Fox & Friends, “This is a great day for Fox News.”

https://slate.com/culture/2025/09/south-park-season-27-episode-4-trump-labubu-comedy-central-paramount-fox-news.html