Max Nocerino 
Seeing Towlie covered in bodily fluids was disgusting, but honestly, it’s the most South Park thing ever. The Trump mockery continues…
South Park continues to troll Donald Trump and attacks one of the most prominent features of the current technological zeitgeist, and couldn’t be more right about it if it tried.
ChatGPT. Everybody knows it, and everybody either loves it or hates it. It’s only been around for several years, but Americans have already become hooked on its oracle-esque advice, and it has been touted as a precursor to true Artificial Intelligence. However, in reality, it’s basically a large language model trained on tons of data from the internet and is no better than an over-glorified Google. Yet Americans are suckers, and they still buy into it. That opinion notwithstanding, South Park already took a crack at ChatGPT when it first came out (back in 2023), and I have to say that it succeeded once again, in its comedic portrayal of it.
RANDY MARSH
Randy Marsh, the idiotic father of the series’s (arguably) main character and everyman, Stan Marsh, is starting to realize that his marijuana farm, which he purchased a few seasons ago, is not doing well financially and that he may need to sell it to keep his family afloat. However, in typical fashion, Randy is clueless and doesn’t see that this farm is really only his dream/passion. His wife and kids were never overly enthusiastic about it. But he is so caught up in his own perspective, being too selfish and dumb to understand that. Also, instead of asking his living wife for advice on what to do, he relies on ChatGPT to provide him with financial and business acumen, complete with a “convenient” and “attractive-sounding” female voice.
At the same time, Sharon sits angrily, cross-armed, next to him in bed. Its advice is pandering and self-reassuring; it talks in circles (like only ChatGPT can do), and dummies like Randy buy everything these technological sycophants say and then do it. The realism is quite remarkably brilliant!
TOWLIE STRIKES BACK!
Randy teams up with Towlie, an anthropomorphic, talking bathroom towel (who South Park fans are very familiar with from previous seasons), to try to change Tegridy Farm’s brand to make it more successful. To stay focused, both Randy and Towlie have been huffing tiny squirts of ketamine like many business people in Silicon Valley do, but they quickly become addicted to it. Towlie is no stranger to drugs, and even though they only say that they will be microdosing, they’re snorting it every 5 seconds. This shows beautifully how drug addiction can take hold of people in the real world. You say that you will do a little, but then it becomes so frequent and synonymous with your life that you barely know that you’re doing it anymore. It’s funny, but it’s a sad reality of what many people struggle with today.
MOCKING ICE
South Park also takes another swing at ICE in this episode. It reveals how they have basically reduced Randy’s staff to zero by arresting illegal migrants who make up the backbone of the company’s workforce. It’s a clever and dark plot point that enhances the story in such a powerful way. Randy also thinks that if they can steal one Mexican from an ICE holding camp, they can get the company back on its feet again. That’s all it will take!
South Park’s dark, satirical, surrealism really shines by stripping the humanity away from these poor migrants who are just looking for a better life for themselves and their families. South Park displays them as objects (or assets in this case), and it’s a stark reminder of how authoritarian and totalitarian the United States has become. We are treating sentient human beings like animals that we need to “catch” and eliminate. It really makes me sad to be an American.
MORE TRUMP!
Seeing no other options, Randy sends Towlie to Washington, D.C., to enlist help from President Trump himself to save Tegridy. Trump is accepting a line of gifts from various important leaders who wait in line to give him stuff, like something out of The Godfather. It’s such a subtle but snide jab at another one of Trump’s ridiculous and ILLEGAL practices. I believe that subtlety will be the most effective weapon for criticizing Trump successfully from now on. Going at him full force doesn’t work at all and often has dangerous repercussions (ask Stephen Colbert!)
Towlie gets an audience with the president. However, to his horror, the gift that Randy has prepared for Trump is, well,…Towlie himself!? To my utter delight, the briefcase Towlie has contains a small holographic projector that plays a message from Randy, essentially offering Towlie as a gift to the president. This is obviously a direct reference to Star Wars Episode 6: Return of the Jedi (my all-time favorite Star Wars movie by the way), in which Luke Skywalker gives his droids C-3PO and R2-D2 away to Jabba the Hutt, as a token of goodwill, via holographic message.
While Luke had deeper, nobler intentions with this move, this here is purely Randy throwing poor Towlie under the bus in a last-ditch effort to save himself and the fam. Towlie is also totally blindsided by this betrayal (just like C-3PO was), and his fate is to become a towel for…..semen clean-up in the White House. YUCK. South Park has never shied away from showing visual depictions of feces, urine, semen, or even diarrhea, and seeing Towlie covered in semen was quite disgusting, but honestly, the most South Park thing ever.
AND FINALLY…
We wrap up with that imbecile Randy sitting on the porch of his farm (next to his wife) and experiencing heavy effects from his constant ketamine use. His eyes are wide open and blank. He is sitting all the way back in his chair, hands gripping the wooden armrests, and tells Sharon that the porch won’t slow down. At this point, as a South Park fan, I don’t even laugh when I see what Randy has gotten into this time, as that has been a staple of the show for over a decade. I, however, DID LAUGH when Sharon used this golden opportunity to trick Randy into deciding to sell the farm. A decision that NEEDS to be made.
She cleverly mimics the speech patterns of ChatGPT and tells Randy what he needs to do, and in such a drug-addled state and his overall reliance on chatbots, he agrees without question. Sharon then points to the phone and triumphantly says, “F-you, b@$h” to ChatGPT, as she is always open on Randy’s iPhone. It was beyond hilarious and made me think again of how absurd Americans have become regarding chatbots. They frankly SUCK, and often give erroneous information and reassurance for things that they want to hear. It’s not A.I.- it’s a fancy search engine! And it will never gain self-awareness. Sorry, Sam Altman.
VERDICT
This episode brilliantly displayed the overhype that is ChatGPT and how it is making Americans inert and reliant on technology that doesn’t actually deliver any meaningful results. Plus, I love me some Star Wars references.
South Park Season 27 is now streaming on Paramount+.
Max Nocerino is a regular Staff Writer for The Future of the Force. He is a passionate Star Wars fan and loves the literature of the galaxy far, far away. Follow him on Twitter where he shares his love of the Force frequently!
