South Park returned to the topic of video games last night with a new episode focused on Let’s Play videos and the people who watch them.
South Park and video games are just a good fit. Between classic episodes like Make Love, Not Warcraft and more recent ones like Black Friday and Freemium Isn’t Free, the show’s creative minds seem to have an uncanny ability to look at the issues and trends in the game industry and create knockout satire based on them. This in mind, you can perhaps understand my excitement when I learned that last night’s episode would again be setting its sights on video games.
The focus of the new episode, dubbed #Rehash, was the growing popularity of Let’s Play videos. The episode opens with series regular Kyle bringing home a copy of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Hoping to spend the day playing it with his little brother Ike, he’s shocked to find him more interested in watching PewDiePie Let’s Play videos than in playing the game himself. From there, it spring boards into an overarching discussion of how entertainment evolves and how older generations fail to empathize with younger ones and see parallels with their own days as whipper-snappers. Oh, and there was also a holographic Michael Jackson and more of Randy Marsh’s double life as New Zealand singer Lorde.
Overall, I’d say that the episode itself wasn’t quite as strong as some of the show’s other detours into gaming. It just had too much going on and the Let’s Play and Lorde storylines didn’t mesh up quite as well as I think its writers were hoping. It still had some great gags though, especially from Cartman, who starts his own YouTube channel where he comments “on my friends commenting” on video games. Interested viewers can give the episode a free viewing at the South Park website.
Source: South Park Studios
