South Park Takes a Swipe at Baby Yoda and Disney+

Hope you like controversy, because South Park has been friskier than usual this season. Now, the show is hitting out at streaming services in this week’s episode “Basic Cable.” The penultimate episode of season 23 is another series of jabs at Disney+ and the other streaming giants. Scott Malkinson is something of a fan-favorite and this week’s adventure revolved around his quest to sell the rights to his own project, “The Scott Malkinson Show.” Scott’s father works at a cable company and is furious that his business is declining because of all the streaming options available. This puts him into conflict with his son because a girl that Scott likes can’t get enough of Baby Yoda and The Mandalorian. By the end of the episode, Scott makes a plan to sell those rights and it looks like the entire plot was just pushing ahead for a meta-gag. A commercial to call Trey Parker comes up on the screen with an actual working phone number in Colorado flashes on-screen. When calling the number, you get a list of shows that are available for purchase in frankly ridiculous amounts.

As mentioned before, this isn’t the first time that streaming culture has been riffed on during South Park. In fact, the show just sold the rights to stream on Hulu for $500 million. But, after some dustups with China and the companies that have tried to steer clear of the country’s crosshairs, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have taken aim. A PC Babies spin-off show, like the ones joked about in the episode, critiqued Disney’s decision to have content warnings before old movies on Disney+. This all goes hand-in-hand with the sorts of other jabs that occurred when trying to take Tegridy Farms overseas.

South Park also skewered LeBron James after he was critical of Darryl Morey after some comments about the Hong Kong protests led to the NBA being banned in China. Of course, this all comes after the show basically issued an open challenge to the country with profanity-laced tirades and a very controversial statement written by the creators addressed to the Chinese government.

“Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts,” began the bold statement from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone earlier this season. “We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look like Winnie the Pooh at all. Tune in to our 300th episode this Wednesday at 10 p.m. Long live the great Communist Party of China. May the autumns sorghum harvest be bountiful. We good now China?”