Season 21 of South Park premieres on Comedy Central next month, and in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Trey Parker looked back on the show’s serialized 20th season and revealed that, in the next batch of episodes, the show will focus less on Trump and politics and more on the South Park crew:
Yeah, and it’s also just gotten boring. We weren’t ever really that show. We would do an entire season and there would be one moment that played off something that had just happened and people would go, “South Park is the show that does that.” And that’s just not true. We’re not. We did start to become that, though, especially the last season. We fell into the same trap that Saturday Night Live fell into, where it was like, “Dude, we’re just becoming CNN now. We’re becoming: ‘Tune in to see what we’re going to say about Trump.’” Matt and I hated it but we got stuck in it somehow. This season I want to get back to Cartman dressing up like a robot and [screwing] with Butters, because to me that’s the bread and butter of South Park: kids being kids and being ridiculous and outrageous but not “did you see what Trump did last night?” Because I don’t give a … anymore. We probably could put up billboards — “Look what we’re going to do to Trump next week!” — and get crazy ratings. But I just don’t care.
Parker was also asked if he and Matt Stone have an “end point” in mind for the series, and he responded with this:
Every year in the middle of the season, we say, “OK, this is it.” And we really thought that two seasons ago when we were doing all the PC Principal stuff. We were like, “This is it — we’re going to get run out of town with our middle finger up.” Because we felt the culture changing, and I think it still is on that track. The witch hunt is coming. Our day is coming. One of these days, out of nowhere, we’ll do something and they’ll go, “How dare you!” — and we’ll be done. But what people don’t realize is, we’ve thought this for 20 years. We’ve been ready for it. Our bags are packed in the car and we’re ready to go back to Colorado. And it’s cool, man.
The new season of South Park premieres Wednesday, August 23rd at 10:00pm.
