Put a chick in it and make her gay cartman

For years, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been one of the few duos in Hollywood willing to call them as they see them. The long-running series has done a few of these specials in recent years which have covered topics like COVID and even the show itself being stuck in a legal battle between streaming platforms.

But Joining The Panderverse seemed to get the most attention before its release because it dared to call out the ridiculous of lazily flipping characters' races and genders in the name of pandering. Cartman keeps having nightmares that everyone he knows is going to be replaced by racially diverse women.

Ones with a habit of constantly talking about the ills of the patriarchy. Now, why would that be a concern? It's not like that's Hollywood's favorite thing to do or anything. His nightmares come to fruition when he swaps places with a Black, female version of himself from another universe.

Are you following? Because this entire plot was designed to do two things. The first was to point out the laziness of multiverse storylines that are a dime a dozen in Hollywood these days. This inadvertently leads to an alternate universe version of Kennedy — which is essentially Cartman — swapping places with the real Kennedy.

Is that a little confusing? While a little dense, the story serves to tee up an opportunity to goof on one of the greatest multiverse offenders: Disney. The episode touches on the continued decline of Disney and places the blame on its habit of pandering to audiences.

Toward the end of the special, Kennedy explains her rationale for this to Cartman. This was one instance where I thought the show may have missed the mark a little.

South Park Cartman GIF

Kennedy says that she started pandering to audiences in a bid to fix the racism and sexism she saw in the world. This, she said, was a reaction to the hate mail she received for swapping characters' genders and races. Hate mail is jokingly attributed to Cartman.

The show argued that this recent trend in pandering is a feedback loop. Well, there had to be a first instance of this brand of pandering for there to be criticism. The pandering had to come first for there to be criticism of it. It had to start as an attempted cash grab or a bid to push progressive ideologies.

Take your pick. The show places the blame on both sides of the argument: the people who pander and the people who loathe it. We've seen as of late, they don't make college-educated folks like they used to, and South Park was more than happy to pole fun at this. The B-story involves Randy Marsh trying to fix an oven door.

Because of a reliance on technology and 8-years of college spent studying geology, he calls a handyman to fix it. However, handymen are so in demand because nobody knows how to fix anything. This leads to them becoming exceedingly rich, while the college-educated end up looking for work outside of Home Depot, because they don't have any actual skills.

I thought this was the funnier of the two main stories, and even had the stronger social commentary. While everyone for the most part can agree on how ridiculous pander-casting is, the idea is that the only people who will be able to make money in the future are those with the ability to fix things.

While it wasn't the series' finest hour, it was certainly a well-done instance of a show willing to tackle issues most others would be too fearful to even brush up against. But at this point, should we expect anything less than that from fellas behind South Park?