South Park goes old-school in an episode that never quite takes off
The boys' rivalry with a group of teenagers is frustratingly one-note
TV Reviews South Park
In many ways, “Help, My Teenager Hates Me!” feels like vintage South Park. It has a self-contained storyline, is anchored by a new rivalry with a group of older kids, and—despite heavily featuring (pretend) gunplay—isn’t especially concerned with sociopolitical commentary or current news headlines. But as refreshing as all of that might sound on paper, the episode is saddled with a central joke that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are never able to escalate.
When the boys all get into shooting Airsoft, the local arena forces them to team up with a gang of teenagers due to age restrictions. After the mock battle, the older kids begin latching onto the younger ones under the pretense of teaching them more about the game. But as Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny soon discover, the teens are more into treating them like surrogate parents, lounging around, demanding food, using a vocabulary that mostly consists of the word “Bruh,” and just being generally unpleasant.
The problem is, the nonstop apathy and frustration of the teenagers becomes boring to watch. While Parker and Stone are undoubtedly commenting on the real-life challenges that can come with raising an adolescent—the selfishness, the lethargy, the irritability—the flatlined demeanor feels out of place on a show like South Park.
It’s a shame, as repetition has long been one of the show’s sharpest comedic tools. But it usually works when there are slight variations in tone or at least an increase in volume. For instance, the one-word gibberish of the “City People” from a few weeks ago largely worked because Parker and Stone kept piling on more characters—to the point where, by the episode’s end, there was practically a barnyard of bird-like yuppies overtaking the town. There was a keen sense of escalation.
But in “Help, My Teenager Hates Me!”, the point seems to be a complete lack of escalation when it comes to the teenagers. And while that may be true to life for some parents, it doesn’t exactly result in a lot of laughs. Instead, we watch the boys become numb to the teenagers’ presence, and we become numb in return.
A brief and belated comic shift occurs in the third act when, in an effort to get rid of the teenagers once and for all, the boys’ dads (and Uncle Jimbo as a stand-in for Cartman’s father) join them in the Airsoft arena. Scored to some modern industrial rock from Gary Numan with jerky camera movements reminiscent of gritty war films like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and The Hurt Locker, the battle sequence radiates the kind of faux seriousness and intensity that South Park does so well. After all, there’s absolutely nothing lethal about those tiny plastic pellets.
And yet, the climactic fight also feels like too little too late. Even when Cartman bursts in on his teenager masturbating in the bathroom and riddles him with pellets, it’s not as cathartic as it would have been had the teen been a more formidable foe, or even a more developed one.
We then get one final twist while the boys and their parental figures are walking home, elated over their victory against the teens. As the sun sets against the mountains in the background, the kids earnestly talk about how fun the day was, with zero signs of cruelty or cynicism. The joyous, picturesque scene is a stark contrast to the shithead attitude of their enemies.
But the adults know that it’s only a matter of time before their sons age out of such authentic pleasantness and become teenagers themselves. Randy Marsh aims his Airsoft rifle at the boys, wondering if he should take them out while they have a chance. Gerald Broflovski stops him.
“We still have a few good years before they turn into monsters,” Gerald says in a kind of conclusive statement for the previous 22 minutes.
Yes, teenagers can really suck, especially if you’re their parent. But as an audience, we understand that point pretty early on in the episode, which, in theory, should give “Help, My Teenager Hates Me!” plenty of room for a growth spurt. Unfortunately, it never arrives.
Stray Observations
- Serious question for any Airsoft aficionados out there: Were there any in-jokes that I was missing? Is this episode inherently funnier if you have a lot of experience with that kind of gameplay?
- There were a handful of laugh-out-loud moments in the episode—namely the below quotes and the reveal that Cartman is indeed still living inside the giant hot dog. I had forgotten about it until they showed the boys walking home.
- I also got a kick out of the phrase “my teenager” constantly being spoken by fourth-graders.
- Is the book of the episode’s title based on any real text? I’ve seen similarly titled life-hack articles, but was wondering if it was alluding to something more specific.
- “As long as your gun has a red tip and you’re white, the police won’t shoot you.”
- “I wish I had a dad and didn’t live in a hot dog.”
26 Comments
Hey Dan,I’m big into airsoft, so I’ll take a stab at your question. There weren’t really any in-jokes for airsoft. Some popular equipment like “Dye” airsoft masks were worn by a teenager and the video Cartman was watching is from a popular airsoft YouTuber, SwampSniper, who is also an owner of the airsoft field Ballahack Airsoft. Besides those few things, I wouldn’t say that many funny things were used that only airsoft players would understand.
Yeah, that’s what I figured. Thanks for clarifying? How did you like the episode?
Sorry, meant to put an exclamation point after “clarifying,” not a question mark. Didn’t want you to think I was being sarcastic!
Bruh.
Bruh.
Funny how you praised the awful repetition of the city people are pigeons joke a couple weeks ago, yet you feel the teenagers demeanor here were too one-note despite the fact that they were doing more varied things than the dumb city people in that episode.
I think there was a message in the episode directed at teenagers like the ones in the episode who might be watching. Depression is a real problem with teenagers and younger kids these days, and suicide seems almost fashionable. I think that the kind of ennui teenagers are experiencing these days is a lot more intense today than it used to be, due to the rise of social media and the pandemic. So, I think I disagree that it’s not a current topic of interest. It wasn’t the most hilarious episode, but I liked it. The ‘tegrity weed trap was the funniest moment and a clever callback to previous episodes!
I thought this episode was hilarious. But if I had watched it maybe five or ten years ago, I don’t think it would have seemed as funny to me. Oh, I would have gotten the whole “teenagers are a pain in the ass” thing (I was one once myself, after all) but until I actually had the “joy” of parenting a young male through the ages of 16-20, I wouldn’t have appreciated exactly how spot on some of it was. They really nailed the weird combination of lethargy and anger and anxiety that is a lot of young men these days. But the good news is they eventually grow out of it and one day, you can look back and laugh. Good episode, guys.
It was absolutely uncanny how perfectly they nailed the teen persona. Every sentence uttered by the teens was spot on. So well done.
This episode was written solely for the parents of teenagers. My husband and I laughed till we were blue. Everyone else? This wasn’t made for you. Come back next week – I’m sure they will be back on more serious topics. Or not.
I’ve no teens myself, but having been a pretty (though thankfully briefly) emo teen once I got a lot of laughs out of this myself at how moody and irritating they portrayed teens to be, lol.
well whether it was ‘made for me’ or not i still liked it a lot. teen jokes are universal!
My husband and I laughed the whole way through the episode. We have a son who will be turning 18 in a couple of weeks. The teenage behavior was spot on. We’ve had five years worth, and it is still going. That was the point of the repetition of the jokes. It’s 24/7 while they are still your charge. It’s never ending. What they didn’t show was the behind-the-scenes parental laughter when kids think they are gaining the upper hand or are using weird and wacky ways to draw attention to themselves. “Do we shoot them now or later” is as close as the show got. The affection and frustration in that remark got a big laugh out of us. We love our son, but we’re thrilled he’s going to college in the fall.
The way the episode showed Gerald getting worried about how Sheila might react to the (pretend) gunplay or Kyle’s pellet bruise early in the episoide made me think it was going to turn into some episode about moral panic, but it just never develops from that. I think it’s quite possible that someone on the writing staff is going through a rough time with their own teenager.
Scene I’m surprised never got mentioned in the review: The part where Stan’s teenager angrily calls him because the teenager thought Stan was calling him gay. Definitely not a mea culpa or anything, but it definitely felt like a bit of a self-aware acknowledgement of the criticism over how casually the show likes to throw around “gay” and “f*ggot”.“I was one of the first people ever to say there was nothing wrong with being gay. I had a dog that was gay!” “Oh, so I’m a fucking dog now?!” was probably the biggest laugh of the episode for me.Also, I have no idea why, but that Naruto poster on his wall was really funny to me.
Otherwise, I think the criticism that this episode was a bit one-note and muted is fairly accurate, but I still liked it. Mostly for its “forgettable but still decently entertaining Season 7 or 8 episode” vibe. I can get behind that.Also I do think they could’ve snuck in a “Oh my god! They killed Kenny!” in there when Kenny got shot. That would’ve been fun. Mainly because I don’t think they’ve said that since the Black Friday arc. Which was…8 years ago now? Fucking hell.
Black Friday was 8 years ago?
2013. So actually 9 years ago. Time sure flies when you’re constantly in existential dread.
I liked this one a lot. It might not be good enough to push into A territory, but I’d say a definite B+. It also plays into what I’ve been begging the show to do for awhile now; ditch the political/social events of the week topic and do more broad, self contained stories. SP does those topics just fine, but too often it feels like a chore. It seems like they only do an episode about whatever event because its expected of them. Same way SNL has to open the show every week with a political topic dejour. Episodes like this though are more relaxed and you can see it in their craftsmenship. There’s no strain to make a joke or a specific take, just telling a silly and fun story. I’m not saying they should never do current events, but more episodes like this one would be welcome.
So far, with the exception of the premiere, this has been a solid season. A nice string of episodes after a long layoff from full time seasons.
Did you notice the similarities between the battle scene here and the paintball episode of King Of The Hill?It might not have been a paint by numbers similarity, but it was very similar
As someone who had a pretty mild teenage years and wasn’t particularly rebellious, yeah I got nothing out of this episode. Does Trey Parker and Matt Stone know any teens?
I thought this episode was hilarious! My wife and I were in agreement that it was one of our all time favorites. Most likely because of the spot on similarities between our teenager, his group of friends and the portrayals in the show.GREAT EPISODE………… BRUH
You’re wrong and you don’t see the irony. This South Park was great because it’s making fun of the pathetic fags everyone has turned into. Suicidal depressed virgins that think they’re cool because they pretend to be badasses when in reality they’re pathetic incels.
Not the best episode ever, but I laughed pretty hard at Kyle’s over-the-top excitement at the beginning. He briefly turned into Cartman doing one of his classic, “YOU GUYS! SERIOUSLY! OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS!” bits.Also, the visual at the drug store with both teenagers slowly pushing the shopping carts with their heads practically buried into the handlebar had me in stitches.
Since you asked, the episode title itself is a reference to the naming convention for episodes of talk shows like Dr.Phil and Maury
Best episode of the season so far. I give it an A. Very intelligent, it had a lot to say. It had laughs but wasn’t written particularly for laughs. It’s up there with the episode when Wendy gives up. I actually like these type of episodes best. They are written to be not only intelligent, but intellectual. Not one-note, just a D minor chord. For those who can hear it.
i’m way late (did this review even hit the front page?) but i loved this episode. i love when south park does these straightforward ‘kids being kids’ episodes.