South Park Feels Oddly Cheerful, Charming, Haloed Farmland and Influential Nonsense

In the third episode of the final season, the boys visit Sephora and eventually the Backrooms, in a story that mocks how Trey Parker and Matt Stone always talk about South Park living in the shadow of The Simpsons, like every animated comedy of the past 35 years. There are many ways The Simpsons, even in its more uneven recent seasons, still outshine South Park: greater depth in its ensemble, emotional moments that…

T. Ray Parker and Matt Stone have always been very upfront about how South Park, like all animated comedies of the last 35 years, lives in The Simpsons' shadow. There are many ways that The Simpsons, even in its more uneven recent seasons, continues to surpass South Park: greater ensemble depth, stronger emotional moments, even more episodes.

However, what South Park often does best is react to contemporary social trends. Kyle, Stan, Cartman, Kenny and the others are more or less Bart's age (and have been for decades). But The Simpsons has never been more adept at examining trends, technical and social issues than South Park, which has always been more immediate and responsive. Maybe that's why it doesn't feel like betrayal to see guys dealing with, say, Halle's farmy looks, which is exactly what South Park Season 29 episode 3 deals with.

You Like That On Your Face opens with Cartman interrupting Kyle with a gasp, and Stan discussing Wendy's mysterious penchant for anti-aging face cream and announcing that Kyle's baby brother, Ike, is in danger of being "cheated" by another student. But Ike wins the battle of the live aura, as he now tackles Max's look, a no-nonsense influencer-driven exercise in using whatever means necessary to achieve more facial symmetry.

As Stan later explains to his father, Randy, there are programs that analyze and rate your appearance using artificial intelligence and recommend products to improve your inevitably terrible score. Although Randy recommends shutting down the program and simply eating well and exercising to take care of your body, he also has to evaluate his face on the program. Meanwhile, Ike faces a challenge from Chase Chadwick - the only person to ever get a perfect score on the Chadmaxx show.

So, where do all the tweens fit in at various points in the episode to look their best? Of course, Sephora, Parker and Stone are capitalizing on the real popularity of skin creams and beauty products among anxious young kids. Stan takes Wendy there for her birthday and encounters an old man who warns him that his grandson went there six years ago and never came back. As Stan misses Wendy's and wanders the store, the familiar shelves and the excited crowd fade away, the walls turn increasingly yellow, the scenery becomes increasingly strange... and, uh, Stan has entered the back rooms.

It's an inspired juxtaposition—the capitalist graveyard depicted by Backrooms with the chic bustle of Sephora's not-so-secret space—suggesting (without anyone on the show saying so) that there may be less distance between the two than we realize, and the dead-end nature of trend-chasing.

Stan is able to escape Sephora-Backrooms, terrified but safe. However, the shrunken Randy is suddenly shrunk along with his son and the rest of the kids—a product of anti-aging treatments that work so well. Apparently, he's not the last character to visit Sephora. Kyle has given up on meddling with Ike, so Cartman, never one to shy away from a meaningless totem of popularity, agrees to take the toddler there.

When Stan and Kyle learn that Cartman and Ike are in the Sephora-Backrooms (from Randy, now enrolled as a student at South American Elementary), they rush to the rescue. Different Sephora workers offer different creams with the suggestive phrase that gives the episode its title: "Do you like your face?" they ask insistently. The monster Sephora manager in the backrooms takes it a step further and pours lotion from a bottle in her crotch while she chants the gross slogan.

It's a minor thing that South Park wants to push things too far, and it's also kind of a shame. The episode's obvious irony moves the episode from being ideal for real teenagers in the midst of a skin-care routine they're following into the TV-MA territory the show is known for — even though younger audiences are most likely to laugh at the episode's absurdity. Then again, what are tweens looking for more than something they're not actually going to watch? Maybe it's the best way to poke fun at the shows' mutant self-care without sounding like adults who don't know what they're talking about.

The icon of a no-nonsense adult venturing into the weird realm of youthful tendencies is fully fleshed out at the end of the episode, when a half-drunk who's still a child gets into a halo battle between Ike and the apparently (hilariously) "hot" Chase Chadwick, and ends up "cheating" on Chase by defeating the ever-loving Hell. problem... solved? Adults may not have the answers, but at least they can spoil everyone's fun with a bloody mess.

South Park is streaming on Paramount+ in the US, UK and Australia.