South Park: Night of the Living Homeless

(S11E07)

"Oh my god, one of them is a war veteran! We're gonna have to give him some change!"

Oh, South Park, I think I love you. You not only hilariously satirized how society has dealt with the homeless problem, but you also parodied Dawn of the Dead, one of my favorite movies of all time. There were also a couple nods to Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead tossed in for good measure. South Park, if you were a crazed, half-dead, hideously burned woman I would kiss your lipless face.

I live in Minneapolis, and like any big city, there are homeless people. There are also people who ask for change who probably don't really need it, and of course the occasional college student playing his crappy acoustic guitar until you want to beat them to death with the want ads. Giving them change doesn't solve anything, but there aren't that many people willing to really try and figure out a solution. As this episode points out, people just want the problem to go away.

I'll admit that this episode followed a template familiar to South Park: the town's denizens, lead by Stan's father, end up taking the situation way too seriously and causing death and destruction among themselves while trying to avoid giving change to the homeless. Still, the scenes lifted from the aforementioned Dead movies were moments of pure genius (especially Kyle's father becoming one of them when he realizes he has no change for the bus). This isn't the first, nor will it be the last time that the adults act like idiots and the children have to come up with a solution, but the show has found a way to derive some of the most hysterically vicious satire from within those parameters, which is why I keep tuning in every week.

I think perhaps the most telling part of this episode is that the problem is never actually solved. Even after chastising the town of Evergreen for sending all their homeless to South Park, the boys follow suit and do the exact same thing, luring the homeless horde to California. The bottom line of this episode seems to be that there isn't one simple solution, and there never will be as long as people find ways to ignore the problem.

Oh yeah, and the whole running gag of Cartman wanting to jump the homeless on his skateboard was pretty damn funny, too. I'm giving this episode a 7 out of a possible 7.