'South Park' delights in pushing all buttons

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's biting satire is letting viewers know they're not alone.

- ROBERT LLOYD TELEVISION CRITIC

You are surely familiar with the story of the “The Emperor's New Clothes,” in which a vain ruler, who has been spending the state's money on fancy duds, is convinced by a couple of con men that the nonexistent suit they sell him is fantastically beautiful, but invisible to dopes and fools; not wanting to be thought a dope or a fool, he claims to see it, and all his sycophantic ministers pretend to see it. And when the king goes out on parade, all the people keep their mouths shut — though he is obviously naked — until a small boy, unimpressed by royalty and clearly no fool, calls out, “The emperor has no clothes.”

We are just through the 27th season of “South Park,” with Season 28 beginning with the episode that aired Wednesday. But Season 27 was newsworthy even before its premiere: Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who delight in busting naked emperors, had signed a fiveyear, $1.5-billion contract with Paramount for global streaming rights and 50 new episodes. It came just as Paramount, which had an $8.4billion merger with Skydance under FCC review, settled a $16-million nuisance lawsuit from President Trump over a "60 Minutes" segment and, coinci dentally or not, canceled Stephen Colbert's "Late Night." For some consumers of topical pop culture, the question of what Parker and Stone would or would not do was top of mind in this moment of "anticipatory obedience," corporate kowtowing and domestic militarization, with a president whose interpretation of Teddy Roosevelt's "bully pulpit" is "be a bully." It was answered immediately by the season's opening episode, "Sermon on the Mount," in which Jesus has become the guidance counselor at South.

Park Elementary, unwillingly.