South Park is taking an additional week off.
The Comedy Central series is skipping yet another week, with the cable network releasing the news on Wednesday, Sept. 17 — the same day as the new episode was supposed to air.
This time, however, the news came with a rare statement from creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone: “Apparently when you do everything at the last minute sometimes you don’t get it done. This one’s on us. We didn’t get it done in time. Thanks to Comedy Central and South Park fans for being so understanding. Tune in next week!”
The move follows the show shifting from a weekly to a biweekly schedule this season, which has been breaking ratings records. Comedy Central says the remaining six episodes will air as follows (subject to change, obviously): Sept. 14, Oct. 15th, Oct. 29th, Nov. 12th, Nov. 26th and Dec. 10th.
The episode was particularly anticipated as it was the first one scheduled in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk being assassinated.
The reason for drawing a connection between those two seemingly disparate events is that South Park has been mocking President Trump and MAGA heavily during its 27th season, and during its second episode parodied Kirk specifically. So many have wondered how what the Comedy Central series would do next.
Comedy Central even pulled that episode, titled “Got a Nut,” from a planned repeat airing, though it’s still available on streaming.
The episode had Eric Cartman becoming a right-wing podcaster in the style of Kirk, who tours college campuses debating progressive students. “Who wants to debate the master debater?” demanded Cartman, who also took on Kirk’s hairstyle and later attended a ceremony giving out “The Charlie Kirk Award for Young Masterdebaters.”
The mockery was actually pretty tame by South Park standards (certainly kinder than its treatment of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem in the same episode). After the episode aired, Kirk seemed thrilled and posted a TikTok (below) calling the episode “hilarious” and noted “South Park gets this right.” The Turning Point USA founder added, “We have a good spirit about being made fun of. This is all a win. We as conservatives have thick skin, not thin skin, and you can make fun of us and it doesn’t matter.”
Comedy Central had no comment on the scrapped repeat. But thinking behind the decision to not air the episode on cable but keep it on streaming is that viewers have to intentionally opt to watch the episode on demand whereas on cable its possible to for viewers passively watching Comedy Central to stumble onto the Kirk content, which some may find disturbing.
