Western Animation / South Park: The Streaming Wars Part 2

Paramount+ release date: 7/13/2022

Continuing from South Park: The Streaming Wars, the town of South Park faces disaster in the midst of a drought.

This special contains examples of:

• Accidental Hero: Cartman, through his breast implants, indirectly provides Randy the solution to have enough water to sustain the people of South Park and save the town from the drought.
• Advertised Extra: Despite appearing on the poster, Kyle and Kenny only appear in the courtroom scene at the beginning; the former gets three lines, and the latter doesn't speak at all.
• Aesop Amnesia: Stan says they should learn from their experience from ManBearPig and do more to help the environment, however Randy and the rest of South Park decide it's not their problem since they have enough water for the summer.
• Asshole Victim: No one feels bad when Pi-Pi gets decapitated by ManBearPig.
• Author Avatar: Butters continues to be used by Matt and Trey as a mouthpiece for voicing their commentary on the economics of streaming services.
  "It's not my fault streaming services paid people more than was sustainable in any business model."
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: This special continues using Pi-Pi as an allegory for Paramount+, referring to his streaming (pee) service as PiPi+.
• Bittersweet Ending: The special ends with Pi-Pi dead and his Evil Plan in ruins while the town has enough water for the summer and Randy's back to his old self. However, ManBearPig is still on the loose, and South Park's residents ignore the threat he and his family will bring about in the future, while Cartman's feud with his mother continues, and they both still live in a hot dog.
• Blatant Lies: The celebrities are clearly struggling to consume the pee in their ads (Reese Witherspoon even throws up during her appearances), but are just trucking through it for the money.
• Boob-Based Gag: Cartman and a sizable number of women in town have ridiculously oversized breast implants, with the latter also having enough work done on their lips to make their mouths look like babboon asses.
• Bullying a Dragon: Pi-Pi insults ManBearPig, only being spared so that the existence of ManBearPig's family won't be revealed. When that becomes a moot point, ManBearPig kills him.
• Call-Back: The development and climax of this special borrows quite a bit from the South ParQ Vaccination Special. Both specials entail a character (Mr. Garrison in the former, Randy in this special) who, after taking up a new profession after getting fed up with their old life (Mr. Garrison becoming President, Randy becoming a weed farmer) and progressively getting more and more immoral in their actions over the course of several years, finally putting their powers to good use, saving the day, performing a Heel–Face Turn, and going back to how they used to be. Additionally, a recurring character is Killed Off for Real by the overarching threat of their respective specials (Mrs. Nelson dying of COVID, Pi-Pi getting killed by ManBearPig), and the problem that has been plaguing the characters over the course of the specials is dealt with...for the time being, with the citizens of South Park deciding to live in the moment rather than work towards preventing the threat from rising again in the future.
• Character Check: Randy goes back to his original geology job and tries fixing the drought, like he would have done in earlier seasons.
• Cliffhanger: While the Streaming Wars are settled, there are a few threads left that will likely be addressed in the next special or season, whichever comes first:
  • Randy has gone back to his old personality and look, but whether the Marsh family (and for that matter the Black family) will move back to South Park proper is not revealed.
  • The Cartmans are still living in a hot dog and Eric and Liane are still feuding.
  • While ManBearPig has been quelled, there's still a chance of him returning in the future.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Randy recalls to Stan his previous contributions as a geologist, such as reporting on the eruption of a nearby volcano and warning of an imminent "global warming". A clip from the former episode is also shown when Randy watches it while speaking with the Mayor.
  • Several clothes in Randy's closet include his Lorde costume, as well as his magician's vest from "Cock Magic", his Jamaican clothes from "Shots" and his Steamy Ray Vaughn outfit.
  • Randy's Thanksgiving special from "Season Finale" also appears as the weed he needs to become a Karen.
• Courtroom Antics: The episode opens up with the lawsuit against Cartman and his mother and the ongoing streaming wars, which gets dismissed when the judge declares everyone involved "a bunch of shitheads".
• D-Cup Distress: Cartman does not enjoy having massive breast implants and the people staring at them. Though this could be understandable for Cartman since he never intended to receive these implants to begin with.
• Dirty Coward: Pi-Pi forces ManBearPig to kill anyone who interferes with his plans and threatens to reveal the existence of his wife and child should ManBearPig not comply. Once Pi-Pi loses this leverage, ManBearPig immediately turns on him, reducing the man to running away and pathetically begging for his life.
• Disgusting Vegetarian Food: Impossible whoppers are shown to elicit just as much revulsion from Matt Damon as drinking literal piss.
• Downer Beginning: We follow Eric and his mother driving around South Park with the drought in full effect. It's summer, so there is no snow, but all the grass and trees are dry and brown. The public swimming pool is completely empty and abandoned. They pass by a cow pasture, with the animals completely dead and dried out.
• Dragon-in-Chief: ManBearPig only does what Pi-Pi tells him to do on the threat he'll expose his family. Once Pi-Pi loses his leverage, he loses his control over ManBearPig, and the creature immediately turns on and kills him.
• Easily Forgiven: Randy's family and friends quickly accept that he's returned to his old self despite a couple of seasons worth of jerkassery, including murder, domestic terrorism, backing a communist government, and starting the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Ecocidal Antagonist: Pi Pi secretly works with ManBearPig (the show's personification of climate change) to cause a drought that will allow him to sell urine as a water substitute.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: Sergeant Yates informs Randy about how he went on a worlwide Karen rampage, showing footage of him acting like an Obnoxious Entitled Housewife in Spain, Bangladesh and the mountains of Tibet. In the case of the former two, the videos show Randy in Plaza Mayor in Madrid and in front of the Dhakeshwari Temple in Dhaka.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: ManBearPig has a wife and son he cares deeply about.
• Fan Disservice: The audience is subjected to numerous shots focusing on Cartman's bouncing breasts, culminating in an uncensored shot of them.
• Frivolous Lawsuit: Cartman attempts to sue his mom for not getting breast implants.
• He's Back!: After spending around 4 seasons being a selfish and entitled weed farmer, Randy returns to his old self using his knowledge as a geologist to solve the drought crisis in Colorado.
• Heel–Face Turn: Randy goes through this when he sees the footage of his worldwide Karen rampage. Even when he becomes a Karen again, it is to save the day and he is able to go back to his old self.
• Humanoid Female Animal: ManBearPig's wife, PigBearGirl, looks like a woman with a few animal bits, as opposed to the hulking monstrosity that is her husband.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • By the end, Cartman still thinks that it's his job to keep his mom "in line", not having learned his lesson throughout the entirety of The Streaming Wars.
  • After managing to make peace with ManBearPig, Stan points out that if they don't learn how to deal with ManBearPig's son, they will end up with the exact same problems as they have been throughout The Streaming Wars. Randy, and by extension the rest of the adults, just shrugs it off as "sound[ing] really hard" and are content with having enough water for the summer.
• Insane Troll Logic: Cartman as usual, concluding that Mr. Cussler's murder means that Tolkien is having sex with Liane.
• Irony: Randy reminds Stan that his official education and profession is as a geologist. He freely participated in a flagrant misuse of water resources that lead to a drought and his specialty in geology is water management. This was one of the factors that lead him to rethink his behavior and start working with the state department again.
• Jerkass Realization: After seeing his Karen rampage on TV, Randy realizes how far he's fallen from being a respectable geologist who loved his town to his current persona as a self-absorbed, weed-smoking jerk whose actions made everything worse, and he's not wrong. Over the past several seasons, Randy has given nothing but grief to his family, South Park, and even the whole world for financial gain. He moved his family to live at a farm they didn't want to go to, caused chaos in town by slaughtering cows and breaking into his former neighbors' backyards, and started the COVID-19 pandemic when he tried selling out to the Chinese.
  Randy: I was the one who warned the town about a volcano. I warned them about the day after tomorrow, and then... it all became about weed.
• Karmic Death: Pi-Pi gets killed in the exact manner as his victims: He gets murdered by ManBearPig before the creature throws his body onto one of his slides.
• Ms. Fanservice: ManBearPig's wife, PigBearGirl, counts as this. She's a Cute Monster Girl that only wears a Fur Bikini which shows off her large breasts and Impossible Hour Glass Figure.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: One of Cartman's Running Gags is to yell this at Butters (and as time goes on, more and more people).
• My God, What Have I Done?: After watching his Karen rampage on TV, Randy, at last, finally realizes how far he's strayed from being a well-meaning geologist who cared for his town to a self-centered marijuana farmer who only cares about getting rich and high. This revelation makes Randy throw out what little weed he has left since the drought began, put on his old clothes, and go back to work at the lab in South Park, as well as apologize to his family for the misery he put them through since starting Tegridy Farms. While this doesn't last, as he reverts into a Karen again and wears his Tegridy Farm clothes to save the town, Randy manages to go back to normal by the end of the episode, but it's unknown whether the Marsh family will move back to South Park.
• Never My Fault:
  • The special opens with Cartman having taken Liane to court because he refuses to accept his actions in Part 1 were his own fault.
  • Subverted with Randy. Randy finally acknowledges how much of a jerk he's become during his time as a weed farmer, saying that it not only controlled his life but ruined his character.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The judge seen at the trial at the beginning of the special looks like Judge Penney Azcarate, who presided the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard from April to June of 2022.
• Off with His Head!: ManBearPig ultimately removes Pi-Pi from the streaming wars by ripping his head off.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Randy has embraced his Karen status and goes on a self-entitled rampage throughout the town. He destroys property, drives like a madman, and creates sonic waves that throw people in the air by saying the infamous line: "I want to speak to your manager."
• Police Brutality: In classic Yates-fashion, Sergeant Harrison Yates presumes Mr. Black is guilty of causing the Streaming Wars and everything it caused, his "proof" being the picture of a gut-wounded Steve being thrown in the waterslide as him "enjoying" the water park. He then proclaims that he has every intent on shooting Steve to his wife.
• Refusal of the Call: Stan, Sharon, and Shelly try to persuade Randy to become a Karen again so he can save the town from Pi-Pi, even though they love having the old Randy back. Randy understandably doesn't want to, as he acknowledges how the weed ruined his life when he started Tegridy Farms and doesn't want to return to that. Unfortunately, as things worsen, he's forced to become a weed-smoking Karen again to save South Park, but thankfully, Randy manages to change back to his old self when the crisis is over.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Along with Part 1, the episode compares sloppy water conservation with the content splurge done with the various streaming services. The argument presented is that both are unsustainable due to over-paying those who create/provide the content and hoping consumers assimilate everything without moderation, while Pi-Pi's plan is to corner a low value, alternative option once the quality water has run dry. This was quite prescient, as at the same time these episodes aired Warner Brothers announced a massive restructuring of HBO Max and Warner Bros. Discovery that included cancelling a near completed Batgirl film as a tax write-off because it wasn't intended for theatrical release. This in turn was a watershed moment that revealed how much other streaming services were bleeding out, as others would start dropping content to save money.
• Sexy Dimorphism: ManBearPig's wife PigBearGirl, who is basically a woman in a Fur Bikini with a pig nose and a pig and bear ear.
• Shout-Out: Randy using his Thanksgiving Special mirrors a scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home in which Dr. Strange uses his memory-erasing spell.
• Skewed Priorities: It's very baffling that after committing domestic terrorism, dealing illegal drugs, backing the Chinese government, murder, and starting a worldwide pandemic, it's only now that Randy finally realizes the error of his ways when he goes Nuclear Karen on the town.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • Zigzagged. After four years of being a weed farmer, Randy goes back to being a geologist like he was throughout most of the show's run. However, towards the end of the episode he (temporarily) reverts back to being the weed farmer he was for the past few seasons, but only so he can save the town. Once he does, he reverts back to being a geologist again.
  • Cartman gets his breast implants removed as part of Randy's plan to bring fresh water to Colorado.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: To combat the drought, Randy submits a proposal for a pipeline that will bring saltwater from the Pacific Ocean all the way to Denver where it will be filtered for human consumption. Everyone thinks it's a perfect plan... until, in an aversion of Artistic License – Physics, they realize that between the hundreds of miles between the two points as well as the elevation of the Rocky Mountains, it's impossible to generate enough water pressure to keep the water flowing through the entire pipeline.
• Survival Mantra: The celebrities often mutter "fortune favors the brave" to get through their commercials consuming pee. It just barely helps.
• Take That!:
  • Matt Damon's crypto ad gets referenced again when he mutters "Fortune favors the brave" before consuming all of Pi-Pi's foods reluctantly while shooting commercials for his streaming (water) service. Damon even wears a "Fortune Favors Matt Damon" t-shirt.
  • In Matt Damon's commercial, he has just as much trouble eating a Burger King Impossible Whopper as he does when he tries to drink pee.
  • Other celebrities that get mocked over promoting crypto include Gwyneth Paltrow, Larry David, Reese Witherspoon, LeBron James, Naomi Osaka and of course Tom Brady. Like Damon, many of them mutter "Fortune favors the brave" before consuming the foods.
  • As with the previous special, climate change is brought up again with ManBearPig having decimated Colorado's water supply, along with the critique of people sensationalizing and exploiting the issue for profitable gain.
  • Randy's Karen actions continue the previous special's scathing critique of, well, Karens. In the beginning of the episode, and in his "full nuclear Karen" form, he even has the "Karen cut". It's also telling that, of all the horrible things he's done over the past few years (including terrorism, murder, allying himself with the Chinese government, inhumanely slaughtering animals, illegally dealing drugs, and starting a global pandemic), the realisation of him being a Karen is enough for him to pull a Heel–Face Turn for good.
  • The news reporter declares that streaming services have made everything suck.
  • A unique example as they're taking a shot at themselves. During Randy's song, he mentions that he has become a one-note character, referencing the complaints about him from fans since the Tegridy storyline started. He also mentions to Steve that Tegridy "destroyed (his) character", referencing those same complaints again.
• Take That, Audience!: Randy giving up his weed farm and going back to his old job as a geologist...only for him to (temporarily) go right back to being a weed-smoking Karen again, can be seen as a shot toward the fans who are tired of Tegridy Farms and want the old Randy back.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: PigBearGirl is surprisingly gorgeous once she's finally on-screen, if a Little Bit Beastly. Especially standing next to ManBearPig, who is an animalistic abomination.
• Undignified Death: Not only is Pi-Pi's death karmic, but also humiliating as he dies begging for his life before getting beheaded, where his decapitated corpse rides a waterslide full of urine.
• Villain Holds the Leash: ManBearPig might be a violent monster on his own, but he only does Pi-Pi's bidding because his wife and child are being threatened.
• Villains Want Mercy: Despite not seeming concerned ManBearPig will kill him in the previous special, Pi-Pi begs for his life when ManBearPig decides to kill him.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: As much as Sharon and the kids love having Randy back to his old self, they know that they need his Karen persona to solve the crisis the streaming wars caused and encourage him to embrace it.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: While it's revealed Steve survived being stabbed and thrown down the water slide, it's unknown what happened to the Water Commissioner who was also thrown down the same slide.
• What Have I Become?: Randy has this reaction upon realizing that ever since he became a weed farmer he also became a self-entitled and obnoxious jerk, aka a Karen. This causes Randy to revert back to being a geologist, aka his old self.
• You Are Grounded!: Butters' parents send him to his room after he's blamed for starting his own streaming service and causing disaster.

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