Reviews in Pop Culture: South Park
South Park has parodied many targets in its long television tenure. Religion, politics, and many other forms of cult-like behavior that we simple humans tend to normalize and rationalize.
And the target in Season 19, Episode 4 is none other than Yelp reviewers, in an episode titled You’re Not Yelping.
So How Bad is It?
South Park is not a show I ever really watched, and it has been years since I’ve seen an episode. But it made me laugh!
What follows will be loose breakdown of the episode, obviously with spoilers. If you have HBO Max, go watch it there. It’s only 21 minutes. And you’ll laugh.
SO.
The episode opens on a bustling downtown area. Restaurants are teeming with diners when Randy and Gerald - two fathers of our four-boy crew - try to get themselves a table. After being told that the restaurant is full, Gerald whispers something in the host’s ear (I’m a Yelp reviewer) and a table is immediately provided for them. As they sit, Gerald asks the waiter if the lights can be turned up a bit, and already we can tell that this is going to go off the rails hard.
Across the street, Eric Cartman (the fat one (because of course)), sits in a Mexican restaurant, and we see the family who own it go to great lengths to please him, fearing a one star review. They turn down the music, give him free dessert, and even then, we later learn that he awards them just two stars, as the meal affected the nature of his morning poop. Gotta love this show, eh?
Across the town, we see more Yelp influence. Cartman gets food delivered to the school cafeteria, and doesn’t pay. Gerald crafts a five page review of Applebee’s. Police Chief Harrison Yates is seen at his desk, working late into the night. But the people need him. Need him to write more reviews, so they know where to get a good experience.
Things come to a head (well, not really, not yet), when Whistlin’ Willy throws Yelpers out of his children’s party-themed arcade restaurant. With this act, the power is taken from the Yelpers. Restaurants refuse them service and business booms. But the Yelpers are hungry, and mainly for the power they once held.
So they assemble.
Cartman, thinking himself the only “true” reviewer asks the many thousands of Yelpers to follow the real critic. We get a hint that Gerald and Chief Yates also think themselves the “true” leader. NOW we get to the head.
The Yelpers storm Whistlin’ Willy’s, destroying the establishment and removing the (fake) head of the mascot Willy. With warlike attitude, they continue to rampage through the town until the son of the family who owned the Mexican restaurant (I’ve been leaving Davíd out of the plot, but you gotta have something to watch for!), HE calls out the so-called reviewer, meaning Cartman, and dares him to a meetup south of town.
Arriving south of town, Kyle and Davíd come face to face with the thousands of Yelpers, all proclaiming in overlapping speeches about how they are the humble leader of the rest of the Yelpers, leading to Kyle saying something that could apply to internet/social media culture as a whole, not just Yelp: They all think it’s about them!
With that idea in mind, we cut to the mayor’s office, where Gerald is receiving a gold badge to mark his eliteness as the city’s true reviewer. As soon as he leaves, another reviewer is let in. And so on and so forth, we’re led to believe.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!
Not by a long shot. In addition to getting badges, the Yelpers are let back in restaurants, and now guaranteed “special” service. If you’re making an assumption about what that service could be, it’s exactly what you imagine, and WORSE. But it’s played to a nice little song, so stick through to the end.
And if you’ve stuck through to the end of this blog post, well thanks. The take home message from this is that it’s good to laugh at ourselves sometimes. A lot of people spend a lot of time on Yelp. How much does it matter to anyone beyond just themselves? The same goes for any social media. A lot of fluff.
But hey, we’re Review Party Dot Com, and we know reviews are vital resources when we’re looking to spend our dollars. Are reviews perfect? No. But neither are people!
