Despite kicking off its latest season — #27, astoundingly enough — nearly two months ago on July 23, the button-pushing and politics-satirizing animated comedy has only aired four episodes thus far, and the creators’ plan to air episodes every other week is already taking a hit, with another delay to look forward to in place of this week’s new episode. But there’s a silver lining, if it can be fully believed.
Comedy Central announced on Wednesday, September 17, that its viewers will be waiting a bit longer for the next highly anticipated outing from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. At the time of this writing, South Park is now set to return with its fifth episode on September 24, marking the halfway point of Season 27’s 10-installment run.
What’s more, the network revealed the new current goal for how the rest of Season 27’s releases are going to slot. Below is the rundown of those dates, which are sticking to the mostly bimonthly approach once the mid-October episode hits following another three-week delay.
Wednesday, September 24th
Wednesday, October 15th
Wednesday, October 29th
Wednesday, November 12th
Wednesday, November 26th
Wednesday, December 10th
If nothing else, this delayed fifth episode and the following gap will hopefully give Parker and Stone enough time to get all the balls rolling in the right direction, and then to get rid of those balls so that they can get back to the actual animation. Who let all those balls in here, anyway?
Matt Stone and Trey Parker shared a statement along with the delay news, explaning the reasoning with:
Nothing wrong with taking the hit and being up front about what went wrong, and I’m not sure what else they could have said that would have made any sense. “Matt’s hands turned into pumpkins after midnight all week,” might work, with the right people listening.
But really, doesn’t it seem kind of strange for Comedy Central to confirm release dates for the back half of Season 27 in the same announcement where Parker and Stone freely admit to not being able to finish an episode on time? I’m not doubting their abilities to stay on schedule for the rest of the season or anything, but if there was ever a time to….
It could very well be that the fifth episode is a beast that required a lot more work than usual, possibly due to beloved characters being brought back for special stories, or perhaps due to an abundance of new locations and characters that required more design work. Or maybe everyone involved was just a little more tired than usual.