South Park turns to America’s beef shortage – and explodes in diarrhea

The 29th season has begun to slightly spin its wheels, but this poo-splattered episode suggests an imminent story arc: the release of Grand Theft Auto VI Are record beef shortages simply not that rich a topic for South Park to riff off?

The show’s 29th season had its first outright middling episode this week with a zigzaggy outing that gestured vaguely toward the performative eating of particular foods, nodded slightly at a father-son story development, and wound it all up by repeating and amplifying a funny season-long running gag that increasingly seems like it will actually serve as a makeshift story arc. But let’s jump back to the beginning, perhaps the most laugh-out-loud moment of the episode: Cartman in a fugue of delight over the impending meal of sloppy joes at the school cafeteria, to which he forms a tribute in the form of a sloppy-joe-themed version of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part Two – a music clearance…