South Park Keeps Making The Same Mistake With Randy

Although The Streaming Wars acknowledged that Randy Marsh needed less story focus, South Park season 26 has returned to foregrounding the character.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for South Park season 26, episode 3.

While South Park season 26 seemingly promised that the long-running series would stop prioritizing Randy Marsh over the show’s real protagonists, episode 3 was a step back in this regard. Randy Marsh is an undeniably funny character. He has been a fan-favorite among South Park’s viewership for years since his status as a major adult cast member of the series means he can get away with sillier, more surreal schemes than the show’s younger lead characters. Randy intentionally microwaving his testicles to give himself cancer (so he can then access medical marijuana), for example, is the kind of South Park gag that requires an older character to work.

However, Randy’s slow journey to becoming South Park’s de facto lead character hasn’t always been received positively by viewers and critics. Fortunately, South Park season 26 focused on Butters, Kyle, Cartman, and Stan for its first two episodes, whereas season 25 and earlier outings foregrounded Randy at the expense of these characters. The creators of South Park even acknowledged how much this trend annoyed viewers in the show’s most recent feature-length streaming special The Streaming Wars, which featured a song about Randy’s transition from a mild-mannered supporting character to an increasingly outrageous (and, occasionally, grating) leading man.

Related: Every Banned South Park Episode (& Why They Were Controversial)

South Park Season 26 Episode 3 Forgot the Show’s Heroes

While The Streaming Wars identified that Randy’s main character status wasn’t universally liked, this didn’t undo the change. Like many episodes in seasons 25, 23, and 22, South Park season 26, episode 3, “Japanese Toilets,” focused on Randy and failed to give Kyle, Kenny, Butters, and South Park’s antihero/villain Cartman a role in its story. This causes a major issue for South Park as the show is ostensibly a series that views the world “through the eyes of eight-year-olds” (according to its co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone), a stated intention that is lost in episodes that center adult characters like Randy.

While “Japanese Toilets” worked as a standalone outing, it was nonetheless another episode focused on Randy at the expense of South Park’s real leads. Since the show’s inception, the premise of South Park was that the series could mock social, cultural, and political events by highlighting their absurdity through the eyes of children. Focusing on young lead characters gave South Park a distance from the celebrity parodies and news stories that the series made fun of and allowed its creators to avoid coming down on one side or another of contentious issues (since its heroes were small children who couldn’t be expected to have any answers).

How South Park Season 26 Started To Fix The Randy Problem

The first 2 episodes of South Park season 26 didn’t overly rely on Randy’s presence at all, while even “Japanese Toilets” did give Stan (and Jimmy) a major role in the story instead of focusing solely on Randy’s antics (as has been the case in some of the show’s weakest outings). This did reinforce the idea that South Park season 26’s satirical stories will recenter Cartman, Kyle, Kenny, Stan, and Butters as the true heroes of the series. However, South Park season 25 waited until its sixth and final outing to unveil a Randy-centric story that revolved around irrelevant satirical subjects, so the show isn’t out of the woods yet.

More: Why Only 1 South Park Episode Didn’t Air On Time