A review of South Park Season 22, Episode 6 in the style of Jesse Schedeen from IGN:

This week, South Park continues its recent trend of appealing to fans' nostalgia with "Time to get Cereal". Once again this season, we see the return of characters that have not been featured on the show for years. Also featured in this episode is a whole lot of gore, which unfortunately is not used to as great of an effect as we saw in episode 2 of this season, and just comes off as egregious in my eyes. And, in a step up from the last episode, the writers seem more willing to make fun of recent pop culture crazes, in this case Rockstar Games' just-released Red Dead Redemption 2.

For the first time in over a decade, Al Gore, ManBearPig, and Satan are all featured in this episode. It just disappoints me that nothing really interesting was done with their characters since their last appearances. Since being ridiculed by everyone for trying to warn them all about ManBearPig, Al Gore has assumed a low-profile lifestyle as a local bowling champion. This sort of "anti-bold" choice is part of what disappoints me; I wish Al Gore would have gone on to do something to redeem himself instead of becoming this grizzled lonely man with nothing but his newfound bowling skills. Nothing interesting is even done with this new development, as we see after the scene in the bowling alley it is never mentioned again. ManBearPig is still the terrifying violent beast we know him as, no surprise there. By the time Satan shows up, the episode is unfortunately almost over. Although he doesn't seem to remember Kyle or Stan, we do get to see some of South Park Satan's classic soft side during the scene in the library, where he assumes the identity of a scholarly library attendee, glasses and all. This was a welcome return for sure, but I just wish there would have been some sort of acknowledgement of the all the past escapades involving Satan and the boys, especially considering his long absence from the show.

The ridiculous amount of gore this episode disappointed me greatly in how overly flagrant it was used. Seeing ManBearPig mutilate unnamed civilians over and over again lost its effect pretty quickly, and would have felt the same if we just saw it once or twice. This is in contrast to the last episode in which gore was used to a certain effect, "A Boy and a Priest", where we see the quick and partially-obscured mutilation of characters that I had been set up to root against for that episode. The imagery was shocking but used sparingly, unlike its overuse in "Time to get Cereal". I would have liked to see a better buildup to ManBearPig's first appearance, like some subtle cues of his presence in the town, and more use of off-screen action with use of audio to set up for something more akin to horror. Instead, we see him just burst into the town and start shredding people up left and right. Just disappointing, really.

What redeemed this episode for me though, was the shining through of South Park's classic trait of just going all in on a recent trend. While ManBearPig is shredding through the townspeople, nothing is being done about it because the local lead detective, Harrison Yates, is too busy playing Red Dead Redemption 2. In the face of several killings, Harris quickly tries to pin a school shooting as the cause of all the deaths, and orders his men to find the boys who committed the crime so he can "go home and play Red Dead Redemption for eighteen hours". It's this sort of absurd lampooning of something so very recent that it is what is now that I love South Park for, and after seeming to shy away from making fun of the craze that is Fortnite in last week's episode, this did not disappoint.

While not my favorite episode so far, "Time to get Cereal" does a decent job of bringing back some old beloved characters, but made me bust a gut laughing at its ridiculing of Red Dead Redemption 2's recent popularity. I'm just hoping that this episode sets up for a three-parter, since we haven't seen one of those since season 14 with "Black Friday".