'South Park' Season 20: Reality may return, 'will blow people's minds'

SAN DIEGO -- Reality may truly be setting in.

Though he was only onscreen for a minute or two of a single episode, Reality (the South Park character, but also the concept) is perhaps the purest distillation of what Trey Parker and Matt Stone were trying to say in Season 19 -- the first to feature an episodic arc, and arguably their best -- about the rise of PC culture.

We already knew that PC Principal would be back after an unforgettable introduction. But Parker and Stone told Mashable during an interview before their Comic-Con panel last weekend that they've cooked up a big idea for Reality "that will blow people's minds."

Will they go through with it?

Though they didn't disclose what the idea was, they did sort of seem to decide right there on the spot that they would make it a, you know, a reality. The way they lit up while talking about it, we can only hope it sticks.

Reality is a generic, Snidely Whiplash-looking villain who appears in Episode 5 (Safe Space) first as a hallucination, but then manifests and crashes an anti-shaming fundraiser, insulting the partygoers' politically correct delusions.

It was one of those South Park moments.

Reality was killed off at the end of the episode in a public hanging, allowing the townspeople to continue living in their "safe space." But as Kenny has taught us many times over, South Park isn't a world where death is final.

It also didn't used to be a place where the episodes connected, or added up to much. But Season 19 was different, and completely by happenstance. Parker and Stone start writing South Park episodes just six days before they air, and had no intention of making 19's themes connect.

Nor do they intend to do that for Season 20, which starts in September. But they are seriously considering thinking about maybe planning on talking about possibly doing it again, though.

Mashable: You seriously did not plan out the arc of Season 19? Like, at all.

Stone: No, we didn't at all.

Parker: The first show was about PC Principal. We got to like Saturday or Sunday and started talking about how it would end, trying to think, well, does PC Principal get run out of town? Does he die, should we kill him? Then it got to be like Monday and were like -- what if we kept him. And it's scary because what if nobody thinks this is funny?

How do you know? What's your feedback loop?

Parker: First show (of the season) is on a Wednesday, then we walk into the office Thursday morning to figure out what the next show's going to be. We have nothing. And we are already hearing about it. If certain friends call me and say 'That was funny,' or like my dad will email me like, 'That was a good one.' We try not to do it too much, but you do look at message boards and stuff like that. It's just so interesting to sit at the table and go, 'OK what are we doing this week?' And the feedback is somewhat ... you just know the energy of it: That joke is landing, or that characters are working.

The 'serialized' approach gave the show new life. Would you consider doing it ... on purpose?

Stone: That idea of doing "serialization light," it did give us like, a new instrument. It gave us a little energy. During the last four our five years, with all this great serialized TV, I do think we felt a little like -- I guess jealous would be the right word -- like, oh it'd be cool if we could do that. We could paint on a bigger canvas.

Parker: We've learned our lesson that, in the way that TV's different, it's not like the Saturday Night Live sketch where we've got to do this big funny thing and just figure our way out of it at the end. We really realized last season why it was fun, in that we kept these threads going every week and yet we sat down every week and came up with something new. 'Oh let's talk about these fucking Yelp people.' Because that's got nothing to do with the any of that. But the fact that it was in that world, the PC world, made it interesting. It's scary. Because here we are going, that was sweet. Maybe we should get together a month before and really map it out.

Stone: That will probably ruin it.

Parker: But it's also scary to go, oh, we'll just do that again, start -- and it'll just work out again.

Stone: Maybe we're finally grown up, or older, or better writers. I think we used to try to make points ... I remember the early seasons, we were more pedantic, or we felt like we had to make a point. And part of was knowing we were wading into fucked up stuff. And lately it's been just like, 'Let's deal with the issue, and let's get the angst from top and bottom and just let our characters deal with it.' I really liked that part about last season; that inferiority complex of that small town in Colorado that feels like they're not good enough. That would've been a shame to do in one show, too big of an issue. So we got Whole Foods, Yelp, guns ... all of it to fit together.

Stone: We don't have to write a policy paper about it. It can be sort of messy and humorous. We don't have to land anywhere, we can just have fun with it.

Reality was a huge highlight of last season -- talk about a thing that's too big for one episode!

Parker: He was a very polarizing character. People were like, 'Fuck that character.' We have to be careful though, if we get feedback that people are going 'Fuck that character,' our first instinct is like 'We're gonna do a lot with that character.'

Would you bring him back?

Trey: I dunno?

Matt: That'd be pretty sweet.

Trey: We're actually thinking ... [pauses, hesitates] no, actually. I'm not gonna tell ya. No, because it -- it's such a sweet idea that if we do it I don't want anyone to think we're gonna do it.

Matt: We are going to do something with Reality this season.

Trey: Yeah. We are going to do something with Reality this season that will blow people's minds -- unless we decide not to do it.