This South Park review contains spoilers.
South Park Season 22 Episode 8
Anxieties tend to run high when your town has rampant gun violence, a vaping addiction, a distrust of its clergymen, racist and unpleasant fecal matter, and a highly destructive ManBearPig on the loose. If I lived in South Park, I’d be putting my head under a box too.
“Buddha Box” begins a familiar plot structure: Cartman learns a new thing, then slyly uses his understanding of said thing to his advantage. Cartman uses a clinical issue, this time his “anxiety,” as an excuse to spend more time on his phone. The episode then introduces a silly product, a cardboard box, to help Cartman shun his mom, friends, and teachers. All things considered, that’s pretty innocent for Cartman.
Eventually it gets to a place where all the people of South Park are coping with their anxieties. That’s a good thing! Acknowledging that mental health is just important as physical health is a big step for them. Granted, they do it in the most counterproductive way possible by putting their heads inside a noise-cancelling box that projects their phone screen a few inches from their face. The joke here is that South Park’s residents are brushing aside how constant contact with our phones, in particular how we fetishize the self-satisfaction that comes with the “like” economy on social media, negatively contributes to our mental health. As they understand it, more time in front of their phones will put them at peace, at the cost of hiding from the outside world.
