In the third episode of “South Park” Season 29, the gang gets stuck in Sephora’s “Back Room,” Stan’s dad shrinks himself using products from the beauty chain, and aura wars take over South America (the newly named mountain town), which means internet lingo like “mogging,” “maxxing” and “meowing” (along with “chad,” “cringe” and “rizz”) abound.
In the episode titled “You Like It on Your Face”, Kyle must try to help his little brother Ike win the live-streamed aura battle against Chad at school, but his anxiety over the practice means he isn’t much help. (Kyle says aura combat and maxing out are “a bad combination.”)
But it’s Ike’s lucky day when Cartman steps forward to help him prepare. As Cartman comforts Ike before the battle, he says, “I’m sure deep down your brother wants to help. Okay? Maybe he just doesn’t know how.” “If I had a little brother, he would be my special little boy.” So Cartman takes Ike to Sephora, which is overrun by South Park kids, to pick up some helpful products. (This is a reference to the ongoing joke about teenagers spending ages at the beauty store; “There’s something wrong there,” says a man sitting in front of the store. “My granddaughter wanted to go to Brandy Melville. Then she asked if she could stop by Sephora. That was six and a half years ago. There’s something there that men can’t understand.”)
However, while Cartman and Ike are at Sephora, they are persuaded to go into the back rooms with an employee; This looks like something straight out of a Kane Parsons horror movie. Earlier in the episode, Stan broke into the back rooms himself, so he knows how to get them both out before the aura battle begins. But all the effort to take them out is in vain, as Ike doesn’t win the fight – Stan’s father Randy beats up Ike’s rival (who is now his son’s height after going to Sephora and thus has to go back to school), which means his max-view face is no longer there.
There were no nods to Trump in this episode, but mentions of the president as a whole were brief compared to the previous season, when the president was the focal point of the show’s ridiculous antics. Some examples include plot points such as J.D. Vance seducing Donald Trump to avoid punishment for trying to kill her unborn baby with Satan.
While the first episode of the show, which aired last month, centered around Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny’s newfound love of e-bikes, the second episode was a full-on phallic fest, with Butters setting out to save South America from “billionaire munchkins” (who, it turns out, are real penises) and data centers that are affecting the region’s electricity. The episode also featured anti-vaxxers, as Butters’ parents blamed his anti-billionaire and AI beliefs on the measles vaccine he received. “I knew what the vaccine would do to him because I listened to the podcasts,” his father shouted. “But you didn’t take time out of your precious day to listen to podcasts, did you? And now your son is a libertarian.”
With Season 29, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are continuing full steam ahead with the “South America” name change, which was announced earlier this month ahead of the Season 29 premiere. The premiere, the first episode after being titled “South America”, reached 4.2 million viewers in three days, as previously reported. Diversity.