Here at The A.V. Club, we divide our reviews of HBO’s adaptation of Game Of Thrones into two tracks. One is for newbies to the series, and the other is for veterans. It’s a pretty good solution for a perpetual problem, or at least what will be a problem until the series catches up with the books, at which point, anarchy will reign down upon the land and send the world into the dark ages. I read David Sims’ reviews for newbies, because I made a decision before the series aired not to read the books until the television series ended. But while that decision potentially worried me during the outset of tonight’s South Park episode “Black Friday,” my fears were soon assuaged. What unfolded wasn’t a tale of economic insanity, next-generation console wars, and Randy’s overall Randy-ness through the prism of George R.R. Martin’s books but specifically through the HBO adaptation overseen by D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. And while it’s hard to judge this parody through the prism of a single episode in what looks like a multi-week narrative, the start is very promising indeed.
Much virtual ink has been spilled here this season about the show’s overall decline in quality. But “Black Friday” feels more like old-school South Park than any other episode this season. Yes, the episode is topical like others this year, but the subject of topicality—the imminent launches of the PlayStation 4 and XBOX One—isn’t one that requires a particularly deft hand or deep analysis. With both consoles due to launch before Black Friday, the kids of South Park band together in their best Lord Of The Rings-borrowed cosplay in order to wage virtual war on the malls. (Cartman’s wizard hat is just his Gandalf hat, with absolutely no cosmetic change whatsoever.) Why? Because South Park Mall has promised an 80 percent discount to the first 30 people who enter the building. What at first is a concentrated effort on the part of all youths soon splits apart, with kids soon declaring allegiances to… their preferred method of marketing. When the XBOX One-loving Cartman declares, “Let these Sony fucks wallow in their limited voice-control functionality!” he’s not speaking from any type of experience. He’s merely parroting Microsoft’s corporate speak filtered through fan-friendly message boards. The same goes for Stan’s preference for the PS4 controller, even though it’s almost certain that he’s never held one before.
Why wrap Game Of Thrones in all this? There’s no real reason to do so, except that it’s really amusing and offers up a great way to frame the overall narrative. What makes the approach really work is that “Black Friday” is not a one-for-one parody so much as a thematic one. A cross-dressing Kenny McCormick is most likely playing Cersei Lannister, but the final image also suggests a low-budget Daenerys Targaryen. It’s easy enough to recognize that South Park Mall stands in for Castle Black, and the grizzled leader of the mall’s security staff represents a figure not unlike Jorah Mormont. Those parents queuing in line outside the mall? Probably the White Walkers. So on and so forth. But none of this really matters. “Black Friday” is more interested is taking a wider view of the series and exploring the hard choices that people in that world make, the deals they must often cut, the sacrifices that often arise, and the double-crossing that makes every step more dangerous than the last.
And yet this played out over the attempt to purchase expensive hardware and “Stop Touching Me, Elmo!” dolls at bargain prices. So it seems like a reductive, ridiculous appropriation of Game Of Thrones, where they stakes seem much higher. And yet, that’s the ultimate joke of this episode: Americans treat Black Friday as seriously as the seven kingdoms treat the Iron Throne. (To be fair, you could also argue the pursuit to sit upon the Iron Throne is equally ridiculous, and that Game Of Thrones repeatedly makes that exact point, but I’ll leave that to another thread.) If you ask anyone in the episode WHY they so desperately crave the item they seek within the South Park Mall, they could certainly give you a surface answer. But that answer merely parrots the marketing that led them to crave the item in the first place.