'South Park' Season 16, Episode 10 Recap - 'Insecurity'

The message of this week's episode was a very late-onset, and as such wasn't quite as clean and clear as it could have been. It seems like "South Park" was really reaching for something to say with this one, and what they ended up with was a topic that's just not very relatable: home security.

It was about much more than that, of course, but still. Not the most universal mine for jokes.

It all starts with Kyle's parents doing a little bit of UPS delivery guy role play. Ike sees them in the act, and informs Kyle that their mother is having an affair with the UPS guy. Kyle relates the story to the boys, but Randy overhears. Pretty soon every man in town knows about it, and they all start wondering if their wives are sleeping with the UPS guy too.

Cartman, partly out of fear of his mother being raped and partly out of fear of Kyle stealing his stuff, gets a home security system installed, and that's where most of the gags come from this episode. Accidentally setting off the alarm and having to deal with the call from the security people is a recurring joke, but not the most effective one if you're not a person who has a home security system.

Slightly more entertaining is the plan that the men come up with, at the suggestion of a mysterious old man at the bar who tells them how convenience lead to the milkman, who f*cks everyone's wife. Now, it's Amazon and UPS. To put a stop to it, the men all put on Bane masks and corner the UPS guy to beat the crap out of him. Is it all really just an excuse for the "South Park" guys to do a Bane impression? Yes. But we'll forgive that, because it's a pretty good Bane impression.

Things spiral out of control, as they often do in South Park: the UPS guy sticks to his job, so everyone gets an even better security system: InSecurity. It's a system that monitors your fear levels so that you get a call anytime you get scared, so that police can show up with blankets and cocoa.

The clever twist is that these alarms just end up being triggered whenever anyone feels insecure. After all, isn't that what insecurity is? Fear of not having something that you should to be safe in your career, relationship or life? Deep stuff, "South Park." Deep stuff.

There's a lot going on here, and there are some things that get a comment but never the full "South Park" satirical treatment, such as the fact that every perpetrator in security system commercials is white. It's mentioned, but not really delved into, perhaps because there's too much else going on. Shame, as there was potential in a lot of stuff this episode, but everything remained pretty surface.

What They're Trying to Tell Us: No amount of security will make up for your own insecurities. Also, close the door when you're role playing.