As much as I don’t like South Park as it is unfunny (in my opinion), they boldly chose to go after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. After five years of putting up with their constant harping and complaining about their privileged lives. In the second episode of Season 26, entitled Worldwide Privacy Tour, the co-lead character, Kyle, is confronted with the idea of having a brand after an argument with his younger brother, Ike, who is hogging the computer.
Ike has repeatedly watched the Queen’s funeral, much to Kyle’s chagrin—just a side note. Because South Park is satirical, the characters representing the British Royal Family are presented as “the Canadian Royal Family” to avoid legal challenges, despite Canada being a Commonwealth nation and the family being representatives of all Commonwealth realms. Just for the record, the episode does NOT refer to the British royals as this.
Anyway, back to the South Park episode, Kyle starts talking about his disdain for the pair, which annoys his friends. It gets worse when the couple, dubbed “The Prince of Canada and his wife”, suddenly move across the street from him. They continue their “Worldwide Privacy Tour” by letting off fireworks in the middle of the night. The prince plays the drums and playing polo. The part that got to me was how the wife is dressed in the same outfit that Meghan wore during the 2018 Trooping the Colour.
Moreover, before the couple moves to South Park, they are on a talk show with signs reading, “We want privacy”, and talking about the prince’s new book, “Waaagh!”, a parody of Spare. The wife even refers to her in-laws and journalists as stupid.
Another side note here. Of course, this is how Meghan feels about the public, as they “don’t understand the real her.” Moving on, the wife accuses Kyle of victimising her because “she’s an ethnic woman”. The prince vows revenge and flashes Kyle, but it does not affect him.
The blue penis gag references Harry’s (alleged) frostbitten penis during William and Catherine’s 2011 wedding. It also references Harry juggling outside the window at the end of Meghan’s 40×40 video with Melissa McCarthy.
By the end of the episode, Kyle realises that having a brand doesn’t make you a better person. He then tells Ike that he can watch the Queen’s funeral as often as he likes. His friends then show up and take him outside to play basketball. The prince shows up and asks to play with them, but instead, he pulls out his drum kit.
Towards the end of the episode, the prince realises that there’s more to life than television and magazine covers. He then opens his wife’s head, and his voice bounces back. This indicates that their words of victimhood and word salad ring hollow.
The topic of brands comes up a ton in the episode. Given that Harry and Meghan have this brand of being victims of the royal family, this was conveyed in the episode too. When Butters takes Kyle to CumHammer Brand Management to develop his “brand”, every brand idea Kyle is given includes victimhood.
The Body Language Guy broke down the episode on his second channel, Royal Rogue, where he mentions that in the first scene, which conveys the Queen’s funeral, the candle, which blocked Meghan from view during the actual funeral, makes a cameo.
TBG also points out that during the scene where Kyle sees images of the wife plastered to his front door, the creators subtly refer to how Meghan copies Catherine. For example, there’s an image in the two-second shot of the wife imitating Catherine’s Vogue cover.
I know Meghan hasn’t copied Catherine’s Vogue 100 Years cover. Still, her [Meghan] claim that she didn’t want to be on the cover of her guest-edited edition of British Vogue is her way of saying, “I’m perfect for not advertising myself”, but then she goes ahead and does it anyway for other magazines.
The exercise that the South Park creators used was ingenious, even if it wasn’t all that funny to me. They highlighted how the rest of us, mere mortals feel. The Sussexes are in our faces too much and need to lessen their exposure. It also teaches a valuable lesson about how easy it is to become corrupted by figures like Harry and Meghan.
I’m giving the episode three stars due to the lack of humour, but I applaud the message and slights towards the Sussexes.
