South Park Season 20: 5 Key Themes From Episode 3

One of the most clever additions this season is the “Memberberries”. Little purple berries that look like bunches of grapes who trot out cute little phrases like “’member Tatooine, ‘member Indiana Jones, ‘member the Goonies, ‘member?”

People sit and eat the berries and remember the past when things were “better”. They seem to be an analogue for alcohol, or maybe weed, but with a more insidious aspect. The ‘memberberries represent a form of nostalgia that ignores the improvements we’ve made over the past decades in social cohesion. It’s a way of explaining the Trump vote as people wanting to look backwards to a time that didn't really exist. Even his slogan of “Make America Great AGAIN” is a way of harking back to a time when things were less complicated.

We know that nostalgia is always rose tinted, but the type of nostalgia the ‘memberberries cause people to think about has a more sinister bent. It has an undercurrent (no pun intended) of racism and isolationism as shown last week when they encouraged Randy to remember when there were less Mexicans.

These little berries make people feel better, they get lost in a time when they were happy and they don't have to think about the serious things in life or deal with real problems. We get taken to a memberberry farm and find out the crop is taking over everything else, another little swipe at modern homogeneousness and the tendency to look back instead of forwards.

We suspect the ‘memberberries will turn out to have a more prominent role as the season goes on and it’s possible we’ll find out who created them and why. In the meantime, we can only speculate as to their agenda or what they truly represent. But they sure are tasty.