South Park is back for its 22nd season, and this time the show’s really coming out all guns blazing.

Literally. But we’ll get to that in a second.

First, in an interesting hark back to the attempted banning of ‘Terrance and Phillip’ in the South Park movie, the release of the 22nd season was preceded by billboards emblazoned with the slogan “#cancelsouthpark”.

It is, writes the Daily Beast, “as if Trey Parker and Matt Stone were trying to get ahead of the inevitable backlash to their latest offence”.

Their latest offence begins with the first episode of the new season titled ‘Dead Kids’. The promo clip touches on one of the exchanges:

The episode went straight for the jugular, by dealing head-on with the American school shooting epidemic:

In the opening scene, the kids are so used to active shooter drills that they don’t even register the presence of an actual gunman in South Park Elementary’s halls.

You know how when you say a word over and over again, it starts to sound weird? The frequency of school shootings in the States has had that effect on the phrase “thoughts and prayers”.

As always, South Park takes something and rams it down our throats to the point where it can no longer be ignored.

I’m sure somebody is going to yank this off YouTube sooner or later, but here’s the entire first episode to see out your Thursday.

[source:dailybeast]