South Park – I mean, South America – is back, with no Donald Trump in sight (yet)

After adopting the president’s fondness for renaming things America, the season 29 premiere sees Trey Parker and Matt Stone use e-bikes to critique the ruination of the US

South Park has been renamed South America. That was the main news ahead of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s animated series returning for its 29th season, which seemed like it could be a one-off promotional gag – or another Trump-related storyline after last year’s scorching imitation of the US president’s “renaming” of the Gulf of Mexico and more recently Lake Ontario.

It turns out that neither is exactly the case, at least not so far. The season premiere doesn’t see the South Park sign scribbled over by the president’s dumb-guy sharpie pen. But it’s not just a passing sight gag, either. The six-episode season opens with the renaming already a fait accompli, not even commented on.

Initially, the episode focuses on the desire of every kid in South America for a class-three e-bike that can reach speeds of up to 25 miles per hour.

Cartman agitates for one most connivingly, as is his way, tearfully insisting to his mother that he needs a bike to get in shape to avoid bullying over his weight. Instead, he winds up with a motorised bike that’s the envy of Stan, Kyle and Kenny (as he informs them by doing doughnuts on their lawns and telling them to – well, you’ll hear the phrase enough times in the episode itself).

Soon the jealous boys, unable to afford their own top-of-the-line bikes, are visiting Mr Kim to buy cheaper, faster knockoff e-bikes,creating an opportunity for the show to indulge in some more “ironic” Chinese-accent gags, some of which involve an appropriately profane-sounding pronunciation of “city e-bikes”. (Yes, Mr Kim is canonically a white guy with dissociative identity disorder, but … are these hacky jokes really that worthwhile?) At three for $200, they’re a steal, and soon the streets of South America are even more crowded with kids having fun.

This proliferation of noisier and less effortful e-bikes sends Stan’s bicycle-riding dad, Randy, into full Calvin’s Dad mode, recalling the occasional cycling-centric strips from Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes. Randy recruits more grown-ups to his cause, and they complain about gangs of bandana-wearing, wheelie-popping, and (they assume) drug-doing bikers – while, of course, forming an actual biker gang.

Accordingly, the cyclists amass members, block traffic, demand protein packets and, eventually, much worse stuff (while still demanding protein). After Googling how to change laws in South America, they attempt to ban e-bikes by bribing the cops with cash and cigars. When that doesn’t work, they escalate to full-on violence. The townsfolk can only lament that they hope things improve in November (“That’s when Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out”).

These references to the hopelessness of South America are a few of the many big winks at what it really means when large companies roll over and let the president rename geographic features like a cartoon supervillain.

Though Stan, Kyle and Kenny protest that the actions of a few (cough, Cartman) are being ascribed to every e-bike-riding kid in town, their sensible analysis cannot avert tragedy. After a hopeful agreement to talk with their parents, Kenny’s bike is blown to smithereens, taking its perpetually killed owner with it. Was it the cheap construction of the bike itself, which had them signing away Mr Kim’s liability? Or was it a gang killing? Either way, it was a more impactful death for Kenny than the show’s early days, with the three remaining core boys visibly grieving. The biker gang, meanwhile, uses Kenny’s death as an opportunity to bring everyone together … to ban e-bikes from South America. Ineffectual rules are made through a combination of minority-view brute force and exploitation.

The episode brings the renaming joke to a crescendo with a patriotic song boasting that “we will always be South America” while, as per usual, the children must suffer the whims of hair-trigger, selfish adults who either behave rashly or shrug at the idea of actually finding a solution to problems.

It’s typical of Parker and Stone to critique the ruination of the US by comparing it to another area of the world that, by their implication, their country should stand above.

In fact, it’s kind of hard to picture them having much quarrel with Trump’s designation of “shithole countries” – except, crucially, his repeated insistence that the US isn’t down in the hole with everyone else. South (Park) America argues otherwise. It is this point in this season’s premiere that cuts the deepest: that to roll over and accept a nonsensical rebranding by a dim-witted maniac is a kind of cultural graffiti that isn’t easy to wash off. It looks like the town, and the show’s new moniker, will stick for a while.