South Park's return to television dominated 2021 viewership records.
The "South ParQ Vaccination Special" episode reached 1.74 million total viewers during its premiere on Comedy Central and ended with 3.47 million viewers by the end of the night, as confirmed by Nielsen. South Park's COVID vaccine-centered episode earned the number one spot for a cable telecast thus far in 2021 and the "most social cable program of the day."
The animated series latest episode marked the second highest-rated episode for the series since 2017. Its competitor in ratings was the previous hour-long South Park episode, "The Pandemic Special," which aired on Sept. 30, 2020.
Both "The Pandemic Special" and "South ParQ Vaccination Special" tackled various stages of South Park, Colorado's reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the latter focusing on every non-elderly citizen's struggle to obtain a vaccine from their local Walgreen's.
This lead to Eric, Stan, Kyle and Kenny tasked by Mr. Mackey to steal vaccinations for the South Park Elementary School faculty as a means of atoning for a prank Cartman pulled on their teacher. The South Park special also covered the return of Mr. Garrison, after taking a four years long sabbatical to be President.
South Park's "South ParQ Vaccination Special" is currently available on Comedy Central.
Source: Nielsen