5 classic South Park episodes that speak to our current moment
As the show marks its 25th anniversary, here are some prime examples of why Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s series remains as relevant as ever
TV Features South Park
An astonishing 25 seasons after South Park debuted on August 13, 1997, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone continue to satirize hot-button topics and prominent public figures without restraint. Admirably, they’ve let the show grow over the years, and even contradict itself as their own views have evolved. Lately, they’ve embraced opportunities to course correct and retcon when necessary. But the series’ crude humor and dramatic excesses remain unbridled, and the show’s mission remains the same—to hold a funhouse mirror up to society and force the audience to feel something, whether it be revulsion, inspiration, recognition, or simply mindless laughter. Out of 317 episodes (and counting), we’ve picked five that capture our current moment and represent South Park at its topical best.
61 Comments
Title: 5 Classic Episodes of South ParkList: Only includes one episode more than a few years old, and features two episodes from the most recent season.
Yeah, both wrong and lazy.
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It’s easy to pick South Park episodes that speak to our current moment when you’re picking them from our current moment.
But can’t you see how these “old” episodes still relate today in the “far future” from when they aired!!!
Something fishy was going on with the reviews for the most recent season.They couldn’t be found on the home page whenever they were posted, and it felt like they were deliberately hard to find.
These… mostly aren’t “classic”. Although you kind of handcuffed yourself with the subpremise of “speaking to the current moment”. A smarter slideshow could have spoken to the current moment with some of the good and some of the bad. Bring up Manbearpig and analyze that. Or the Trans Dolphin.
Or just the best examples of when the show MET the moment and spoke to what was current within context. That opens the door for “Osama bin Laden has Farty Pants,” “Krazy Kripples,” and a host of others.
at least they did an apology episode about Manbearpig, admitting he is real And Gore was right. not often you see people changing their views in things and publicly apologizing.
I love Al Gores comments on the episode. He truly appreciated that they apologized to him in it and did a 180 on their views.
Have they apologized for the trans dolphins shit yet? Because that was pretty shitty, even at the time
Our society is currently in a funky in-between regarding trans and similar issues. There is zero doubt that we should be empathetic and not imposing on trans individuals, but it’s far from a settled situation that is black and white right/wrong. For example, we’ve been expected to codify that people chose their gender based on preference in their minds, not their genes, and yet people who have chosen their race on the same basis have had their lives ruined. That sort of arbitrary double standard doesn’t fly. We also have female trans individuals wanting to play on women’s teams, which blatantly whiffs on the purpose of women’s sports: not to give people who identify as women a place to comfortably play only among themselves (which would be sex-based discrimination), but rather to admit to the radical genetic-based advantage those with XY chromosomes have over those with XX chromosomes in most athletic activities. The only options Title IX had were to open all teams to both sexes (which would have provided minimal opportunity for women) or else create a separate but equal situation, which made sense. The sole purpose of male and female teams is to give a place where XX individuals can compete, and confusing that purpose to mean that the teams are for gender identity is a huge miss. Trans women are XY, an advantage that blows up the one and only logical reason to have separate gender teams. I’ve yet to hear anyone ask a trans woman who is pushing to play on a woman’s team the obvious question: why not continue to play on men’s teams? That would be fair, and if the response is “well, I’m on hormones, so I would be at a disadvantage”, welcome to the world of the huge number of XY men who also would like to thrive in men’s sports but aren’t physically gifted enough to do so.Until we sort this all out with a mindset that is fair and empathizing to everyone and broadly logical, nobody who wasn’t blatantly hateful or similar behavior has anything to apologize for – we don’t have the clear right answers enough to render those with differing takes “wrong”.
No it wasn’t.
How’s your mom?
Not a fucking loser like you.
From lil’ homie’s most recent backlog: Again, you’re a caricature. I hope for your sake you aren’t more than 16 or 17 years old And not a scintilla of irony was detected that day, because an edgelord dipshit can’t identify or understand it.Such a deeply weird, pathetic fuckhead.
Yeah. I allow myself one snarky response to them and then just dismiss the responses. I hadn’t see posts from them in a while so I was surprised when it popped up. I figured they moved on to some other place to be a transphobic bigot
Is this the right room for an argument?
pretty doubtful, I haven’t seen every single episode to know for sure. there is also Mr Mackey, he was gay, then trans, then male again ( not sure if still gay), then trumps avatar.. also there was an episode that was unflattering to Trans athletes ( the female athlete was Macho Man Randy Savage). I wasn’t trying trying to say that everything problematic they’ve done they have apologized for, but at least there’s one thing?
You mean Mr. Garrison, of course. And I don’t think they had anything to apologize for there.
Um, what? That was a pretty transphobic episode.
Mr. Garrison, not Mackey.
Yep, you are absolutely correct.
Keep in mind that Gore wasn’t entirely “right”. He was of course correct to raise awareness of global warming, but some of the criticisms the manbearpig episode raised about him were and still are valid. For one, his manner of working to address the problem was somewhat self-promoting and guilty of the same hypocrisy man climate change activists were at the time (having a large carbon footprint even as they told others they needed to reduce theirs). For another, his approach to increasing awareness was to be as sensationalist as possible, presenting worst-case scenarios as the likely future and glossing over uncertainties. The extremist nature of the warnings led climate change deniers to accurately (but disingenuously) cry foul about the accuracy of climate change activists, which muddled the societal dialogue and confused a lot of moderates into thinking that there was a chance that there was no human-based climate change. I hated Gore’s approach at the time because I understood it would lead to the polarization of the debate (as we’ve seen, this is how most of our debates have gone, and for similar reasons in many cases), so in that regard I would argue his approach was wrong. Good intentions, highly flawed execution.
true, but that’s pretty par for the course when it comes to most politicians causes.
Going straight to the worst-case scenario in studies about the potential effects of climate change (or any issue, for that matter) is the biggest mistake media and activists make, especially now that it has been a topic for long enough that we can see in real time that those worst case predictions have not come true. Gore and the like did themselves zero favors with that approach. Trying to get people to fundamentally reorder their lives or risk an uglier future is much harder when the validity of those forecasts themselves are called into fundamental question.
Volunteer Proofreader is going to have a field day with this.
I’ll get over it.
At least that retard laserface isn’t here anymore to deliberately misinterpret south park episodes on every related post
“Gnomes” was Season 2.
Every time there is a slide show:
You can view in list form on your phone.
Kenny Dies is a classic. I stopped watching when they serialized (just stopped finding it as funny) and wish Trey and Matt had gone on to different ventures, so I can’t speak to the 4 newer episodes posted.But as far as an episode that speaks to our current moment AND is a classic, I’d go with “Canceled”, where Earth is revealed to be a reality show broadcast to aliens and the kids are living in a repeat. Applies so well to today, has really funny individual silly moments, and has some great South Park meta-commentary without going too far up its own ass, as the show started to do after.I also might go with the episode where Chef wants them to change the South Park flag, which was I thought for the time a nuanced discussion of racism and the dynamics of racism and again, really silly and funny too (like the Cartman-Wendy romance which is actually cute). What’s weird is comparing it to something like the Tiki torch episode which takes such a lazy, obvious stance on a similar topic years later.
But it does go up Helen Hunt’s ass.
Point of order: George W. Bush didn’t ban stem cell research, he banned federal funding for research into fetal stem cells collected after his announced ban. Private funding for fetal stem cell research could continue, and federal money could be used for research into non-fetal stem cells, and fetal stem cells derived from samples that existed as of his announced ban. It was an interesting approach that made exactly zero people happy.
That’s right. He also didn’t ban umbilical stem cell research.
It set back research by twenty years.
I’m laughing because A LOT of the anti-stem cell people were very Christian boomers and 20 years later, I’ve known several in my own family who have had stem cells injected into aging knee joints and such. It’s amazing how shit can be “evil sinful” stuff until your old ass knees start giving out.
Yep. Whole swaths of this country have no problem saying “Well it’s different, because it’s ME!”
True, but I can also see feeling pretty icky about your taxes funding research that involves harvesting cells from dead babies. I’m not naive about medical research but it’s not surprising the same groups that were anti-abortion would have that position, or that GWB would pander to it.
After what happened yesterday with Salman Rushdie “200” and “201” speak to the current moment.
It really is so subjective. I find the non-make-a-statement episodes the best. The purely relevant/hilarious do it for me. It was the Make Love Not Warcraft episode that made me ask my boss about World of Warcraft and a ten year affair in Azeroth. It was Major Boobage that made me relive midnight movies and Heavy Metal. It was the Casa Bonita episode that made me relive the worst Mexican food ever and Black Bart’s Cave.
Whenever I feel that I’m drowning in the historical moment, just overhelmed by confusion, I take a moment to review the classics. You know, Thucydides, Cicero, Gibbon, Hobsbawm, and Parker and Stone.
Why are almost all these episodes from the last couple of years? There’s a lot of older episodes that really hold up.In fact, th best episode of South Park is Scott Tenorman Must Die
because of the incredible commitment the episode makes: the whole thing
is one long setup for a single, devastating, slow-burn joke. That’s
incredibly hard to pull off without boring the audience, and somehow the episode manages it while
still being entertaining throughout, even though it’s tricking you the
entire time, not letting you realize what’s REALLY going on until the
joke lands at the very end. Just masterful comedic structure and it still
holds up now 21 years later.The best “political” episode
is Margaritaville, which is about a specific real event but still manages to be almost completely timeless. Watch it today and it feels like it could have come out last week (except for the Obama joke at the very end.) Full disclosure I
haven’t watched South Park in like ten years but I’m still right.
….wait, Stan’s voice sounds really different now. Did he hit puberty or something? Also, I, um totally knew his name was Tolkein the entire time. I’m not racist, you’re racist.
The “White People Renovating Houses” episode is similar in scope to Scott Tenorman, the ENTIRE episode is a set-up where the title is the final line of the episode, and the punchline.
No shit these episodes speak to our current moment, they’re all (except one) relatively new episodes. I mean, that’s literally the main theme of South Park… commenting on current events.
Remember way back when Coronavirus was a thing, man the world has changed huh! 🙂
I get a kick anytime I see one of those “this will change the way we do things forever!” claims from the TV talking head crowd about some current event, because it has never once been true in my lifetime.
The author should be more careful to keep questionable editorializing to a minimum. The bit about “Trump’s botched response” to Covid-19 is highly questionable Kool aid drinking. What exactly was botched? Some have tried to abuse the reports of him initially keeping the word of the fast-developing growing threat of the virus to moderate levels, which obviously is reasonable (not right or wrong) given human nature to panic. Others have gotten on his case for not responding enough – even though one of the first actions he tried to take was to shut down travel to and from China, something Democrats denounced in hair-trigger fashion as xenophobic (so, can’t blame him for not responding enough when some of his attempts were undercut). Meanwhile, he mobilized the medical field to get a vaccine created in record time, only to have a large chunk of the credit for that taken by a following Democratic administration that did complete the job (good for them) but then bungled the messaging about it by pushing it as a cure-all (to justify trying to force the populace to use it) rather than the likely reduction in worst symptoms but otherwise only temporary immunity to the virus (as it was expected to evolve into weaker but more easily spread strains).Note that I write this as someone who has never approved of Trump and didn’t vote for him, but anyone who buys talk of him bungling the situation needs to examine one’s bias. It’s also obscenely inaccurate to label this the country’s “greatest health crisis” ever.
KYS
Oh, nonsense. It probably can’t be known how much better we could have done — it was a new virus, and outcomes varied even in the developed world. But I do think we did badly. There are lots of things Trump could have done that he didn’t do. He gets credit for Project Warp Speed, but that’s it.The virus was circulating in China for about a month before it hit US shores. That’s a million years in epidemiological terms. Trump could have invoked the Defense Production Act to make sure we had enough masks and gloves by the time it hit us. Infection tracking was never set up at a federal level. He put Jared Kushner in charge of materials distribution at a federal level, despite the existence of hundreds of more qualified candidates not married to his daughter. Those pipelines never got established. He refused to model mask wearing and helped make it into a useless “personal choice” question and, worse, a partisan issue. He chose not to get vaccinated publically, which would have made a real difference, when every other ex-president did. He fed Americans a lot of bull about how it was gonna be over by Easter 2020 or the summer, or whenever when he should have known much better. That was somewhere between “wishful thinking” and “refusing to be straight with anyone.” The CDC fucked up on coming up with COVID tests, and while that’s not directly his fault, it doesn’t make him look good. I tend to think that thousands and thousands of Americans would probably be alive today if he’d done things differently.And stop with this “I don’t approve and I never voted for him” nonsense. I don’t buy that either. You’re a chud or I’m a goddamn three-legged zebra.
Note that I write this as someone who has never approved of Trump and didn’t vote for him, but anyone who buys talk of him bungling the situation needs to examine one’s bias.So… let me get this straight. You’re not a Trump fan or Trump voter, yet your entire comment is beyond wrong and filled with pro-Trump misinformation…Yeah, I don’t buy that for a second. The bit about “Trump’s botched response” to Covid-19 is highly questionable Kool aid drinking.Says the guy drinking the Kool Aid directly from Trumps dick.
Trump had the most empirically botched response in the Western world. This clown is a nazi troll.
What that he said is misinformation (a word I am coming to despise)? Could more have been done in hindsight, that actually would have had a positive impact? Possibly, but a lot of the things we were instructed to do proved unnecessary or useless (spraying your shoes with disinfectant and leaving them outside when you’ve been out was a personal favorite). There was no way to know until after the fact. I do agree that his unwillingness to wear marks was very harmful.But somewhere along the line the objective switched from flattening the curve so our healthcare system wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed to somehow believing that we could prevent people from getting it at all. This proved to be a complete practical impossibility – every time a lockdown was lifted, people immediately got it. So the vaccine’s effect on symptom severity turned out to be the most important mitigant we had, until other therapies were introduced more recently.People have got to stop letting Trump live rent-free in their heads.
People have got to stop letting Trump live rent-free in their heads.Trump still dominates media headlines to this day. Do you really believe I like thinking about him?You already answered your question. The fact that Trump constantly downplayed the virus and spoke about unproven dangerous solutions in the media? Or, the fact that he was adamant masks didn’t actually do anything. Or the fact that he refused to listen to actual experts like Fauci, and instead belittled them online. Or the fact that he openly refused to initiate a nationwide mask/lockdown initiative. Or the fact that he even downplayed the vaccine… WHILE SUPPORTING IT. Or the fact that… do you get or do I need to keep going?Covid is here to stay, we all understand that. Having a better response to the situation instead of convincing your millions of followers that they shouldn’t do the things they SHOULD do, actively goes against everyone’s best interest. He literally created a new group of anti-vaxxers who refuse to listen to anyone. And that’s after he half-assed tried to convince them that the vaccine was something they should get. I mean really, are you being disingenuous here and pulling my leg?Instead of being the leader of a country, Trump acted like a mentally unstable uncle spouting nonsense while actively undermining a real effort to prevent the spread of Covid. If you still believe any one of those things is acceptable for the President of the United States… one of the most power person on the planet, to act that way during a major crises then I don’t have anything else to say to you.
First off, I drove this so let’s keep that in mind during our discussion. Note enemies, just disagree, etc.(not this specific one, but identical)But with Trump I feel the same as I do with so many of his antics – his words were a sideshow. He DID push through vaccines by substantially changing approval timelines and testing requirements, which undoubtedly saved untold lives (both in the U.S. and abroad). He was accused by Democrats of being a racist for curtailing travel from China which was the blindingly obvious right thing to do. He was himself vaccinated. Fauci himself admitted early on that masks didn’t do much, so it’s hardly a surprise that he latched onto that. I’ve heard it equated to trying to catch mosquitoes with a soccer net. I disagree that he actively undermined preventing the spread of COVID. Did he fuck up a whole lot of things? Yes he did. But to refuse to acknowledge things that did turn out to be the right call is disingenuous.ETA: Plus my initial rent-free point stands. Like so many others the author felt the need to shoehorn her editorializing into this article.
lol
Not sure I’m convinced these famously Libertarian-leaning guys who signed a $900million deal last year are Marxists now, just because they went after Amazon (and, previously, Walmart)
They continue to go harder and harder after anyone they think is behaving badly. No surprise Amazon would be way the hell up that list.
Five Episodes of South Park from the last six months that are still relevant today!!
Re: The Token episode—they also gas lit the world by going back to EVERY episode featuring Token in the past and changing the subtitles to Tolkien. Really high-level meta comedy at work there.