South Park

***South Park*** is an adult animated sitcom that aired on Comedy Central in 1997 and is currently ongoing. It is the third longest running animated series to date.

## Plot

The series focuses on 4 foul-mouthed children: Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick. They get into many weird and bizarre mishaps while learning a valuable lesson at the end.

## Why It Rocks

1. Kenny's hilarious death scenes in the earlier episodes, especially the ones prior to the Season 5 episode "Kenny Dies".
2. Numerous clever and hilarious pop cultural references.
3. Far too many hilarious jokes and quotes to count, with many of them spawning internet memes.
4. The celebrities parodies are hysterical, especially Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, and Kanye West.
5. Many excellent episodes such as "Scott Tenorman Must Die", "Casa Bonita", "Funnybot", "Good Times With Weapons", "Make Love Not Warcraft","Trapped In The Closet", "Cartoon Wars Part I & II", "Volcano", and "Band in China". All the two-parters and trilogies are also as good as the show.
6. Valuable lessons to be taught... **to adults of course.**
7. Has countered numerous attacks on entertainment by moral guardians with episodes dealing with censorship and it even being one of the main focuses of the film.
8. Eric Cartman and his crazy (and at times, downright evil) schemes.
9. They ridicule everything and everyone on the planet, especially those that are widely dislike or who really deserve it.
10. They aren't willing tackle a wide variety of controversial topics without pulling any punches.
11. The shows doesn't choose either side of the political spectrum, as both left and right wingers are ridiculously mocked.
12. Season 19 in particular attacked both SJW propaganda and outraged cultures with a season-long story arc. In fact, South Park is one of the few shows on TV that attacks and insults SJW culture and people who are too mentally outraged and overly offended (or the ones looking to be offended) by everything they see or claim "racist", "sexist", or "offensive" whatever so on, all willing proving a good point.
	* This does not mean the show doesn't attack the right wing; indeed, there are too many episodes to count where racism is mocked and ridiculed. This earns South Park the lofty honor of being one of the few shows centered around political humor to promote rationalism and healthy skepticism.
13. Due to how incredibly simple the show is to animate, many episodes focus on current events due to the fact that episodes take only a week to make. Case-in-point: the 20th season episode "The Very First Gentleman" was changed to "Oh, Jeez" after Donald Trump's shock victory in the 2016 presidential election, as the episode (and indeed, the rest of the season) had been made with the expectation that Hillary Clinton would win; as the election was on Tuesday and new episodes air on Wednesdays, they animated and voiced the new stuff in under 24 hours.
14. The voice acting is great, considering that it is mostly done by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
15. When people criticized the show for it's poor animation and fart jokes, to which Matt Stone and Trey Parker responded by creating the characters of Terrance and Phillip with even poorer animation.
16. Though the animation isn't the best, it has a certain charm and parodies paper cutout animation very well.
	* The original pilot was done in cutout animation, keeping continuity in art style for over 23 years.
17. It's one of the first American shows that challenged the stereotype that animation is only for children.
18. The famous quote *"**Oh my God! They killed Kenny! You bastards!**"*
19. The animation quality has greatly improved in later seasons, with characters showing more movements.
20. Hilarious and unforgettable moments like Mr. Mackey's failed drug education class and Cartman singing "Kyle's Mom's a Big Fat Bitch".
21. Tons of memorable and likable characters, like the main boys, Butters, Wendy, Jimmy, Randy, Chef, and many others.
22. Clever writing that mocks other animated shows like *The Simpsons* and *Family Guy*.
23. *South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut* set a Guinness World Record for most swear words in an animated film (399).
24. Hilarious villains such as Mecha-Streisand, Saddam Hussein, the Woodland Critters and Mel Gibson.
25. Two official tie-in games, *South Park: The Stick of Truth* and *South Park: The Fractured But Whole*, which Trey Parker and Matt Stone have officially confirmed to be canon to the series (taking place after Season 17's "Titties and Dragons" and Season 21's "Franchise Prequel", respectively).
26. The Pandemic Special was hilarious and broke records for South Park.

## Bad Qualities

1. There have been many times where the parodies in the show go too far and become outright offensive to many people.
2. Some plotholes and loose continuity, like "Breast Cancer Show Ever".
3. A somewhat excessive amount of toilet/gross-out humor at times, to the point most of the critics of the show point at the excessive cursing and gross-out scenes as the major flaw of the show. For example, Mr. Hankey (a sentient piece of poop) can be a disgusting character to some people. Thankfully, later seasons dialed down the toilet humor to a reasonable amount.
4. Season 20 was not a well-received season, mainly due to the unaired "The Very First Gentleman" having to be reworked into "Oh, Jeez" after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, forcing Matt Stone and Trey Parker to scrap their plans for the entire season.
5. Some unlikeable characters, such as Kyle's mom Sheila, Sergeant Yates, Butters' parents and the Member Berries, although the former three were deliberately meant to be hated.
	* Depending on your view, Cartman can be annoying, unlikable and detestable at some points.
	* Likewise, Randy Marsh is considered by fans to be either a funny or annoying character, especially in the later seasons.
6. From Season 18-20, you have to watch every single episode in order to see what's going on. When Season 21 rolled around, there was still continuity, but it was much looser to the point that each episode can be enjoyed individually (one episode centered around the ongoing opioid epidemic and guest-starring Josh Gad is completely standalone).
7. Some bad episodes, like "Stanley's Cup", "A Million Little Fibers", "Ginger Cow", "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", "Britney's New Look", and "Funnybot".

## Trivia

* Although Matt Stone and Trey Parker have made fun of a lot of celebrities on the show, Barbra Streisand is one of the few the two truly hate.
* The episode "Band in China" mentions how the Chinese government banned Winnie the Pooh in 2018 due to unfavorable comparisons to Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping, which subsequently led to the film *Christopher Robin* not receiving a release there, as well as the country's severe censorship and authoritarianism. Said episode ended up getting the entire series banned... in China. Trey Parker and Matt Stone would respond with a fake apology which mocked the NBA's pardening to the Chinese Government.
	+ The series was also banned in Sri Lanka after a scene in the episode "201" depicted Buddha snorting several lines of cocaine.
	+ That same twoparter, "200" and "201" (which are indeed the 200th and 201st episode respectively, of the show) was banned in the USA after complaints from Muslim groups that Muhammad was shown (Muslims are iconoclasts, meaning they accept the existence, but not the depiction of Muhammad, their prophet, or any other major personality).