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  • Writer's pictureMatt B. Livingstone

Every Episode of South Park Ranked: 254-245

Updated: Jan 13, 2020

"Be careful. You might not like what you see."

254. The End of Serialization as We Know It

Season 20, Episode 10


What could have been. Season 20 started off so damn good. I loved the Skanhunt42 plotline so much. The Memberberries were great. The parody of the election trail was spot on. Poking fun at nostalgia, Kaepernick, Denmark, quitting social media…it was all excellent stuff. But real life didn’t conform to Parker and Stone’s narrative ambitions crumbled around them. While the basic plot of Troll Trace meets the Cartman/Heidi/SpaceX storyline and forms a fairly satisfying conclusion, their original plan for the last few episodes was surely better. Parker and Stone have Bedrager say, “Maybe this is the post-funny era of satire” to express their disappointment with how nonsensical reality became. To cap the season, the internet is wiped and rebooted in the hope we’ll use it right this time. Of course, the first usage of the new internet is an unsolicited dick pic.


Cartman’s vision of the “cum and joke mines on Mars” is pretty hilarious and fully exposes his ostensible support for women being smart and funny (get over it). A great aspect of Season 20 (and something I’ll touch on in later episodes) is its treatment of Sheila Broflovski. After a rough few episodes believing Ike is Skankhunt, she’s given a choice when Trolltrace.com is launched: look at Gerald’s internet history or not. Despite her inner need to look, she opts to respect his privacy. She does, however, verify Ike’s innocence instead. In the end, she’s utterly relieved and as a reward for being a good wife, she remains blissfully ignorant that Gerald was Skankhunt42…much to Ike and Kyle’s chagrin.


253. ManBearPig

Season 10, Episode 6


This is a difficult episode to rank. The Al Gore parody is funny, but ManBearPig’s legacy comes from its inclusion in later episodes, all of which were better episodes than this one. Al Gore is definitely one of the best celebrity/politician parodies in the show’s history (another list for another day), not because they really criticize him so much as he’s a realized character in his own right. Not many celebrity parodies exist outside the criticism to have their own unique identity, but Al Gore definitely does. From his speech, to his loneliness, to his insecure craving for validation, there is decently deep persona when compared to say Rob Reiner or Paris Hilton. Aside from Gore being super cereal, the only other real laughs in the episode involve Cartman eating fake treasure to hide it because he thinks it’s real.


252. The Wacky Molestation Adventure

Season 4, Episode 16


The kids wield the power of false allegations of sexual assault by telling police their parents ‘molestered them’ and get them taken away one by one until the town is adult free. The episode follows a couple from out of town who stop in Smiley Town (South Park) after car trouble to find it a veritable wasteland. The best bits of the episode is the mythology the children built, developing their own lexicon, power hierarchies, territories, and even a ritual for sacrifice…all in ten days!


After Cow Days and Cartman’s Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut you’d expect the couple to die as most outsiders tend to in South Park, but they actually help the children realize what they did and get the adults back; the husband gets the job of a lifetime – the manager of Denny’s! – and the experience convinced the wife to get her tubes tied, which makes the kids cheer. The parents return after intensive therapy and proclaim they’re cleansed of their sick, sexual urges they now believe they had, and the kids are confused.


251. Towelie

Season 5, Episode 8


"Wanna get high?"

What I appreciate most about Towelie is the self-reflection. It parodies the ridiculous stories in South Park and the complex scenarios the kids tend to find themselves in. I love the way people keep trying to explain to the kids what’s really going on – aliens, secret government agencies, plots of world domination with a talking towel that gets high, but they only care about getting their Okama Gamesphere back. There is also the live action commercial for the Towelie Towel and other merchandise where you can get an “I Love Towelie T-Shirt” if you love Towelie or you can get an “I Hate Towelie T-Shirt” if you hate Towelie. Parker and Stone, I think, were poking fun at the ridiculous amount of South Park merchandise early in the show’s life by having products made for a character no one has seen, prepared for the fans hating or loving him. All this is capped off at the end when the kids tell Towelie he’s the worst character ever and he replied, “I know”.


But as much as I enjoy the self-reflection, the episode lacks big laughs from the scenes where the military shoots all the Towels in a 50 mile radius.


250. The Coon

Season 13, Episode 2


Cartman naming his superhero character after a racial slur is exactly what Cartman would do. The parody of brooding comic book films is pretty spot on, but it’s not a really funny episode. It’s the type of episode where you can appreciate what they did without really reacting to it. I do really like Cartman promoting the mystery of who The Coon is and his jealousy when Mysterion steals the spotlight he never had, which is exacerbated when Professor Chaos has a whole wall dedicated to solving who Mysterion is and already ruled out Cartman, “because Cartman is fat”. The final fight is amusing because all the adults treat it like actual superheroes were fighting. When Mysterion shows his face, people are shocked despite him having the same face as all the other kid’s faces, a joke they’d done before. Subsequent episode involving the kid’s superhero alter egos are better.


249. Erection Day

Season 9, Episode 7


"Wow. You know, I've never thought of it that way before, but you're right. If you're pissing blood, you can shove a tampon up your peehole. You are very insightful. Please tell me more."

Erection Day is South Park being as silly as possible. Only South Park can do a show about a handicapped child comedian terrified of getting an erection during the talent show and have him go on a quest to prevent it from happening that sees him in a high speed chase, fighting a pimp over a fat hooker with a urinary tract infection named Nut Gobbler who gets a guy’s head shoved up her vagina as her legs are stretched between two cars. Similar to Clubhouses we see a kid who doesn’t understand what’s happening with his body and clumsily try to figure it out. He learns erections go away after having sex with a lady so he just walks up to girls and school and asks if he can stick his penis in their vagina. After that fails, Cartman teaches him how to manipulate women while on dates. The episode doesn’t have anything to say, but that’s not a detraction - the only real detraction is that, despite how over the top silly the episode is, it’s not as extremely funny as it could be.


248. Splatty Tomato

Season 21, Episode 10


Despite some solid jokes, specifically the Fox Trap and the unbridled support for Garrison from The Whites (a family) who leave food out for The President despite being told not to, the episode doesn’t really function great as a standalone episode or as a satisfying Season Finale. It’s one of those episodes that should be funnier. The kids’ disillusionment at uncool 80s music while riding a wave 80s nostalgia is a perfect joke though. I’m not sure who the episode is really criticizing. Trump? Trump supporters? Those who blame The Whites for everything wrong in the world? The Whites for being stubborn? RottenTomatoes for enforcing a strict binary of “fresh” or “rotten” for criticism? I don’t expect South Park to pick a side, but it comes across as unfocused. However, everyone puking at the idea of PC Principal being with Vice Principal Strong Woman because he’s her boss like it's the most disgusting thing imaginable is pretty goddamn funny.


But as I said before, I love the Heidi/Cartman relationship so the ultimate payoff in that two season long arc is what I enjoy most about this episode. Heidi comes to the realization that she’s made herself the victim in a great speech about the culture of victimhood, and breaks free of Cartman’s emotional abuse. The speech allows President Garrison (caught by Ike in a Mountie Uniform for nuking Toronto in the previous episode) to escape...and only The Whites can stop him now.


247. Clubhouses

Season 2, Episode 12


"When are you gonna cut me some slack, huh?! I have taken you under my wing and done my best, and all you ever do is whine and moan about it! Now, for the last time, go cut some firewood!"

Despite South Park starring four kids, they rarely are depicted as actual children because they usually take on such adult subject matter. Clubhouses is really about them being actual kids, clumsily learning and fumbling through love, relationships, and maturity by playing Truth or Dare in the dueling clubhouses they build. Stan deals with Randy and Sharon getting divorced and a brand new stepfather that he has no control over. I’ve always related to this episode because my parents separated when I was five and I had a stepfather fairly quick so a lot of the humour around that hits for me. Roy (Stan’s stepfather) is a great parody of stepfathers, somehow being various stereotypes of stepdads at all once…he tries to be Stan’s friend and then punishes him for not forming a bond immediately. Stan’s confusion to what his life has become overnight is pretty true-to-life. In the end, Stan finally gets to ask Wendy “dare” all smooth-like, expecting a kiss, only to get dared to shove a stick down his pee hole.


246. Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo

Season 1, Episode 9


This episode marks the first time South Park tackled religion in any real sense, highlighting the isolation Kyle feels being the only Jewish kid at school. Treating Mr. Hankey like an imaginary friend serves the episode well because everyone only sees a piece of shit so there’s a real Calvin and Hobbes angle to Mr. Hankey. This is the first instance where South Park parodied political correctness as the town scrambles to make Christmas non-religious to avoid offending anyone (mostly Kyle’s mom) and they put on the "The Happy, Non-Offensive, Non-Denominational Christmas Play". Cartman sing’s Kyle’s Mom is a Big Fat Bitch for the first time here as well. Overall, it’s a good parody of Christmas specials and religious sensitivity, but both subjects are tackled so much better in the next 21 seasons this episode has lost a lot of its poopy luster to me.


245. Tweek vs. Craig

Season 3, Episode 5



"It's okay, Richard. I'm a pilot! It's what I do." *immediately dies in plane crash*

Mr. Adler, the shop teacher, is the first different teacher at South Park Elementary who isn’t Garrison. When he’s not telling yelling “quit screwin’ around!” he chokes down nicotine gum during panic attacks of visions of his wife who died in a plane crash, which are extremely cheesy but funny. The kids egg on Tweek and Craig until they actually want to fight each other so the kids can settle a bet over which one could hypothetically beat the other up – the argument over who’d win gets so heated Kyle and Cartman fight and Clyde remarks, “Wow, Tweek and Craig really hate each other!” When they are ready to fight, they realize they don’t know what to do. Craig is trained in sumo yet can’t overcome Cartman’s ass while Jimbo teaches Tweek to box by getting him to kick Ned in the balls until he coughs up blood.


Kenny’s story is my favorite part. Terrified of shop class because he dies all the time, he’s in home economics where the girls are taught how to manipulate their husbands, how two is the perfect number of credit cards a man should have, and how shoes reveal how rich or poor their dates are. His teacher Kenny that Home Ec isn’t for him.“Your cooking is unsatisfactory, your sewing skills are below average, and, frankly, I don't think the odds of you marrying a nice rich man in the future are very, well, good.”


Mr. Adler lies down on a table saw to commit suicide before saying, "What am I doing?" only to turn so he goes into the blade headfirst instead of dick first. "That woulda hurt like hell!" Kenny reports to shop class and, naturally, Tweek and Craig finally fight and it spills into the shop class and Kenny ends up dead. “You see what happens when you screw around in shop class!”



All images copyright of Comedy Central

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