219. Pip “Great Expectations”
Season 4, Episode 14
Something tells me this would be one of the least favourite episodes for most South Park fans. What makes this episode so enjoyable to me is how straight Parker and Stone play this adaptation of Great Expectations, which also plays as a jab at how The Simpsons and other animated TV shows will tell classic stories with their characters inserted into them, including having a host along with it. Playing it straight is what makes the eventual changes to Great Expectations so hilarious in context. It also helps having knowledge of the source material, I guess. Also, getting Malcolm McDowell as the host and having him say, “Until next time, I’m a British person”…well, that’s just Grade A stuff.
218. How to Eat With Your Butt
Season 5, Episode 10
This episode is famous for one reason: Cartman blows his funny fuse (oh, you thought I meant the butt faces?). After a class picture prank – where Cartman gets Kenny to wear his snowsuit upside down so his ass is inside the hood – he decides to put the picture on a milk carton as a lost child with “a brown eye”. He thinks it’s hilarious until two people with asses where their heads should be show up at his house looking for their child with the same condition (TPS) as them. And it’s so funny to him that he can’t laugh or as he claims, he blew his funny fuse – he saw something so funny nothing can be funny again. Or you can accept Kyle’s theory that Cartman couldn’t laugh because felt bad.
Personally, I think the joke of Ben Affleck being their lost child and that Ben Affleck actually has an ass for a face is just so funny that it fixed Cartman. But that last shot of Assleck’s parents shoving his face into the butt cracks and farting tears is magic.
217. Holiday Special
Season 21, Episode 3
This is one of those hit and miss episode South Park has made over the past five years or so. Randy does everything he can to get Christopher Columbus basically erased from history because of crimes Columbus committed. In typical Randy fashion, this is only to hide the fact he used to be stoked on Columbus, so stoked him and Sharon had a Columbus themed wedding and Randy has a closet full of Columbus paraphernalia. I appreciate Parker and Stone poking fun at white liberals who act woke yet have a history of intolerance and racism etc., and the idea many people are only so vocal about social justice to deflect their own transgression or their own white guilt. Problem is there aren’t many laughs along the way from this stuff, mostly from Randy calling people “indigenous” instead of ‘indignant’.
But what brings the episode up from being a total misfire is the native man who falls in love with Randy and the introduction of DNAandMe. Randy uses the native man for his own gain to steal his blood for the test. When verifying Randy didn’t cheat through a DNA swab in person, Randy makes out with the native man so that DNA test will show he is part native. This is, so as the DNAandMe ad says, white people can find out what percentage victim they are to claim victim status. The DNA test reveals Randy has some rare Neanderthal DNA, who were wiped out by the Homo Sapiens allow himself to claim that his people are ultimate victim. The second half of this episode really saved it.
216. Weight Gain 4000
Season 1, Episode 2
Now this is how you follow up that spotty pilot episode. The blending of the two plotlines was executed as if Parker and Stone had been doing it for years. The satire is there: satire of consumerism and celebrity worship, not to mention mocking the extreme advertising and health craze that was growing in popularity in the late 90s. There are many memorable moments to the second episode of the series, like Chef singing about fucking Kathy Lee Gifford, Kathy Lee’s bulletproof shell, Cartman getting super fat (he’s such a beefcake he can’t even fit inside the door), and Kenny’s infamous flag pole death that told audiences he was going to die in every episode.
It also served as the launching pad for the Wendy and Cartman dynamic after he wins an essay contest by just submitting Walden with his name on it. Their feud is the highlight of the episode. It also establishes Wendy’s character as more than Stan’s girlfriend, giving her an idealistic, activist personality, a choice that has given us so many great episodes over the years. Also the conversation about dolphins at the beginning is classic. “If Dolphins are so smart, why do they get caught in those fishing nets all the time?”
215. Dead Celebrities
Season 13, Episode 8
This episode brings up an interesting take on how social media affects our perception even though the episode isn’t about social media. This episode aired October 7, 2009, a few years after Facebook and Twitter launched and a couple years after the first iPhone and Android phone were released, putting social media and the internet in everyone’s hands. After a mid-season break where so many celebrities died, South Park did this clever take on The Sixth Sense and Poltergeist where Ike is being haunted by all the celebrities who had just died. I wonder if it was an inordinate amount of celebrities who died or if the information of their deaths was just so much more accessible and easily shared? Did more celebrities actually die in 2009 than usual? Was it perception or reality? Maybe it was just the group of deaths themselves that formed a perfect storm as they came from so many forms of media. Anyways, onto the episode itself….
I like the metaphor of a plane stuck on the runway for limbo and the joke that Michael Jackson simply has too much baggage to board the plane. I wasn’t the biggest fan of how they used Michael Jackson in The Jeffersons episode, but having him possess Ike and having Ike act like MJ worked for me. Putting Ike/MJ into a child beauty pageant – where the male judges get arrested because they can’t stop rubbing their crotches – to fulfill Michael Jackson’s goal of being a pretty, little white girl was a great choice for widespread mockery. Billy Mays and Chipotlaway is a good running gag. However, the best part of the episode is when the reality TV show Ghost Hunters investigates Ike’s haunting and they get so scared over literally nothing they piss and shit themselves before fleeing hysterically.
214. Fatbeard
Season 13, Episode 7
A case of childhood ignorance rules this episode. Cartman mistakes the growing pirate issue in Somalia as the second coming the classic depiction of pirates, so he recruits some kids – Butters, Kevin, Clyde, and Ike – after convincing them how awesome it’s going to be…a fantasy Kyle indulges after Cartman refuses to hear that Somalia is a poor, run down country. Upon arriving in Somalia, reality quickly sets in for the boys and Cartman quickly manages to face his disillusionment by trying to turn the Somali pirates into ye old pirates of mythical lore. Kyle shows up in Somalia to retrieve Ike only for Cartman to order him captured and held hostage for ransom.
While the episode pokes some fun at Somalia, it’s pretty on the nose at depicting their pirate lives as necessity. One pirate tells the boys he’s only a pirate because his mom has AIDs, how he dreams of school, and how being a pirate is terrifying, not because he might die, but because he might not get the money he needs. The pirates begin to wonder if all American kids are as insane as Cartman. It’s not a hilarious episode, but it’s a pretty good story with some good commentary.
213. Cripple Fight
Season 5, Episode 2
This was the episode in which Jimmy Valmer debuts, but he’s quite a different character. Though he’s still wise-cracking, it all comes at the expense of Timmy. The escalating tension between the two of them is excellent as Jimmy humiliates Timmy until a breaking point where they duke it out in a pretty vicious fight…which Cartman announces to a full store and the church by screaming “CRIPPLE FIGHT!!” and clears the place out. Considering how much of a bullying dick Jimmy was in this episode, I wonder if Parker and Stone just went in a different direction or if Jimmy learned a lesson.
The other half of the episode is about Big Gay Al being kicked out of Scouts (he was the boys’ leader) because he’s gay…somehow they didn’t know before. The adults were worried Big Gay Al was doing gay stuff with the kids only for the new leader to make the scouts pose for naked pictures (pictures the news later shows on TV) with a pretty funny yet creepy demonstration of ‘what happens to a scout when he tells his parents about the naked pictures’ by smashing a hand puppet scout with a hammer, with his own blood coming out of the puppet. Right after the parents show up, he says, “You know what I say about kids…they’re all pink on the inside” – then Randy replies, “You bet.”
Knowing this leader is bad news, the kids successfully lobby to get gays in Scouts (because of the appeal of the cripple fight) so Big Gay Al can come back and the Scout leads are put in stocks labeled “homophobe” and the townspeople hurl stones at them. Big Gay Al then says he doesn’t want this and that part of freedom of expression is allowing The Scouts to have their own beliefs, and that the Scouts shouldn’t be forced to change, but persuaded to change. It’s always been one of the greatest points South Park has made…one that seems even more relevant 17 years after this episode aired.
212. Hooked on Monkey Fonics
Season 3, Episode 12
I’m not sure if you ever knew any home schooled kids growing up. There were a few we knew, that lived right by our elementary school, actually, and we always thought they were kind of weird and we probably teased and bullied them a bit. The South Park kids feel the same way after being exposed to home school kids, a brother and sister, at a regional spelling bee. The boys bully the brother for being different, usually by duct taping him to stuff. Kyle falls in love with the sister. The home school father, who was also home schooled, tries to intervene because he thinks his children are being poisoned…only for the other fathers to duct tape him to the flagpole. There’s a lot in this episode about ‘like father like son’ and how personality traits and behaviors are taught to children by their parents, even if they don’t realize it.
Seeing the way South Park poisons the home school kids is a very funny journey though. Kyle thinks he’s teaching the sister about the ways of love and she experiences her first kiss. She discovers she loves kissing. Kyle then turns up to the school dance only to find out the sister turned into a total slut overnight and now she’s kissing every boy. The brother sees this and beats the shit out of Kyle, which of course makes all the kids think he’s super cool, and the brother smiles as the other boys argue over whose friend he is. The episode seems to be about how home school doesn’t prepare your kids for society while also making public school kids awful enough influences that home school seems the way to go. South Park is usually on the middle ground yet without making such great cases for both sides. Maybe they believe in private schools?
211. The Jeffersons
Season 8, Episode 6
This is probably the first entry people may vehemently disagree with (the next entry will be probably be the second). I’ve never been a big fan of the Michael Jackson episode. It’s always been pretty weak material and a pretty weak celebrity satire, probably because Michael Jackson was just so off his rocker it always felt like kicking a guy while he’s down. It helps the episode mostly empathizes with his son, Blanket, and how lonely he feels because his father isn’t being a father like he needs. It also empathizes with Michael Jackson just enough they can tell MJ to shape up as a father, that his lack of a childhood shouldn’t rob his son of one. While it doesn’t go into anything abject about pedophilia, there is a scene where he’s caught sleeping in the boy’s bed and they call the cops.
What saves this episode for me is Officer Harrison Yates (one of the best side characters) who hears about a rich black guy moving into town and decides he’s going to frame him, because that’s what cops do. At the last minute they see Michael Jackson and abort because he looks white. Yates is so disgusted with himself for almost framing a white guy that he questions if he even has what it takes to be a cop anymore. It’s his wife who reminds him that “framing wealthy black people is in his blood”. The whole ending sequence is classic too, with Michael Jackson’s face falling apart as he chases the kids who run from him like a monster, only for MJ to catch them and throw Kenny (impersonating Blanket) up too high where he dies by going headfirst into the ceiling, which is one of Kenny’s last great deaths.
It’s not that this is a bad episode by any means, but I know people really love this episode. I think it’s just good, not great.
210. Trapped in the Closet
Season 9, Episode 12
If the last entry's ranking wasn’t contentious, this one surely is. I know many people would probably put this in their top 10 or 20 episodes. It just doesn’t quite work for me. I don’t find the ‘in the closet’ joke to be funny at all, at least not after 30 times in an episode. Often South Park finds a way to do a joke over and over again that becomes funnier due to the repetition and then they find away to make it fresh again just when it’s losing stream – this gag doesn’t do it for me.
Now, the mocking of Scientology and the montages of the creation myth according to Scientologists with THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE on the screen is hilarious (I still prefer All About Mormons much more), as is the role of Stan as the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard and exposing the religion as the massive scam that it is (though any religion is a scam to me). After Stan says it’s a scam and the Scientologists threaten to sue him and Stan tells them to go ahead, which is really Parker and Stone telling Scientologists that they're not afraid of them, only for the credits to roll and....
I’d actually have ranked this episode lower if it wasn’t for this episode’s infamous behind the scenes drama that saw Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist, leave South Park after 9 seasons because he was offended. Chef was never my favourite character, but he had a special role on the show nonetheless and his leaving was the most significant event to happen to South Park at the time…it probably still is. The hypocrisy of Hayes to sit idly by while South Park made fun Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons yet get upset when it’s his religion being made fun of, is horrible. Over the years, there have been a lot of mixed reporting about what happened with Hayes. Hayes says that he never quit. His son says the Scientologists forced him to quit and that they took advantage of him after his stroke…which could be the case. I don’t know. All the same, it’s a shame it happened at all considering Isaac Hayes’ passing two years later. But South Park had an unforgettable response to Hayes’ departure which I’ll cover later in these rankings.
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