We’re getting into the part of these rankings where I don’t consider any of the following episodes to be bad or even lower quality than most. They’re all good and there is less to criticize and more to praise with each episode.
228. Cat Orgy
Season 3, Episode 7
Cartman singing Wild Wild West with his puppets is surely one of the most enduring things from classic South Park. Yet as great as that stuff is, compared to the other two episodes in the Meteor Shower Trilogy, it isn’t near as good. Seeing Kitty going nuts in heat, trying to fuck Jabba the Cat, and then throwing a massive cat orgy where they’re sniffing cat nip like cocaine is pretty great. But the plot with Shelly and Skylar and Cartman’s is just okay. I do like the fact it humanized Shelly so she wasn’t an out and out monster as she’d been portrayed previously. Looking back, it’s also weird they didn’t make a bigger deal out of an adult Skylar dating a 12 year old girl.
227. The Succubus
Season 3, Episode 3
This is an episode they definitely couldn’t have done earlier in the show because we wouldn’t see just how much Chef changes in this episode, which is what most of the story relies on. The B story of Cartman’s sadistic eye doctor who likes to torture his “little piggy” is great because Cartman so rarely gets the brunt of abuse. We also see Mr. Derp, the precursor to hilarious Rob Schneider movie trailers in The Biggest Douche in the Universe. The highlight of the episode is Chef’s dad going off about the Loch Ness monster constantly hassling him “for about tree fiddy” and is up there with The Chewbacca Defense and “Respect my authoratah” in terms of the most enduring lines from the earliest seasons.
226. Lil’ Crime Stoppers
Season 7, Episode 3
What makes this episode work for me is the escalation. We first see the kids trying to play detective by solving kiddy crimes like retrieving a stolen doll and investigating an old woman’s missing pie – they tell her that her husband planned to kill and dismember her so he could have the pie all to himself, to her horror, but the dog ate it before he could kill her. They force Butters to give a semen sample and we hear him painfully tug on his wiener to get it come out. Kids playing FBI take over the missing doll case, much to their dismay. Then they get called into the South Park P.D. to be Junior Detectives and are immediately sent to bust a meth lab. The rest of the episode is just over the top ridiculousness of the kids using their hands like guns while criminals shoot at them and end up killing themselves and they manage to take down an entire drug cartel and crooked cops by accident, only to get chewed out for causing so much destruction…but goddamn it they get the job done! A great riff on buddy cop action films. I also love the resolution to the crooked cop story. It's a silly episode where the kids get to be kids.
225. Fantastic Easter Special!
Season 11, Episode 5
I am probably in the minority for ranking this so low because this episode because it seems to be well-liked. It doesn’t do much for me. The idea of the episode is really clever, but a lot of what I like about the episode is crammed into the last five minutes, like Kyle very reluctantly killing Jesus so he can resurrect (to escape their jail cell) and save the day, and his death is so painful and over the top it’s wonderful. I could appreciate the DaVinci Code parody aspect more if I’d read the book or seen the film and could laugh at the tiny details they no doubt included. I like the parody on religion and the idea of The Pope actually being a rabbit is clever…it just isn’t particularly funny to me, and too much of the episode is building up what’s actually clever about it. Some episodes aren’t funny yet have a great story. Some episodes are hilarious with a thin story. And some episodes fall between and don’t do enough in either direction, like this one. The last five minutes are fucking excellent though and definitely make up for the lackluster first half.
224. Chef’s Salty Chocolate Balls
Season 2, Episode 9
This episode why Brokeback Mountain was said to be the gay cowboys eating pudding movie for 2006. South Park goes after independent film festivals here. I’m not exactly sure why they went after Sundance and the rest. Maybe Orgazmo was denied entry and they had a chip on their shoulder because of it or maybe they just thought they were really pompous and pretentious. The evil plan of Robert Redford to run a film festival in every idyllic mountain town to turn them all into Los Angeles because if he has to live in LA, so does the rest of America…well, that’s just a great, corny villain scheme. Overall, this episode lampoons Hollywood and independent films pretty well with Cartman selling the rights to Mr. Hankey and the next day Mr. Hankey (now a monkey) starring Tom Hanks plays in that festival. Cartman only makes three dollars and he’s really upset they cast Tom Hanks.
The central plot of Mr. Hankey being sick because all the fancy food the tourists eat is toxic to him drags the episode down a bit. He’s just not a very good character and it’s no surprise you barely see him after Season 5. Though the Fantasia homage where he’s covering all the Hollywood tourists in their own shit is well done.
223. Lice Capades
Season 11, Episode 3
I’d hazard a guess that this is the strangest episode they’ve ever done. The majority of the episode is an environmentalist disaster parody starring head lice, with the evil politician who won’t listen to the virtuous scientist about what’s really happening. I don’t think any other episode of the series has featured so heavily on one-off characters with the main cast being a tangentially related side plot – The Wacky Molestation Adventure comes close, but they still interact with the kids. Pairing the disaster parody with the accurate depiction the tension of head lice checks when you’re a little kid and being considered a leper if you get them creates a nice balance. The Thing scene when they do the blood test to check for lice is spot on and I like the misdirection when you think they’re going to beat Kenny to death with soap in socks, but they use it to clean him.
The different look to the lice and their world is a breath of fresh air for the show. The terrific animation of how the lice shampoo melts the lice is gruesome and ghastly and very, very funny. This was around the time they really began advancing their animation, giving the flat characters a real deep world in inhabit. The entire lice plot with the cheesy voice acting and terrible dialogue was so good I just wish it was the entire episode because I’m saddened whenever it turns away from the lice. I would’ve been fine without seeing much of any characters we know, except for seeing how Clyde affects their environment. I think that they felt if no regular characters were features, fans would hate it. Oh, and that ending is sublime.
222. Ginger Cow
Season 17, Episode 6
In many ways, this episode was the culmination of the Kyle vs. Cartman dynamic since they don’t war often anymore. After dressing up a cow to prove there can be ginger animals, Cartman mistakenly brings upon a prophecy nearly every religion shares, the coming of the Red Heifer that signals the end of times. The three major religions, Christian, Islam, and Judaism realize they’re being civil with each other for a change, sacrifice the cow in fantastic fashion, and usher in 10 Years of Van Halen to celebrate peace in the Middle East. It’s all fine stuff, but it isn’t overly amusing or fleshed out. Parker and Stone said on DVD commentary this should’ve been a two-part episode, maybe even a film, and a lot of stuff was cut for a single episode. That’s no doubt why I’ve always felt like there was something missing here, that this episode could’ve been so much more
The Kyle/Eric dynamic though has shifted, where Cartman is trying to tell the truth and Kyle is trying to stop him instead of working to expose Cartman’s lie, because the lie would ruin world peace. Kyle becomes a martyr and a total douchebag as he pretends to love Cartman’s farts and he lets Cartman fart in his face in front of everyone. This piousness demonstrates the worst of Kyle, which we rarely see, and that’s refreshing. It too would could really use some flreshing out The way the episode wraps up is exactly what Kyle deserves and it’s one of the best tie ups in any episode. Also I have to mention Stan worryingly inquiring Kyle if he really loves Cartman’s farts, and if he should try Cartman’s farts.
221. Spookyfish
Season 2, Episode 15
This was one of my favourite episodes as a kid. Evil Cartman is still great and I like the bad screen split effect when him and Cartman share the screen. I believe this is all based off a Star Trek episode, but I haven’t seen it…ToS is hard for me to watch. There are some clever jokes, such as Aunt Flo, Sharon’s ‘monthly visitor’ being in the house. Cartman riding Aunt Flo, who has Parkinson’s, abd remarking “you don’t even need to put a quarter in her” is dark humour at its finest. Sharon trying to hide Stan’s evil goldfish’s victims thinking he killed them is a good Halloween concept and her locking Officer Barbrady in the basement (despite him being too stupid to see all the fresh dug graves is suspicious) and Randy walking in on him all chained up and stripped down to his underwear is fantastic. I also love the joke about Evil Chef being a skinny, white Insurance salesman.
The pet store owner saying he didn’t just build his store on an Indian burial ground and that he, in fact, dug up all the bodies, pissed on them, and buried them again upside down because he was drunk is a humourous twist on a classic horror setup. It’s still an enjoyable fun Halloween episode, even if you do have to look at four Barbara Streisand’s at all times. The fact it’s so low on this list shows how many great episodes there are. Also, I still say "hella".
220. Tegridy Farms
Season 22, Episode 4
This episode shares a lot of ground as Fantastic Easter Special! for me. I like the idea of Randy going to war with Big Vape because they’re taking away business from his new weed farm and I especially like the idea of kindergarteners vaping at school. Towelie coming together with Randy (to scientifically test his weed) in this episode turns out to be a great partnership, however, that really pays off in the following season with the emphasis on Tegridy Farms. It’s a good episode, but the last five minutes are hysterical as Randy beats the shit out of everyone at the vape bar to “Two Princesses” by The Spin Doctors before he blows up giant vats of colourful vape juice by flicking a joint and the place blows up in a rainbow explosion…well that’s just one of the funniest bits of the season.
I think what held this episode back for me is the plotline of Cartman/Butters selling vapes and Kyle trying stop them. It felt really been there and done that and a step down from how different the Kyle vs. Cartman dynamic had been in previous seasons, like Ginger Cow. It distracts too much from an otherwise solid Randy episode.
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