There is a Master List of these rankings that will be updated with each post and will link to each of these posts as well.
264. The Ungroundable
Season 12, Episode 14
I wish I liked The Ungroundable more than I do. It’s a Butters episode that makes fun of the Twilight fad: I should love it! But it just isn’t all that funny, especially following the glorious lampooning of High School Musical the previous episode. Gullible and naïve Butters believes the Vamp Kids are actual vampires drinking blood, believes he becomes a real vampire after a visit to Hot Topic. Of course, his innocent goodness won’t let him suck blood, even from a mean kid like Eric Cartman.
Butter’s Dictaphone playing his ‘Big Texas Butters Show’ while reporting on vampire activity and his sheer panic is easily the best laugh; the second best is the ending as the Goth Kids give an assembly to solidify Goths and Vamp Kids are the same, ending with “Fuck all of you” to a thunderous applause.
263. D-Yikes!
Season 11, Episode 6
I don’t care much for this episode at all. I like it less than most of the episodes I’ve already listed. So why is it ranked above them? I’ll tell you why. Scissoring. Mr. Garrison taking to lesbianism (his second time coming out of the closet in the series) with such aplomb will always be hysterical. It’s the 300 parody that really misses the mark for me and drags the episode down. 300 deserves to be parodied (of course) but there was something hollow about it. The kids hiring Mexicans to read The Old Man and the Sea and the Mexicans writing their eses instead of writing essays is a favourite joke of mine.
262. My Future Self N’ Me
Season 6, Episode 16
While not an overly funny episode, it’s a smart episode. Parents and society do tend to scare kids about drugs and alcohol instead of simple talking with them about the realities of drugs and alcohol and the personal responsibility that comes with them. Hiring actors to play their derelict, addict kids from the future is certainly easier than having a frank conversation. My favourite part is Stan faking chopping off a hand to prove the guy isn’t his future self; to keep to ruse going, Randy chops off the future self’s hand and blood goes everywhere as the future self screams in horror. Randy at this point in the series isn’t the character who takes things to extremes, but this is an early sign of the greatness to come.
261. Krazy Kripples
Season 7, Episode 2
Offended by the adulation of Christopher Reeves because he isn’t a true cripple (crippled at birth), Jimmy and Timmy form a club called “The Crips”. The four main boys remark “they better stay out of this one” as Jimmy and Timmy go to Denver and join the actual Crips, thinking they’re all crippled too. They unwittingly kill a bunch of punk ass Bloods, become legendary Crips, have their homes racked with drive-by shootings, and trick the two rival gangs to bond over games and snacks at the Rec. Center. This is all amusing enough though the biggest laughs see Christopher Reeves snapping the necks of aborted fetuses and drinking the stem cells from their spines (to applause) until he’s throwing cars like Superman. His arch nemesis, Gene “Hack-Man” legally cuts Reeves’ supply of aborted fetuses and sends Reeves to The Phantom Zone. It’s stupid and offensive: I love it. The episode ends with the four main boys remarking, “glad we stayed out of that one”
260. Members Only
Season 20, Episode 8
It's hard to rank episodes from Season 20. It’s heavily serialized and tougher to the gauge how they stand as individual episodes. Some are are weak individually, but contribute meaningfully to the season's arcs and some are the opposite. This episode accomplishes neither. Donald Trump winning the 2016 Presidential Election made Parker and Stone rewrite the last four episodes of the season, and it shows. Things don’t line up. There are some funny bits and plot points introduced here that don’t go anywhere, like the Memberberries boss plan to bring back the real stormtroopers and make people member.
President Garrison makes people suck his dick for doubting him. A new wrinkle, Butters, now free of his hatred of girls, is injected into the Heidi and Eric plotline at SpaceX without hitting its stride until the following episode. The highlights of the episode involve a trapped Gerald getting Ike to troll for him. Ike is caught and punished. Kyle realizes his dad is Skankhunt42 and runs away with Ike. The episode is capped off with one of my favourite endings (until the following episode tops it) – Sheila sees them run off and she screams at the sky, “What What What?!?!”
259. Cow Days
Season 2, Episode 13
A lucky couple win a trip to South Park Cow Days on a game show and go from abject disappointment, to trying to make the most of it, to starving to death in a jail cell. Cults think a big cow clock is a God and hilariously commit ritualistic suicide en masse. The boys experience The Line Ride, a simulation of a real line. Shenanigans are declared when the boys can’t win the shittiest Terrance and Phillip dolls ever. To get the money to play the game to win the dolls (instead of buying them), they enter Cartman into a bull-riding contest. He suffers a head injury and believes he’s Vietnamese prostitute Ming Lee, which gives him the skills to win the 5,000, offer sucky-sucky for ten dollar, and ultimately get slapped by Leonardo DiCaprio. You dirty girl, Ming Lee.
258. Mecha-Streisand
Season 1, Episode 12
Look, if you’re a South Park fan, I don’t need to talk about Mecha-Streisand. You know after a fair and healthy game of Roshambo that Barbara Streisand gets the Triangle of Zinthar to complete the Diamond of Pantheos and becomes Mecha-Streisand. She destroys South Park and signs an autograph for Sheila and she is fought by Leonard Maltin, Sidney Poitier, and Robert Smith of The Cure, who defeats her. It’s a ridiculous Godzilla parody that is classic South Park stupidity. Streisand didn’t like the episode, so South Park used her for Spooky Vision in Spooky Fish. Nice.
257. Volcano
Season 1, Episode 2
While an improvement upon Cartman Gets an Anal Probe, Volcano isn’t quite as good as the episodes that follow it. We see the first appearances of many characters, Randy (not Stan’s dad yet), Jimbo and Ned, Mayor Daniels, and more. The character dynamics are still not there so it’s a little jarring to watch back. But there are good laughs with the boys out hunting and Kenny drinking gas. We first see the concept of the townspeople’s stupidity and hysteria in this episode though as they watch an old, black and white video on how to Duck and Cover so lava goes right over you, a true-to-life riff on old Nuclear War safety videos. And it goes as well as you’d expect it too. They dig a trench around the town and successfully divert the lava…to Denver. Ooops. It’s a decent episode that shows glimpses of brewing genius.
256. City on the Edge of Forever (Flashbacks)
Season 2, Episode 7
As parody of lazy flashback sitcom episodes, it works. Alone on a school bus perilously teetering on a cliff-edge, the boys recall past moments that end wildly different and then everyone eats ice cream. They have a flashback of the big scary monster eating a kid off the bus before the big scary monster gives them ice cream. They even relive The Fonz jumping the shark and killing Kenny…they then question how Kenny could’ve died then if he just died ten minutes ago. Ms. Crabtree really shines as she eats Roofies to calm down, unwittingly becomes a comedian by screaming at the audience to shut up, and falls in love. Of course, everything Cartman’s dream that’s within Stan’s dream (DREAMCEPTION!) while Ms. Crabtree and her new love take in the sunrise together, arm-in-arm, knowing their love isn’t reality yet they savor the time anyway, an uncharacteristically sweet moment for young South Park.
255. Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow
Season 5, Episode 5
Don’t fuck with Earth Day people. If you promise things to Earth Day people and you don’t deliver, they chop your limbs off one by one. They are super cereal! The boys scramble to produce the broken up duo of Terrance and Phillip for the Earth Day Brainwashing Festival, discovering Terrance is morbidly obese and Phillip is performing Canadian Shakespeare in Toronto. They trick the duo to appear. However, the episode is pretty dull until the showing of Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow, a history of their career that is pretty fucking great. Americans are exposed to Canadians for the first time as T&P appear on Ed Sullivan as kids, horrifying and confusing the audience.
“Oh my god! What’s wrong with their heads?”
“It’s alright, darling. They’re just Canadians.”
They reference the April Fool’s joke they pulled in Season Two, saying riots and the executions of several TV executives occurred immediately after people watched Not Without My Anus instead a more popular show, The John Schneider Variety Hour. It’s solid stuff.
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