South Park: Perfect Reception
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
This is an entry in our Perfect Reception series. Submit your favourite television series for review here!
There's a bunch of birds in the sky
And some deers just went running by
The snow's pure and white on the earth rich and brown
Just another Sunday morning in my quiet mountain town
Once upon a time, there were two boys by the names of Randolph Severin Parker III and Matthew Richard Stone who met each other at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their absurdist senses of humour was the immediate click-into-place for the two aspiring filmmakers, particularly their love of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (there’s a particular part of this iconic series that inspired them, but we will get back to that in a minute). They were destined to be making projects together, and this includes an assignment of theirs: to make a trailer for a film. So “Trey” Parker and “Matt” Stone got to conceiving a trailer for a fake film for Cannibal! The Musical, which drew enough of a crowd that this vision could actually be financed and an indie feature was born. Classmates failed some of their film class because they were busy working on Cannibal! The Musical (the real one, this time). The film would be released years later, but they both caught the filmmaking bug. They pitched the unsuccessful pilots of Time Warped, and would go on to make Orgazmo in 1997; the latter is interesting, because you can spot Parker as the director/writer of the project, Stone as one of the producers, and both guys as stars of this project. Even from then, the two knew exactly what they would contribute to their partnership.
Before all of this, however, came a little animated short film, back when Parker and Stone were still students. The Spirit of Christmas was a four minute cartoon where the titular snowman proceeds to terrorize four young school children before baby Jesus steps in to save the day: Kenny (who is a child with a green poof-ball hat and a red jacket) and an unknown kid in an orange hooded coat get the worst treatment and die amidst all of this. The animation style was an homage to the cutout works of one Terry Gilliam (there’s that Monty Python callback), and the short was for their own amusement, mostly. Parker and Stone would revisit this short once they somehow got through to the Fox Broadcasting Company, who granted them one thousand dollars that could make a better version of the short that could be used as a filmic Christmas card that could be shared around the office. Parker and Stone complied, and The Spirit of Christmas (as most people know it)was made. It was slightly longer at five minutes, but with a bit of money one could already start to see a stronger sense of quality animation; still done via cut out construction paper pieces. This time Jesus fights Santa Claus in an argument over why children should celebrate Christmas (the answer ends up being “presents”); Kenny is now the kid in the orange coat, and the other “Kenny” is now Cartman (Stan and Kyle were in the first short and show up here as well).
Not only was The Spirit of Christmas a smash hit at the Fox offices, but it would go on to become one of the first cases of internet virility ever. A tape copy of the short made its rounds online, and it was suddenly accessible almost anywhere. This video with dying children and complete blasphemy was something that just spoke to the now-digital audiences of the ‘90s: maybe it was a sign of what this new frontier could bring us (completely unhinged ideas). Fox was in love with bringing Parker and Stone on board, especially with the potential that an entire show based on these kids could bring (Fox is also the home to the biggest animated series of all time: The Simpsons). Unfortunately, the two creators experienced enough disagreements — perhaps Fox wanting to have more control on their ideas than they would have liked — that the project was shelved. Fortunately, Parker and Stone (as we have already seen) are two of the busiest people in the business, and they wasted no time trying to wind up elsewhere; Comedy Central would end up being their home.
Like they were gifted the budget to enhance their Spirit of Christmas short, Parker and Stone were given money to make a pilot, and they spent three months working on the pilot episode of what would end up being called South Park. Cartman Gets an Anal Probe was painstakingly made with traditional cut-out animations; while it was an improvement over their earlier shorts, this is easily the most shoddily made episode of the entire series. The end result — a juvenile, offensive half hour — didn’t really resonate with audiences, but Comedy Central ordered a first season anyway. They even agreed to get a celebrity on board to help flesh out this idea; Parker and Stone’s request for soul legend Isaac Hayes was met. That’s all that they needed to achieve what felt like global pop culture domination. South Park as a series was an overnight sensation that pushed television to its limits in terms of what could be shown, and it became the height of anti-safe material in the ‘90s (before Eminem, before Grand Theft Auto, before anything). You didn’t know what you would get in any episode, outside of the certainty that you were bound to be offended at some point. South Park took place in the titular Colorado town, and it was far from mundane and ordinary. Each character felt like an exaggeration of what they were meant to be: teachers were monstrous, children were delinquents, and parents were either complete morons or dictators.
Their absurdist visions would continue for three seasons; after their pilot episode, every release afterwards would be computer animated and made to look like stop motion. Parker and Stone would provide the majority of the voices on the show themselves (something else they carried from their animated short). The personalities of the four young boys were being developed. Stan and Kyle were younger versions of Parker and Stone, respectively, and they channelled some of their childhood debaucheries. Eric Cartman was the devil himself (outside of the fact that Satan is an actual character), and the worst child in television history (imagine Archie Bunker as a young boy that was spoiled rotten). Poor Kenny — based on a kid Parker and Stone knew that would just disappear for days at a time — would die in every single episode, with this generation’s “Don’t have a cow, man.” being printed on shirts and other merchandise (“Oh my God! They killed Kenny!” “You bastards!”). The show was foul-mouthed, sacrilegious, offensive in every way, and a major hit amongst young adults, teens, and even kids that knew the avenues to reach this show; many parents or older adults were furious with the show, but you know what they say about bad press being good press.
However, Parker and Stone were getting interested in the actual creation of South Park more than anything, and this included the development of characters and scenarios. Sure, the shock value meant something for a little while, but there was some real use that could be found here. While the first episode took three months to animate, each episode afterwards took a couple of weeks to make. When the show was big enough, a turn around time of one single week was possible. By then, the guys knew exactly what they could achieve in the briefest amount of time. However, one thing was holding them back before they could move onto greener pastures: their own feature film. Yes, while South Park was on the air, the dynamic duo were still working on other projects (mainly the film BASEketball), and they were under the impression that South Park wasn’t going to last long anyway. They had the opportunity to make a South Park movie, and they took it (because this was bound to be the biggest film they could make at that point). Already from this feature (titled South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) you can see the shift in direction that Parker and Stone were striving for. In case you couldn’t tell in an earlier episode where Barbara Streisand became a mecha-Godzilla that got destroyed by Robert Smith Mothra, the boys are Liza Minelli fans (and, in return, Broadway aficionados). Who would have thought, right? So the South Park movie could only be a musical with songs about uncle fuckers, substitutes for bad words, and even Satan himself gets his Disney princess ballad moment.
What we also got to see is actual story structure and some of the lessons that Parker and Stone took from university being put to good use here. While Bigger, Longer & Uncut didn’t mark the end of the series like the duo feared, but it could bookmark a new chapter for them. With their quick turnaround times and their aspirations to do something more, the golden years of South Park begun. Season four — while still offensive and immature — began the golden years of the series. What was more current than their shock-of-the-week? What was happening in the news. With their ability to make episodes in just a week (it’s quite incredible if you really think about it), Parker and Stone could now be lampooning current events, satirizing political scenarios, and comment on the freshest debates, more than any other animated series at the time; South Park was even one of the first major series to discuss (and, ultimately, roast) the Taliban after 9/11 (the kind of audacity only Parker and Stone could pull off). In recent years, Parker and Stone have gone on to declare their hatred for the first three seasons of South Park, and I think most fans can agree that the show only got better from there.
Parker was established as the main conceptualist of the show, being a part of the directing and writing process of nearly every episode. Stone was the head honcho behind the scenes as a producer. Together, the two knew how to do their formula but get better and better. The writing got wiser as well. Kenny wasn’t just dying every week arbitrarily. Most offensive content was serving a bigger purpose (outside of catching people off guard). Characters were starting to develop personalities outside of just easy tropes. The town was growing, with the new focus on characters like Leopold “Butters” Stotch and Jimmy Valmer. Some episodes just had the boys being boys. Some were more political. Either way, South Park felt much less absurdist and far more calculated, with much more hilarious payoffs. The disturbing side was still there, but it felt much easier to justify why one could be glued to the TV to watch hours of South Park back to back, especially with the curiosity of what current situation they would singe next. This golden age would go on for over ten years, and its duration depends on who you are asking. I honestly feel like a strong argument could be made that seasons four to even sixteen or seventeen were the height of the series. I can even see eighteen being defended, although I would disagree. Basically the series was a smash hit and the go-to location for social satire for countless audiences. As for the greatest episodes, there are many that can be considered; I’d have to go with a more “serious” (a term used lightly) episode called “You’re Getting Old”, which I found to be an oddly empathetic episode that really understood what I felt like being a teenager with depression and losing the spark in everything I once loved.
Of course, Parker and Stone were setting their sights anywhere and everywhere. Within the South Park universe, they were no longer making theatrical feature films after that first release back in the ‘90s. Instead, they indulged in multi part episodes that resonated highly (the “Imaginationland” trilogy is a major highlight of the series, and the various “Coon and Friends” parts are a major delight as well, particularly the revelation of each child and their alter egos as time went on). They had some early video games that are notoriously atrocious, but they saw the opportunity in releasing other long-form “episodes” in the form of games that they could oversee themselves (including The Stick of Truth and The Fractured but Whole). Otherwise, Parker and Stone continued their love of Broadway by making their own iconic musical The Book of Mormon (an extension of the ideas used in the season seven South Park episode “All About Mormons”); they created the production with Avenue Q mastermind Robert Lopez. The musical was a smash hit, and considered one of the greatest of our time. It was the greatest non-South Park release they had; a 2001 series That’s My Bush! didn’t go anywhere, and a deepfake series Sassy Justice is currently being worked on amidst the pandemic (although their puppet epic Team America: World Police continues to be a massively popular film to this day).
However, South Park itself began to shift as well for two major reasons. Parker and Stone were getting older. They weren’t identifying with the kids themselves anymore. Stan’s dad Randy Marsh would arguably become a bigger character than his son, and it was likely to match Parker’s current senses of humour. Parker and Stone could no longer do the kids’ voices on command and were well used to pitch shifting for well over ten years by now. Then, there was the change in the landscape of pop culture. Cancel culture began, and anyone could have their careers destroyed in a matter of seconds. The same two guys that were voicing races as stereotypically as they could (one of the few problematic parts of South Park that really hasn’t aged well) were now rewriting these pasts (Chinese immigrant Tuong Lu Kim was actually a Caucasian man with a multiple personality disorder). Elementary school principal Victoria was now replaced with a PC Principal (a spoof on the ludicrously of PC culture extremists). The same show that once tried to hurt the feelings of every single viewer was now being mindful not to be prematurely ended.
What would also transpire is the series’ worst season post the first three: a serialized experiment that would lead up to the result of the 2016 presidential election. Neither Parker nor Stone thought that Donald Trump would be elected, and so they created an entire season-long joke catered to a Hilary Clinton win. Well, the joke was on them, and they had less than twenty-four hours to cobble together an episode that stymied the buildup to a completely different joke. Mr. Garison (the show’s most detestable character morally) represented Trump, and now he would have to actually be the president for the remainder of the term. While the mission to hastily fix the episode was accomplished, I shall quote the great Sir Charles Barkley: “the surgery was a success, but the patient died”. The end result was evidence that not every idea that Parker and Stone come up with will be a success, and this gamble, unfortunately, didn’t pay off. It was in the middle of a clear drop in quality overall anyway, so that didn’t help. A few seasons afterwards, the series tried to come up with their own hashtag: “#CancelSouthPark”. This cry-for-finality didn’t work, and South Park has continued to be exactly what Fox (when initially interested) could predict: the next Simpsons (now in a series of ways, including its permanence on TV, and the lifeblood of an entire network).
Despite a clear lack of full focus from Parker and Stone now, I still think that the series is being used to help fuel their other endeavours. A deal with Paramount has resulted in the duo being able to purchase a nearly-extinct Casa Bonita (a real restaurant that South Park famously featured in one of the greatest episodes). Current seasons seem to help while Sassy Justice is being worked on. With only a handful of weeks a year of hard work, Parker and Stone can then work on virtually anything else afterwards. Sure, they may be stuck in some monotonous running jokes like Randy’s marijuana business (Tegridy Farms), but I honestly don’t think they care. In fact, they never did. They did whatever they wanted to do this entire time. The main difference is that we were on board before (some viewers still are), and they managed to somehow scratch an itch many of us didn’t know that we had. Besides, there seems to be a bit of beauty within the new Parker and Stone. The same series that once used homophobic words as insults (indicative of a different time) now has a gay couple done rather tastefully. The same troupe that had episodes about singing poop and a saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad panda mascot now was tackling honest depictions of mental health, clique hysteria, and existential separation. The guys were maturing (as much as they can), and it’s something fascinating to be a part of.
Otherwise, South Park has succeeded as some of the best zeitgeist moments in television; when we realized what happened to Scott Tenorman’s parents; when Kenny being on life support was Parker and Stone’s way of commenting on the hideous media obsession with Terri Schiavo that wouldn’t leave her alone in her final hours; when Blizzard helped make a Warcraft themed episode. While The Spirit of Christmas was a big viral hit back in its day, South Park would go on to make sensation after sensation for well over a decade. Even now, I would argue that South Park at its worst is doing much better than its peers at their lowest points; at least South Park still has occasional moments of hilarity and the intrigue of what they will make fun of next. Even at its most savage, South Park has shown its heart in its own deranged way (including a frightening yet highly sympathetic episode towards Britney Spears when everyone else was hounding her during her worst moments: a view that certainly still feels relevant now). South Park wasn’t what it once was in terms of quality but remained what Trey Parker and Matt Stone — two bored and off-kilter students — always envisioned: a tabula rasa of a town (you can see your town as South Park here) to see if everyone else in America (and possibly on Earth) identified with their sick senses of humour, their frustration with the mediocrity of civilization, and their interest in the unorthodox. They did.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.