I remember being only 11 or 12 when South Park first hit our screens. It was during my first year of secondary school. I remember seeing the Halloween episode; Pink Eye, where a Russian satellite crashing onto Kenny, and some Worcester sauce mixed into his embalming fluid, turning him into a zombie. You had Cartman dressed up as Hitler, and the Chewbacca costume that won the fancy dress costume. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen.
Being twelve I was very easily led by the fart humour, the swearing, and some of the adult themes that the show touched on. From that very moment, I was hooked!

I absolutely loved South Park, and for the last twenty years I have watched it. This week it celebrates being in our lives for twenty years! Two decades! That is a lot of brilliance that has been shown to us. The show itself has evolved and changed from the days of Mr Hanky the Christmas Poo, and Big Gay Al with his Big Gay Boat Ride. Now the show focuses on dealing with current issues that making fun of whatever is talked about in the news. I was amazed with the last few seasons at just how relevant the episodes were, and it turned out that the creators, writers, animators and artists complete an episode within 6 days. That is a very impressive feat, but I would imagine that it is a hell of a lot of work. Although the pay off is there. We have episodes of US President Donald Trump winning the elections (although it was Mr Garrison playing a parody of Trump), days after he actually won the election. It touches on vegans and internet trolls, Black Lives Matter, as well as how kids today only watch computer games being played on YouTube instead of playing them themselves.


If you speak to someone who hasn’t watched the show in years, then they will say that it is childish and nothing but fart humour, but the truth of the matter is that South Park is so much more. Sure it was that for the first four or five season, but being on the air for twenty years, South Park has worked well to keep up with the times. The last season, focusing on Member Berries, really shows just how far this program has come and how completely different it is.
I for one cannot watch any of the first… maybe seven seasons of South Park. If I see it on Comedy Central when I am flicking around the TV on the rare occasions that I am looking for something to watch, I will, 9 times out of 10, disregard it. Most likely because it is an old episode and not of the same humour it holds today.
Personally I feel as if the comedy of the show grew up along with me and my generation. When you are 12 years old, seeing Kenny getting killed and hearing the line “Oh my god, they killed Kenny. You bastard!” and watching someone shit themselves to death, is amusing, and, although I do find some of that stuff still funny, the comedy now focuses on real things that I find annoying with the world today, such as how politically correct every one is, or how everyone thinks that Caitlyn Jenner is a hero and brave.

That is not to say that there are not some great episodes in those early seasons. Looking through the list of episodes, I can see at least one that really stands out in my mind as being brilliant. Although I am sure that is because I have hazy memories of them, and rewatching them now would make me realise how some of it is now a little dated.
But a couple that stand out are: The Terrance and Philip special in season two. The Spooky Fish episode where Stan gets a fish from a pet shop built on an Indian burial ground, and it has “Spooky Vision” down the side with pictures of Barbara Streisand. Sexual Harassment Panda. Chinpokomon. Cripple Fight. Any episode featuring Towelie. Just to name a few and hopefully you too will remember these and have a chuckle to yourself.


The show itself spawned so many amazing one liners and sayings that people still use to this day without even realising it, as well as jokes that people try and pass off as their own (although being a huge fan, I can normally spot these a mile away).
Not only that, but it is now influencing children for the last twenty years, and kids today of a similar age to when I started watching the show, are still checking it out and talking about it at lunch times with their friends. So the show is just as strong as ever, even though the comedy itself has changed and become more adult, so who knows what it is doing to them, because I know that I would not be the same sort of person I am today, or at least have the same kind of sense of humour, without this show.

TV Shows, and cartoons especially, that say on the air for this long, usually become stale. Look at The Simpsons. Season 3 to 12, or so, are amazing. Seasons eight and nine especially. But after a while, mainly due to writers changing, the show became a bit crap. People tuning in to shows like Family Guy manipulated the creators to adapt their writing style to try and keep in line with what people wanted, and it was rubbish. When I am checking out what Simpson episode is on, I will not watch it if it is too new an episode, purely because they nowhere near as good a quality as the older ones (not too old though. I has to be the perfect balance).
South Park has even made fun of this in the past.
Other shows like Family Guy and American Dad have dipped in quality over the years that they have been on. Some seasons are nowhere near as good as others, and you find yourself tuning out for a while before catching an episode one day and suddenly getting back into it.
South Park has never been like this. It has always been consistently good throughout its twenty years on our screens and I think that is mainly down to the creators themselves; Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

Matt and Trey have written (and acted in) every single episode of the show. That is 277 episodes, plus a film, plus all the games, plus all the short episodes they did years before the show was picked up. Their sense of humour has evolved with the years, which is why the comedy style of South Park has changed from the fart humour of the days of yore. If it had been “written by a committee” like the Simpsons, then the show would try and keep the same jokes that they had tried to do, or adapted to what the key demographic is watching, and try to be more like them.
South Park is Matt and Trey’s child. It is what really put them on the map! Although some of their other stuff; like the Book of Mormon, and Basketball, are brilliant. South Park is what really got them known and became a household name.

The new season of the show will begin on the 13th of September 2017 and you can be sure that I will be checking it out as soon as possible.


Since we mainly talk about Game of Thrones and computer games here, it is of course mentioning South Park; The Stick of Truth – the computer game on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. I personally thought that this game was brilliant. We might all remember the South Park game on the N64 and Playstation way back in the day, but that was just a generic FPS with no real plot or structure. It was running around shooting aliens and evil turkeys with Terrance and Philip fart grenades, and Anal Probes, where as The Stick of Truth played as if you were watching an episode of the show. It was written by Trey and Matt, and had things brought back from nearly every season of the show, but done in such a perfect way that it suited the game brilliantly. If you have never played it, then I really recommend it, especially as the sequel; The Fractured But Whole, is coming out in October and has expanded on the actual gameplay and the mechanics of the game. And given how I loved the last one, I will 100% be picking this one up as well.

So South Park marks its twentieth anniversary and we hope that it keeps on going in the exact same fashion as it has done for another twenty. Matt and Trey, keep doing what you are doing and evolving the comedy the same way you have done over the last two decades. Thank you, but for now, screw you guys, I’m going home.

Please follow and like us: