I am starting to think that I haven’t been harsh enough on this series. The main reason for that is that I am mostly chill in real life, but the more that I subject myself to this cartoon, the more that I despise it. Between the lazy gross-out humor, harmful stereotyping, useless messaging, and worst of all, the undeserved popularity, it boggles my mind that nobody (to my knowledge) has tried to tear this program a new one. It does occasionally show signs of promise, but I shouldn’t hold back for that reason alone.

Let’s cut the crap and take this season apart.

Jared Has Aides: Probably the most glaringly obvious issue with this series (apart from the mostly bland art style) is how aged so many of these themes feel. I am not referring merely to the pop-culture references and the discriminatory humour, but also the subject matters. This story is a great example: Jared Fogle, Subway’s answer to Ronald McDonald, has long since fallen out of the mainstream, and for something much more serious than misleading everybody about how he lost weight.

That is not to say that the message is worthless: the writers could have made this about a fictional celebrity who misrepresents an equally nonexistent restaurant and the core message would have remained agreeable: don’t mislead innocent people. But anybody who remembers Jared is going to be riffing on this episode for all of the wrong reasons.

As you might have guessed from its title, there is a running joke in the story where everybody misinterprets what Jared means by ‘aides’, a homophone for a sexually transmitted diseases. Not only do the writers run this already boring joke into the ground, but it is a problem that could have been easily solved at any point in the story. The script writers postpone the obvious solution either because they’re uncreative or they’re desperate to see how many laughs they can get out of the joke. It’s a good example of South Park’s lazy writing (but not my favorite example, which is another topic for another day).

Asspen: Have you ever been in a situation where somebody told you a joke that you understood, but you didn’t show any reaction, so they explained the joke to you under the false assumption that you did not get it? That was how I felt watching this episode.

I’ve seen An Extremely Goofy Movie and who knows how many other films or episodes where the protagonist has to beat his snooty rivals in a competition (usually sports-related). I could quickly tell that this episode was going to parody the tropes in those stories, and it was as boring as it was predictable. At one point somebody even explicitly mentions Rocky, as if the showrunners had so little faith in their audience that they needed to point out the obvious. The closest that I got to laughing was when the marketers held their guests at gunpoint in their meeting, and that’s it.

There is one joke where somebody distracts Stan’s rival by flashing him. See, if she were flashing another woman, that would have amused me, but it’s just generic when a woman does it for a bloke. Worse: they had to ‘enhance’ the joke by revealing that she was really just showing him the abdominal mutant from Total Recall. Trying too hard.

Freak Strike: This episode reminded me of The Venture Bros. episode ‘Venture Libre’, which was better than this in every way imaginable. Watch that instead. Hell, watch the entirety of The Venture Bros. instead of South Park. Even at its worst moments, The Venture Bros. is still more tolerable than any of this puke.

Fun with Veal: I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the most tedious episode in the series that I have seen so far. The boys spend literally hundreds of hours in Stan’s room preventing calves from becoming slaughtered and the story just drags on and on and on. The writers try to keep it interesting with instances of bargaining and Stan developing a disease, but I’m more interested in the fact that I somehow stayed awake during this slog. The story ends with a misogynistic joke and an unimpressive moral about how eating veal is wrong but eating the meat of adult animals is necessary to prevent yourselves from turning into weaklings. This is an awful, awful television programme.

The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer: This is mostly about a celebrity who goes around the world beating up people. It’s less exciting than it sounds. It almost got interesting when said celebrity assaulted his editor, since at that point it was getting a little more ambitious, but it quickly reverted to generic crap.

The other half of this story is about the boys struggling to find an accessible television set so that they can watch a film trailer. The only time that I laughed at this episode was when Ike was watching the news, which showed a photograph of a Herzlian flag on fire, and he nonchalantly commented ‘it’s a birdy fly’ (presumably meaning ‘it’s a burning flag’).

Professor Chaos: The part where the boys ‘fired’ Butters saddened me, mostly because it reminded me of a few difficult moments in my own life, but I was finding Butters to be marginally more interesting than Kenny, too. Butters then vows to become a troublemaker, but it’s already obvious, even if you’ve never seen this show before, that he is only going to disappoint the audience by causing trouble in the dullest ways imaginable.

The unintended irony is that this is a story where Comedy Central’s looser standards would have helped the script, because Butters acting edgy or shocking would have at least been more surprising to witness. As it stands, this is another episode that would have fit in a kid’s show with only a few minor adjustments. (Fun fact: I wrote these two paragraphs only five minutes into the episode, then I watched it to the very end. It turned out that I didn’t have to edit a thing!)

The Simpsons Already Did It: Holy shit, this is a season 6 episode? It feels like something that they would have published later in the series. The writers were either coping with their personal frustrations or, more likely, they were responding to somebody who criticised this series for its unoriginality. South Park’s unoriginality would be the least of its problems if the show were both funny and well intentioned, but most of the time it is neither.

The rest of the story is a tedious subplot about miniature sea creatures, and confusion between the homophones ‘seamen’ and ‘semen’. Wait a minute, did I just say homophones? What are those, telephones for gay sex hotlines? Bada bing! Comedy dynamite! Ugh. The most interesting moment was when the sea creatures went to war with one another, but the twist ends with mutually assured destruction, then the story ends as well.

Red Hot Catholic Love: To my disappointment, this story is not at all about a naughty Catholic seducing Jews. (We have Intricate Interfaith Networks in the Middle Ages for that.) Instead, it’s about—dramatic pause—child molestation, because when I think of minds that could tackle the serious subject of clergy abusing kids, oh yeah, I fucking think of Trey Parker and Matt Stone!

The boys’ unfamiliarity with child molestation leads to a subplot about Cartman literally shoving food up his other end and puking out his Scheiße, which then leads to the grown-ups doing the same thing. I could tell that the writers were really proud of this joke, because they repeat it ’way too fucking much and it’s eyeroll-inducing to watch.

The main plot is a surprisingly boring adventure about South Park’s priest trying to modify Catholic law, and basically telling the audience that the Catholic Church does not need to be so conservative and fewer people would be abandoning organised religion if only they did something about the child abuse (no kidding). The subplot has a few potshots at atheist activists, like how they want to make the Pledge of Allegiance optional and remove ‘under God’ from their dosh. Stupid atheists, not wanting to take part in something that they don’t believe in. Can’t they just take the easy way out and lie about how they feel instead? Now there’s a thought!

This episode blows.

Free Hat: ‘Coming this summer, it’s the motion picture that changed America. Saving Private Ryan, the RE-RE-RELEASE, where the word “Nazi” has been changed to “PERSONS WITH POLITICAL DIFFERENCES”’ Okay, this joke was actually pretty fucking funny. Bravo.

I can’t believe that I am finally saying this, but I actually enjoyed this episode. The main reason is that this is actually funny: somebody accidentally giving George Lucas and Steven Spielberg the idea to ‘update’ Raiders of the Lost Ark, the parody of said film’s climax, and the joke at the very end of the story were all pretty funny. There were several other times when I smiled, too.

The next reason is the adventure: the boys travel to Skywalker Ranch to steal an unmodified print, then they end up in a desert, and in between all of this, there is a little self-parody involving a fake trailer for a nonexistent update of South Park’s pilot, including an interview with Parker and Stone about this fictional update. It does feel slightly forced in, but it adds to the fun. All of this is helped by the fact that I love Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The last reason is that it has an agreeable message: it’s one thing to update your classics, but when you rarefy the unmodified publications and act ashamed of them when you have no good reason to be, mockery really is the minimum that you deserve. Unfortunately, we can tell that this episode was ineffective on both Lucas and Spielberg.

Now, there are some negatives: some of the jokes are boring, like the entire subplot about the infanticidal criminal named Hat, and the writers repeat the joke about the walkie-talkies too much. There were a few other flops, but those were the ones that really stuck out for me. Lastly, as agreeable as the message is, it is also a bit of an obvious one (obvious except to Lucas and Spielberg, of course), so I can’t give the showrunners too much credit for sending out a message that most of us were already thinking anyway.

With all of that said, this is the best episode of season 6 and the only one that I would confidently recommend. I can’t say that this is the funnest South Park episode that I’ve ever seen (an award which I still give to The Red Badge of Gayness), and the script suffers from the same blemishes characteristic of most other South Park scripts, like the overly and needlessly hateful characters, but by South Park’s standards this is a really good episode.

Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society: It’s hard to believe that a man (a Republican one, no less) wrote this story, because this is one of few ‘feminist’ episodes in the series. The core message is agreeable: you should not treat others differently simply because you find them attractive. It is a message that sadly remains relevant today. Unfortunately, they had to spoil it at the end by making fun of Wendy Testaburger for getting implants.

It was mildly amusing to see the boys go full monkey brain because of somebody’s breasts, and making Bebe’s breasts sentient was almost funny, but otherwise I was unamused. In fact, the episode feels depressing when you dwell on its subject matter, and it is made worse by Wendy acting meaner than usual. I almost want to approve of it for its messaging, but it’s hard to because they had to ruin it at the end for a cheap laugh. Such a waste.

Child Abduction is Not Funny: ‘And in other news, another school shooting has taken place, this time in Idaho. As these kinds of shooting increase, one thing becomes clear: Your children are not safe at school.’ Sadly, this is one of the few lines that aged very well.

‘Wait, that’s it. A wall. We could build a huge city wall all around South Park so that we have complete control over who comes in.’ Oh for fuck’s sake, they did it again!

There’s a tedious subplot, apparently ripped off from old Warners Bros. cartoons, involving a Chinese bloke constantly attempting to prevent Mongolian raiders from bypassing his wall. He keeps replacing his l’s with r’s, a confusion that is normal for native Japanese speakers but very atypical for Chinese ones. I’ve read that some Chinese speakers do substitute the alveolar fricative (‘s’) with the palatoalveolar sibilant (‘sh’), but it isn’t that funny, especially after hearing it for the umpteenth time. Yes, we get it: he’s unintentionally calling his own products shitty. Change the fucking record already.

I know that the writers will brush aside the obvious racism as light-hearted teasing. Viewers in East Asia with little to no experience with white supremacy would presumably be inclined to agree (I’ve never seen them express their own opinions), but for East Asians living under Eurocentric societies and who have had to deal with bullying before, it’s just annoying to see theirselves reduced to caricatures like this. Speaking as a white viewer, witnessing caricatures like these does nothing to entertain me. It’s just shameful, uncreative, and unfunny.

As for the messaging, I do agree that Yankee parents tend to be overly worried about strangers abusing their children. For me, though, this is a message that is too little, too late, and the delivery is awful. Not impressed.

A Ladder to Heaven: The boys want a ticket from their deceased friend Kenny so that they can get some free candy. They attempt to construct a ladder to the sky, and the grown-ups all think that the boys are well meaning. It’s another joke that goes on ’way too fucking long. Yes, I get it: the grown-ups are naïve about the boys’ intentions! Enough already!

When I was little, I saw an episode on the animated Winnie the Pooh cartoon with a somewhat similar premise: one of the characters managed to climb up into the sky and walk on the clouds. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but I do remember it being interesting. I am somewhat tempted to rewatch it, because it would be funny if that episode were still more interesting than this one.

It was mildly interesting seeing fragments of Kenny’s life from his perspective, but that is pretty much the best that I can say for this story. The moral here is ‘The only heaven we can hope for is one here on earth, now. We should stop waiting to get into heaven and start trying to… create it.’ This only contradicts decades of antisocialist propaganda about how utopianism is evil (unless it’s cleansing the world of socialism, of course). What a worthless episode.

The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers: For once, I am actually optimistic about an episode: it looks like the boys are about to embark on a wonderful adventure. Let me see how it unfolds…

Eh, it was all right. It was less ambitious than I was expecting, but it did involve travelling between towns, escaping licentious sixth-graders, a pornographic video tape that is mysterious to the main characters but exhibits severe effects on the few who watch it, and there is something almost charming about the boys’ naïveté as they’re playing pretend.

I’ve never been big on The Lord of the Rings (which this story constantly parodies), and the only times when I was amused were when the sixth-graders exclaimed their pursuit of the pornographic tape, and the tape’s effects on Butters almost amused me, but the rest of the jokes were meh. I do appreciate the attempt at making a good adventure, though, so I wasn’t too bored watching it. Overall, an okay episode. (I know that that sounds like faint praise, but compared to the rest of the dreck in this series…)

The Death Camp of Tolerance: Another episode where the title has me pessimistic.

Mr. Garrison tries to get fired for being gay so that he can sue the school, so he introduces a gay BDSM fetishist called ‘Mr. Slave’, who consents to Garrison’s sexual antics in class. The boys frame the problem as the teacher being ‘super gay’.

The problem is not that one of the characters is intensely attracted to his own sex. The problem is that he is sexualizing an environment that so clearly does not need to be sexualised. It would be just as wrong if a heterosexual did it. Look, I’ll be honest with you: I do get annoyed with shameless hypersexuality, but I don’t see it as a ‘gay’ thing. If anything, cishet men are probably the worst offenders.

There’s a tedious subplot about a rodent adventuring throughout Mr. Slave’s body (LOLRANDOM), Mr. Garrison still trying to get fired, a potshot at left-wing identity politicians about how they’re intolerant of smokers (take that, leftists!), and an equivalence made between Axis officials and left-wing identity politicians, which is so fuckheaded that it barely merits comment, but I’ll say this: I suspect that few survivors of the Axis’s oppression, if any, would be happy seeing this fatuous parody of an Axis concentration camp.

This may be the most obnoxious episode of the season (with the finale being a good contender), and I was unimpressed by its condescending and obvious moral. This show fucking stinks.

The Biggest Douche in the Universe: Did a celebrity murder Trey Parker’s parents when he was little or something? And what happens when celebrities stroll into his town? Do the residents immediately lynch them and shove the limousine into an incinerator?

Anyway, this story is one about a con artist. It is actually somewhat interesting how Stan explains cold reading to the audience and how self-identified psychics use this technique to manipulate others—who would have thought that being a fraudster would be so much work? My interest died down after that, though. There’s a subplot about exorcising Kenny from Cartman’s body, but it’s boring and they made very little progress with it. I can’t say that I was moved by the Rob Schneider parodies either, even though I have no strong feelings about him one way or the other… oh wait a minute, what’s this?

My Future Self n’ Me: Terrible.

Red Sleigh Down: I was absolutely miserable watching this one… so afterwards, I watched one of my favourite videos and it inverted my mood almost instantly. Check this out: a counterscammer set up a fake bitcoin website that scammers visited naïvely thinking that their bitcoin was only seconds away. It came with an A.I. tech support agent who gave the most bombastic, baffling responses imaginable, and some scammers fell for it anyway! Here’s a link. It’s a laughfest! I actually laughed harder at the first dozen minutes of that video than I did throughout the entirety of this season.

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I’m not going to spend too much time rambling down here, but it still baffles me that this show was so widely acclaimed to the point where it had to get dozens of seasons. Thank you to anybody who read this far. I have a feeling that you are starting to get a little bit bored reading these, though… but not as bored as you’d be watching Shit Park! BOOOOOOOM!