I recently started rewatching The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show for the first time in nearly three decades, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I would much rather be watching that show than suffering through Shit Park.

I know that it is unfair to compare a short-lived Ren & Stimpy wannabe to this long-running ‘adult’ cartoon, but Shnookums & Meat has some fundamentals nailed down that Shit Park does not: mildly charming characters whom I don’t despise, explorations of different settings, a good (and ’90s-ass) cast, relatively good visuals, a scarcity of obnoxious ‘adult’ jokes, and it is a show that never pretended to be smarter or more insightful than it truly was. It is seldom funny, but at least the stories don’t bore the ever living fuck out of me. Unlike this…

Sexual Healing: We start off with a violent confrontation between Tiger Woods and his wife. It is actually somewhat interesting, because it is abnormal for the showrunners to depict domestic violence accurately. Sadly, the punchline is that this was all in an EA Sports game. I could see somebody else getting a chuckle out of this, but all that I could feel was disappointment.

Okay, I can tell what this story’s premise is. It will be about the misdiagnosis of generic sexual thoughts as hypersexuality, like seeing an attractive stranger and craving sex with her. I would not call that a disease, but it does sound like a poor excuse to attempt to start a relationship with somebody.

I feel like I got close to sleeping as I sat through this dreck. Whether it’s repeatedly joking about domestic violence, pretending that a ‘wizard alien’ is causing sex addiction at Independence Hall, or making fun of horny men, this is an episode that tries so hard and yet achieves so little. I smiled slightly at the chimpanzee experiment, but that is it.

The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs: Based on that title alone, you can make an accurate guess about my expectations here.

Mr. Garrison tasks his students with reading The Catcher in the Rye, which they are first unexcited to read, but after telling them about its controversial content and history, they become excited. Guess what the punchline is. If you answered, ‘They read the book but finished it unimpressed,’ give yourself a thumbs up.

Nonetheless, it did inspire the boys to write their own book, and there is a montage where we see them laughing repeatedly over it, but I think that we can all guess what the payoff shall be.

Well, maybe not. Sharon Marsh reads it and it nauseates her to the point of regurgitation, but confusingly she also calls it a good book, then she shares it with her husband, who gets the same reaction. Then the other parents read it and have the same reaction. The boys blame Butters, mistaking the parents’ disgust for disapproval, but the boys realize that they actually like it and the parents don’t believe them when they take credit for the book. It becomes an international bestseller despite making everybody vomit. I hope that you think that puke is funny, because this story has too much of it.

The boys get into an argument with Butters at school and I am already exhausted. In a situation like that, I would have simply given up rather than repeatedly try to unmake my mistake.

The most interesting point in the story is when the boys try to call for a ban on their own book, and the judges argue that the book is filled with cutting edge social commentary rather than meaningless gross-out humour. It is a scene that implicitly invites its audience to join the dispute over whether or not an author’s intent is more important than the audience’s inferences.

Butters writes a second book that is less edgy but similarly disgusting, and his readership likes it… until one of the readers massacres the Kardashians, then institutions start banning all five of the boys’ books and everything is back to normal.

Here’s the thing: this could have been an interesting episode if it had something more meaningful to contribute to the authorial intentions debate, but the lesson that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar feels incidental to everything else. Approximately 90% of the humor consists of bland gross-out jokes along with several ‘surprising’ twists, like readers enjoying and wildly misinterpreting lousy books. Given the utterly baffling popularity of rubbish like Bloodlands and Twilight, that could have been a set-up for some good jokes, but the writers piss it away with their uncreativity.

In short: this episode is a waste of everything. Aside from a few good ideas, there is no compelling reason to watch it.

Medicinal Fried Chicken: This episode is awful. At first Randy Marsh tried to give hisself cancer solely so that he could apply for medicinal marijuana, which was actually kind of funny, but then his half of the story soon devolved into cringeworthy testicle jokes. This wouldn’t make me any happier if I were actually suffering from cancer.

The story’s other half is a less cringeworthy but still boring subplot that parodies crime dramas: Cartman gets involved in vending KFC on the black market. I could understand somebody else getting a few chuckles out of this, but most of the humour relies solely on the concept of ‘criminals selling KFC on the black market’ being inherently funny; if you know anything about crime dramas then this is too predictable. (And I can’t help but comment, for the umpteenth time, that somebody could have fit this in a kid’s show with only minimal editing.)

The funniest thing about this episode is the likelihood that opponents of marijuana legalization could have easily misinterpreted it as being on their side, since the lesson is apparently that people will intentionally endanger their lives so that they can apply for medicinal marijuana. Anyway, don’t waste your time with this episode.

You Have 0 Friends: ‘Oh, and I sent you a funny picture and you didn’t respond to it.’ Is this your first day on the Internet, Randy?

This episode is very boring. One subplot is Kyle struggling to become popular after pitifully befriending an unpopular kid. The other subplot is Stan trying to disconnect from Fedbook after so many others have been pressuring him to use it. His subplot then devolves into an uninteresting Tron parody.

The messages are agreeable to the point of being facile: long-distance friends (if you can call them friends) should not be treated as currency, and no-one should be pressured into joining a social network. It also felt like there was another message about Fedbook being horrible, which I could agree with without hesitation but I suspect that that was unintentional. So while I actually agree with a lot of what this story has to say, it is still pretty boring.

The only part that interested me was the brief moment when we see on Stan’s profile that he was born on October 19, 2001. How the fuck is that even possible? The season two episode ‘Prehistoric Ice Man’ confirms that Stan and his friends were alive in the 1990s. Did Stan lie about being young? Why would anybody lie about that?

200: Ohhhhhh fuck… a two-parter. Sigh.

Oh Judas Priest, another joke about Tom Cruise’s rumoured homosexuality. Uuuuuugh. To make matters worse, they’re beating this joke into the ground.

‘If Muhammad appears in South Park, we get bombed!’ Oh yeah, I can see the U.S. military bombing you for having a single Muslim in your midst. LEL

The first part is mostly uninteresting. Celebrities want Prophet Muhammad’s sacred status so that no-one will dare make fun of them, but nobody wants to reveal him. Much of this part centres on the writers’ ignorant view of how Islamic rules work: although most Muslims discourage trying to depict him, it has more to do with the prohibition on icons and less to do with the notion that Muhammad must be so sacred that even trying to depict him is shocking. Sure, the depicter could get a few careless death threats, but most of the reactions are going to be a pie chart of generic hate mail, stern letters, and plenty of people facepalming and avoiding your cartoon (and they wouldn’t be missing out on much).

Anyway, the first part ends on a cliffhanger: who is Eric Cartman’s real father? Will they unsuit Muhammad? What is Mecha-Streisand going to do to South Park? And above all, who the fuck cares? For me, the cringiest part was when one of the celebrities said, ‘Release the Kraken!’ Except he combined the word ‘Kraken’ with a certain racial slur in reference to Barbra Streisand’s Jewish heritage. (The script that I could access suggests that that was a simple mispronounciation, which I find highly unlikely.)

201: Ha, ha, Cartman gave his hand blackface and Mephisto is too boneheaded to tell. Judas Priest, what a lazy script.

I was so fucking bored watching this. Cartman meeting Scott Tenorman again and learning who their father is, the struggle to save a censor bar (Muhammad), puns involving ‘Seaman’ — I understand that this was supposed to be epic, in part given the huge number of cameos, but I was bored out of my skull.

Ironically, the only parts that I enjoyed were the scenes of Mecha-Streisand wrecking South Park. She is presumably supposed to be the most loathsome character in the show, but she accidentally ends up being the coolest character because seeing her destroy a worthless town and terrorize its annoying residents is as exciting as this series ever gets. The same could be said about her début appearance, which maybe I’ll review some day (I dread the thought of rewatching seasons 1–2), but basically if you only ever see her scenes, you don’t need to watch anything else from this show. She’s great—even if only for the wrong reasons.

Crippled Summer: Holy fuck, what a boring episode. The main plot is a parody of some documentary about somebody’s drug addiction, only here the focus is on Towelie, and it is boring as all hell. The subplot is not much better: it’s a rip-off of some old cartoons wherein the antagonist repeatedly suffered as a consequence of his incompetent sidekick. It is painfully predictable and trying to make it ‘edgy’ does not work.

The gag that they repeated most was a message appearing on a black screen to explain to us what just happened. They repeat this gag more than twenty fucking times and it only makes this script even more predictable. Don’t watch this mindnumbingly dull episode.

Poor and Stupid: I had a dream where I was in an Axis concentration camp and was, for a while, the sole prisoner. When I went into the factory, the officials in there laughed at me. Later, other prisoners (including a Rom) arrived at the camp, and one of the officials measured our skulls to determine our race. She also made fun of my chin. The weirdest part was seeing a conveyor belt with prisoners trapped on them, and a flamethrower sterilized each prisoner by blasting her groin with fire. I was disturbed watching it.

What I just wrote was umpteen times less uninteresting and even less unfunny than this episode. That is how awful that it is. When I say that the most intriguing part was seeing Kyle inexplicably caring that Cartman was upset, I am not exaggerating.

It’s a Jersey Thing: Uuuuuuuugh, another parody.

Aside from being short-tempered, I don’t see any good reason to care about these stereotypical, party-going Jerseyites, so when I am this uninvested in the subject matter I am bound to become bored. I mean, who can honestly say that they still care about party-going Jerseyites in the year 2025? That would be as pathetic as still being angry that furries exist. What is the point.

Insheeption: A story about sheep? Maybe I won’t be bored to death.

Oh, I get it: because counting sheep is something that some do to sleep. See, this story is about dream therapy and finding the cause of compulsive hoarding. After Mackey resolves his trauma, Stan decides that he does not want therapy anymore and then he throws away the crap in his locker.

Umm… yeah, not a great episode. They tried to make it epic by continually adding characters to the dream, but it only makes the story feel more tedious. Oh, and there is a guy who tries to mimic an intense song with his mouth, which is the running joke that they beat into the ground. Anyway, you aren’t missing out on much by skipping this episode. It isn’t the worst, but that is the nicest thing that I can say about it. (On a side note, it’s getting late in the season and picking a best is going to be tough.)

Coon 2: Hindsight: Ugh, another three-parter.

Oh, ha, ha, the pretend superheroes are having an argument over their organization’s name. Piss in my skull.

Someone called Captain Hindsight appears and he helps by… giving the firefighters architectural advice. This is another unfunny joke that goes on for too long. C. Hindsight, the firefighters, and nearly everybody else at the scene leaves despite the ongoing disaster, while the little superheroes stand there and do nothing. What an anticlimax.

C. Hindsight reappears for an oil spill and he responds predictably: giving advice that is no longer useful. You used this joke already, guys. The first time it was dull, the twoth time it’s just obnoxious.

The head of BP apologizes repeatedly (yes, I get it) and then changes the company’s name from BP (Beyond Petroleum) to DP (Dependable Petroleum). As if the sexual innuendo were too subtle, they show a graphic of the earth with two giant drills in it and he says ‘DP: We no longer fuck the earth. We DP it.’ Even I could still write sexual innuendo that is more charming and less unfunny than this.

While the superheroes were having a boring conversation on how to undo C. Hindsight, I looked up the Human Kite to see if he was supposed to be Kyle. Sure enough, he was. I bet that you can’t guess why.

This is a monstrously boring episode. The most annoying joke was when the head of DP repeatedly told the camera ‘We’re sorry’ in a variety of mundane scenes. They tell this joke three times—yes, they repeat a joke that was itself based on repetition. It is mindboggling.

Mysterion Rises: They recap what happened in the previous story by using a comic book. Credit where it is due, it is actually a neat way to help first-time viewers without simply slapping together a rapid montage, which is what most shows do, but the writers could not resist showing us the head of DP repeatedly saying ‘sorry’. Why they were so proud of that particular joke I have no clue.

Similarly, they resummarize C. Hindsight’s origin, but this time they explain it in more detail, making it more meaningful for somebody who watched the previous episode.

This episode, much like the last one, is really fucking boring. There are several painfully slow scenes where Cartman befriends Cthulhu, including a montage that is a parody of a children’s film. It’s supposed to be funny because they’re using a children’s song to express dark themes, but it feels so typical and unoriginal.

Coon vs. Coon & Friends: Now I know what substitute I can use when I run out of hydroxyzine.

Crème Fraiche: Ha, ha, Randy has a food fetish. There is also another obnoxious joke about something called a Shake Weight, which is an obvious dick joke and goes on for too long. (Hur hur hur hur ‘too long’, get it? Comedy dynamite!)

Judas Priest, what a painfully uninteresting story. If you think that obvious sexual innuendo is the apex of comedy then I can see why you would enjoy this, but if you don’t then you deserve something better than this dull thud of a season finale. What a waste of time.

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This is a valid contender for the most boring season that I have watched so far, which is impressive considering how fierce the competition is. The problems are the usual suspects: jokes that go on for too long, jokes that repeat too much, unoriginality, unsubtlety, characters that are dull as all fuck, subjects that you don’t care about because you have more important things on your mind — it is disastrous. How can any well educated adult watch this and never feel bored? How?

My pick for worst has to be ‘Poor and Stupid’, because all that it does is constantly tell us that NASCAR fans are lower-class and unintelligent. It is not one of the vilest episodes that I have seen; it’s just an extremely boring story for how monomaniacal and petty it is. As for the ‘best’, I am going with ‘201’ only because I enjoyed seeing Mecha-Streisand tear up South Park again, but the rest of the episode is worthless, so you definitely don’t need to rush to watch it.

Fuck South Park.