As a kid, I saw the first season and half of the second at a friend's house around 2003 or so. After that, I saw a handful of episodes, which I estimate to be from Season 4-5 and that's it. So this will be familiar, but mostly new territory for me. I've never undertaken a show marathoning of this much content, nor in this short of time. The last marathon I did similar is size was watching Scrubs from season 1 to season 8, and that even took me several months of watching. So I don't know if I'll make it by September24th, but I'll try.
So as of this writing I've finished season one and am just about to finish season two, so I'll do my write-up of season one and in the next day or so do my write-up of season 2.
So the basic premise of South Park, in case you don't know, is that we're following the lives of four 8 year old boys and their lives in the small, weird-ass town South Park, Colorado. Our boys are best friends and average 8 year olds Kyle and Stan, and then their poor redneck friend Kenny and their spoiled, overweight, conniving friend Cartman. Cartman usually has a scheme that gets them into trouble, and Kenny is always wearing a parka that muffles everything he says, leading to in-jokes where the audience can only imagine what Kenny is saying but in-universe characters understand exactly what he's saying.
The real conceit of the show is that the age of characters doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, Parker and Stone use the show as a platform to get across ideas in popular culture in a way that no one else would convey them in. The perfect example of course is the classic season one episode, Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride, an episode where Stan gets a new dog and discovers the dog is gay. Throughout the episode, Stan and all the neighborhood kids ostracize Sparky the gay dog throughout the episode until Sparky runs away to the gayest character in the show Big Gay Al's gay animal sanctuary. When Stan realizes his dog has run away, he discovers the sanctuary and Big Gay Al gives Stan a lesson on homosexual understanding and equality. At the end of the episode, Stan comes to understand that Sparky is just like any other dog, except he likes males instead of females.
In a 20 minute episode of a crudely made cartoon, Parker and Stone at once made an incredibly rude but incredibly simple and eloquent point about how being gay doesn't make someone any different than anyone else except for what gender they're interested in. And that's the heart of the show and what has kept it going this long. With an animation style that is slightly better than an 8 year old's drawings, Parker and Stone largely make content that is both unafraid to tackle any subject as well as effortlessly simplify down real world problems and break them down to how they could effect a young kid, or how it might look to a young kid. Another perfect example is the episode Death, in which Stan's grandfather turn's 102 and he spends the episode following Stan around in a wheelchair demanding that Stan kill him. The whole plotline revolves around the topic of assisted suicide and when and if it is ever okay, told through the eyes of 8 year old boys.
These season one episodes are pretty much all classics. I was surprised with how well I knew the majority of the episodes, considering I had seen them only once about 11 years ago. An incredibly enjoyable 13 episodes, where I got to reaquaint myself with the community of South Park and all the quirks and odds and ends to it. I can't wait to see what happens in the 14-ish seasons I haven't seen.
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