Season Five of South Park really picked up where I thought season four lacked. It was not only shorter, which made the season feel stronger overall, but it also had more cohesive writing and interesting new character developments that brings some new life into the shows fifth season.
This season is full of winner episodes and really is a must-watch overall. Episodes that had an interesting take on a cultural message this time were in full force. This time, they include the first episode It Hits The Fan, as well as Cripple Fight, Cartmanland, Proper Condom Use and Here Comes The Neighborhood. All of these were stand-out hits for me this season, with It Hits The Fan making fun of the overreaction of NYPD Blue saying "shit" on network TV, Cripple Fight taking on the Boy Scouts banning homosexuals from being in the Scouts, Cartmanland about dreams vs. reality when it comes to getting the thing you want most, Proper Condom Use about the various inappropriate methods in which sexual education is taught in schools and Here Comes The Neighborhood, where Token feels ostracized from his friends because he's richer than everyone else in town, but realizes he doesn't fit in with actual rich kids he convinces to move to town when he's ostracized by them too.
Each of those episodes swiftly and expertly get their message across while being funny in their own right. The episode Osama Bin Laden has Farty Pants is a special one because it intentional skews the line with an outrageous sub-plot but also a message driven main plot. Of course, this was the first episode made after September 11th, 2001. The main plot of the episode is that South Park elementary forces the boys to donate a dollar each for supporting kids in Afghanistan, and an Afghani equivelant of the gang send a goat back in return. The boys get caught in the middle as they try and send the goat back and end up in Afghanistan themselves. The sub-plot being a parody of a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Cartman and Bin Laden. The boys learn a new world perspective from the Afgani kids and Parker and Stone give America exactly what they wanted and has Cartman as Bugs Bunny beating down Bin Laden as Elmer Fudd. Many people list this episode as their favorite, and it's understandable why. South Park was pretty much the only show of it's kind where they could tell a cartoon-y story making fun of Osama Bin Laden, and in a time where America needed something to laugh about in a time of immense tragedy, they really pulled through with not only a message about tolerating and accepting other cultures and accepting that our Pro-America world view might not be shared by people outside America, as well as a fist-pumping, patriotic nod to the country as Cartman takes down Bin Laden. It's definitely a highlight of the season for me.
The other two highlights of the season for me is Scott Tenorman must die, where Cartman's Hannibal-based plan to exact revenge on a 9th grader takes Cartman to a darker, more diabolical place that they make note of in future episodes. It also signifies a shift in how Parker and Stone make the episodes, where now the majority of episodes from this season onward try to focus on just one plot and not an overarching plot and several minor plots. This allowed them to get more creative with the stories they were telling instead of focusing on a whole revolving cast of characters they need to include. My absolute favorite episode however, which I didn't realize was special when I saw it as a kid, was the episode Kenny Dies, where Kenny gets a muscular disease and dies a slow, agonizing death that's played for real.
Parker and Stone pulled another trick like they did at the end of the Season One, where they set up the question of who Cartman's dad was and then went on season hiatus, then came back for a Terrance and Phillip only episode before coming back later revealing the conclusion of the story. At the end of Kenny Dies, Kenny obviously dies. But it was the second to last episode of the season, and the last episode was a Butters only episode (which was also a highlight for me in how dark it was) so viewers had to wait until season six to know whether or not Kenny was really dead.
Overall, this season was exceptionally good, and brought us both Jimmie (a personal favorite) and Towelie. The episode I think I liked the least was How To Eat with Your Butt, a whole episode based around a single joke, that there were people in the world born with a butt over their face. Not a terrible episode, but it was pretty much the entire joke of the episode, in a season full of great jokes, that one just felt middling to me. In the end, Season five was totally worth it and a nice pick-up from the dip that season four was for me.
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