It's also worth noting that South Park is our third series that is still on the air that we've profiled (links to all previous write-ups are below), so theoretically this show could still move around the next time I revisit the list, though, unlike Game of Thrones (which has probably overtaken The Office quite frankly after a stellar season), I'm not confident that it will. After 250 episodes it's hard to imagine it could have another creative run to push it up, but with Trey and Matt, you never can tell (just when you think that they're out, they pull us back in).
I actually remember the first time I watched South Park-I was in London, eleven days into a trip and feeling a tad bit of the homesickness. I had had a lot of "different" foods and my feet were killing me. As a result, I was in my room, had just watched an episode of Friends, and South Park popped on and my need for some additional American television was too much, even though my mother had complained about the show for years and it was forbidden in our household. The show made me laugh hysterically, and it was soon a regular part of my viewing experience, even getting the hallowed (for a broke college student) buy every season of the series on DVD treatment. As a result, these ten episodes are not only ten of my favorite episodes of any show, but also they are ten episodes in a series that, amazingly enough, I have seen literally every episode of. Without further adieu...
10. "The List" (#11.14)
A personal favorite of mine (there are certain episodes that are so good of each of these series that you simply have to list them, and I know this isn't one that would show up on every fan's personal canon). While I love Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and the guys, it's occasionally nice to get some comments from the ladies, and this episode definitely had that, with the girls creating a list of the cutest guys in school. Because this is South Park, the list has a conspiracy behind it (which leads all the way to Bebe!), and we also get some hilarious moments with Kyle coming to terms with being the ugliest kid in school, and of course a giant showdown where, well, someone shoots Kenny. All-in-all, a classic example of what South Park can do without any sort of political satire-just awesomeness with these characters.
First, let us marvel at the cumbersome but grammatically solid title. Then let's look at an episode that swiftly both celebrated and utterly maligned the Lord of the Rings franchise, which was about to head into its second movie and fanboys everywhere were lying in anticipation. The boys think that they are returning the Fellowship of the Ring to the video store, but in reality they have a copy of a pornographic film that Stan's parents rented. An all out war with the sixth graders erupts over who will get the film, with Butters of course taking the Gollum role. The film ends with Butters being thrown in the video slot return, in a similar fashion to what would eventually happen in the Lord of the Rings series...except with a giant volcano.
8. "Casa Bonita (#7.11)
Perhaps one of the tamer episodes of the series from a ratings perspective (it is one of the only episodes of the series to be rated TV-14 rather than TV-MA), this is a classic in South Park lore. Cartman is not invited to Kyle's birthday party at the entertainment restaurant Casa Bonita (which really exists, in case you want to go on a South Park city tour) because, you know, Kyle hates Cartman. Cartman then sets up an elaborate prank that involves Butters thinking it's the end of the world and the entire town thinking that Butters is missing and probably dead. Hilarity ensues amidst the panic, as the sociopathic Cartman cares little for the pain he inflicts on the entire town, but sits, waiting for Kyle's birthday party to come so he can go to the restaurant. In classic South Park fashion, he is found out, but only after he gets an abbreviated experience with the restaurant and he can show no remorse.
Long before Community made "meta" a television staple, South Park was off brilliantly skewering itself, mocking that it was about to hit 100 episodes by jokingly playing on the fact that the show is in fact a TV show. In this instance, we learn that Earth is a reality television show, but now that the planet is aware that it is a TV show, it is no longer of any quality and must be cancelled (with everyone on the planet dying). The boys manage to blackmail two producers (in a wildly inappropriate but hilarious series of scenes where the two "Joozian" producers engage in a series of debauchery). Eventually, everything returns to normal, with the boys saving the day but not knowing that they did. My favorite moment is the boys looking out on space, and stating (correctly), "it's hard to believe this is only our second time in space," and Cartman replies "this is like my fifth time." What strange and awesome lives these four have had.
6. "Dances with Smurfs" (#13.13)
This episode could have also called "Glenn Beck Asked For It." At the height of the conservative pundit's popularity on FOX News, South Park took his bombast and gave it the Eric Cartman treatment (it says something about Beck that Cartman's rants and skewering of Student Council President Wendy didn't seem even remotely out-of-character and was Beck to the pitch perfect). The episode's use of Avatar as a smurfs meets Dances with Wolves combination was questioned by some as too much, but in an episode about Glenn Beck, seemed just about right. The ending, with Wendy pulling a Sarah Palin and quitting the job to write a book, thus leaving Cartman with the thankless job of being president-priceless.
If South Park had a golden age, it probably petered out right after this episode, but oh what a brilliant ending it received. The episode is near flawless, with the boys playing World of Warcraft, and having their characters being killed by a masked man (who is, of course, a cliched overweight comic book nerd). The guys then train for weeks, subsisting on a diet of Hot Pockets and chips, finally taking on the evil man, being aided by Randy giving them the "Sword of a Thousand Truths." I cannot tell what is funnier-the blissful way that the writers tear at gaming culture, the fact that Randy has a faux death scene at a Best Buy gaming kiosk, or the fact that Butters spends all of his time just playing Hello Kitty: Island Adventure. Whatever it is, it's surely a Top 10 episode.
4. "Imaginationland Episode III" (#11.12)
In reality, I have to admit, that this is really a proxy for the entire multi-part episode series (I didn't want to cheat and include the first two parts, but know that they're there). The multi-episode stories are some of my favorite, ranging from Mysterion to the Cartoon Wars to this, my personal favorite, with multiple former characters coming back (including ManBearPig) and everything heightening to a giant battle between the real world and the Imaginationland (with occasional cuts to court cases with Cartman, always focusing on the big picture, trying to get Kyle to "suck his balls" because of a bet over whether leprechauns are real or not). The episode ends in perfect South Park fashion, with Butters saving the day during the battle, and Cartman "imagining" Kyle sucking his balls, so that it is real in Imaginationland. An hilarious episode, filled with classic South Park group panic and multiple pop culture references. By far the best of the trilogy stories.
For those of you who born after 1993, you may not realize this, but at one point, Brangelina and Kimye were not the reigning couple of Hollywood: there was only Bennifer. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez dating was the biggest news on the planet for some reason none of us who lived through it can entirely understand. Every single issue of US Weekly had them on the cover, and any celebrity-obsessed tabloid reader worth his salt knew the nuances of their publicized relationship. So it goes without saying that South Park took this bedlam to task. In an episode that brilliantly parodied both the negative of Lopez's and Affleck's public personas, we saw them taking on Eric Cartman, whose hand has purportedly been turned into Ms. Lopez and no one except Kyle and Stan can see that it's clearly his hand and not Jennifer Lopez. The end is classic Cartman, with the hand Jennifer Lopez turning out to be a "conman" named Mitch Connor who disappears and the real-life Lopez ends up working at a La Taco. The true genius of this episode isn't just the spot-on celebrity skewering and the ridiculous hit songs that Cartman sings, but the fact that we never actually get a definitive answer of whether or not Cartman was telling the truth.
2. "Woodland Critter Christmas" (#8.14)
There would be no more Christmas episodes in South Park, Colorado, after the woodland critters came to town (this is actually true-eight years later we have never had another Christmas-specific episode). The show takes on the classic Rankin/Bass style Christmas specials, and absolutely eviscerates them by having all of the cute and cuddly creatures of the forest being sadistic Satan-worshipers, aided unwittingly by Stan in their quest to bring about the birth of the Antichrist. The show takes an odd turn (at least at first) when Kyle is shown helping the Antichrist, until we get a cut to this being Cartman's show-and-tell story, with a riled-up Kyle and a completely bored Mr. Garrison listening. Kyle wants Cartman to stop, but his classmates are desperate to hear the end of the story (even though Kyle says the ending is obvious and that he will be killed by Santa to save Christmas), so they find that Kyle has an abortion to remove the antichrist...and then Kyle dies two weeks later from AIDS. Kyle yells at Cartman, the show ends, and I dare you not to have spent the entire episode both laughing hysterically and wondering if you're going to hell for doing so.
In the pantheon of South Park, you're allowed to have as many silver and bronze medal favorites as you want, but any true fan of the show has only one gold medalist, and it's this one. The episode where Cartman progresses from a dumb, bigoted kid into a complete psychotic has him trying to get back $10 from ninth grader Scott Tenorman, who has sold Cartman his pubes, convincing him this is how one hits puberty. The episode continues with Tenorman routinely outsmarting Cartman, before finally realizing the error of his ways when Cartman invites him to a Chili con Carnival, with Scott assuming that it's where Cartman has tricked a pony into castrating Scott (an idea he assumes impossible, which throughout the episode we learn it is) and finds out that Cartman has instead arranged for Scott's parents to be killed, and he has fed them to Scott. The episode ends with Cartman licking Scott's tears in delight, and Stan-and-Kyle agree to never anger again. I remember watching this episode in abject horror, and never again would I be surprised by the wild and sociopathic places that Eric Cartman would go.
Those are my Top 10-what are yours? Do you have a favorite South Park character? Have you seen every episode? And if it were eligible, where would you place the movie? Share in the comments!
For more of my favorites: Girls, Pushing Daisies, How I Met Your Mother, Game of Thrones, The Office, Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives
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