South Park Episodes – Past and Future Connections

As I cover a wide variety of topics on my blog, I hardly go over adult topics. Well, this entry is an article about South Park, one of the most well-known adult shows. You would be surprised, but I do enjoy South Park.

Today’s entry is going to be about connections I have to make about each South Park episode. One fact about South Park is that it’s very topical. Whatever the episodes are about are then-current issues, not just covering actual news stories and current events in politics (i.e.  the Season 8 episode “Goobacks” is about immigration issues), but also a jab on pop culture at the time (i.e. the Season 17 episode “Informative Murder Porn” was about Minecraft), sometimes even making references to much older media that only Gen X is familiar with (i.e. the Season 21 episode “Franchise Prequel” made references to 1970s Kung-Fu movies that are known for their bad dubbing). Although it started getting more topical since Season 12, it’s been topical ever since 1997, when the show premiered.

Because of their topical nature, the episodes eventually become dated as the years go by. In fact, some of the content looking back may remind you of future episodes. If you remember how different time is as you go back by 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, and so on, you can see how much the shows have changed.

My Connections of each Episode:

As I’m going to share my thoughts about the episodes comparing the past and future, I have cherry-picked one or two episodes from every season (from Season 11 to Season 20) as I would like to share how different these episodes are, looking at both at the time of the airing and today.

• With Apologies to Jesse Jackson – after Randy Marsh said the N-word on Wheel of Fortune, he became an outcast among society and got mocked on for using the N-word. So Randy tried to do several acts of convincing to prove that he’s not a racist. Well, in reality, if you did the same things Randy Marsh did in future episodes, nobody would really want to be around you, not for using a slur, but rather for becoming a total maniac. In future seasons, Randy disrupted a play and flooded the theatre, hijacked Stan’s iPad to scare people from watching movies digitally, played with his genitals in front of everyone as a “magic trick”, pretended to be an Indian to get a school holiday removed, and even started the COVID-19 Pandemic. Not to mention, but everything he did wrong since the start of the Tegridy Farms arc, with the worst thing he did was bombing home marijuana gardens out of greed. Even doing one of these things will make you an outcast quicker than making racist comments.
• Canada on Strike – out of all South Park episodes in history, this one would have to be the most dated episode, even more than “Cartman gets an Anal Probe”. First of all, YouTube has changed a lot since the first airing of this episode. You can now make money off of YouTube, they no longer rely on viral videos, and there are other platforms to make money off of. Another thing, many of the internet celebrities in the episode and the viral videos referenced are hardly recognized in today’s society.
• The Breast Cancer Show Ever – for how much of a bully Cartman was, the beatings he got from Wendy were deserved, not just for mocking on her reports, but also for everything he did wrong to the other kids in the past (like when he gave Kyle AIDS or locked Butters in a bomb shelter to replace him for a birthday party). And yet, Cartman continues to do other mean things to other kids in future episodes. He does end up getting beaten to a pulp again in “Stunning and Brave”.
• The F Word – the message of the episode says that a particular three-letter homophobic slur and its longer variant was another way of calling people inconsiderate jerks. Due to the increasing awareness of LGBT people, this episode is way more offensive by today’s standards, as such message would be frowned up. In fact, the words had decreased usage over the years. They are right that the biker gang is rather obnoxious, but slurs that target minorities aren’t good substitutes to insult people that the words don’t apply to.
• Medicinal Fried Chicken – this episode fell out of relevance not only because the state of Colorado legalized recreational marijuana two years after the episode premiered, but also because of seven years of the Tegridy Farms episodes. For the time, the idea of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use was rather crazy. But now, people wouldn’t understand why Randy would give himself cancer. Though one interesting plot that I like was when KFC became illegal in the state of Colorado.
• You Have 0 Friends – while Facebook still remains to be dominant, many of the stuff mentioned or featured in this episode was rooted in 2010 (or at least between 2008 to 2012). Stuff like Farmville, Café World, sending a poke to someone, and even the obsession of Facebook like how it was depicted are hardly relevant today. Chatroulette (the other social media site featured in the episode) also has changed a lot since the airing of this episode, as they no longer allow nudity. Worse social media sites have popped up since this episode premiered, and it’s not even because of sexual material, but rather because of hate speech and misinformation.
• Bass to Mouth – whatever was going on in the episode that the school body tried to stop is not as scary as what future South Park episodes featured (which are based on real life stuff). In this episode, they just needed to stop some gerbil from spying on people and posting their scandalous secrets online. But we had an episode that confirmed that the government is watching us and everything we say online, an episode where others spied on others and invaded their privacy, and a series of episodes where some company was trying to leak everyone’s entire internet histories to the public.
• A Nightmare on Face Time – one of the topics covered in the episode was how Blockbuster has gone obsolete thanks to the rise of stuff like Redbox, Netflix, and digital downloads. So the point that Randy made about how Blockbuster is still viable was laughable. But even this episode has aged poorly thanks the rise of subscription streaming services like Disney+ and Paramount+ (which have the streaming rights to South Park). Netflix has lost many content because of these streaming services, and if you don’t want to pay lots, it would be better to go back to physical media like DVDs. They are right that video rental stores have gone obsolete, but video rentals are still viable in today’s age.
• Obama Wins – along with the 2012 Election, one of the topics covered was Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars. While this wouldn’t be the last time they would tie Star Wars with a presidential election, this episode retains its relevance given how Disney’s sequel trilogy went. If you didn’t like the Star Wars sequels, you probably would’ve wanted Obama to win in this episode (which did happen in real life).
• Titties and Dragons – at the end of the third part of the epic Black Friday Trilogy (which covered the release of the PS4 and Xbox One, Game of Thrones, and Black Friday violence), Team Xbox won, and the boys all got their Xboxes at the end. Ironically, in reality, the PlayStation 4 ultimately sold way more units than the Xbox One. Heck, it even outsold the 3DS.
• Go Fund Yourself – while the conflict was about copyright infringement instead of the use of a slur (and race) as a team name, the issue it was based on was that one of the football teams had an offensive name, which they didn’t want to change the name. Six years after the episode aired, the Washington DC team did end up changing its name, as well as the baseball team in Cleveland, moving on from an age where it was acceptable to name your sports team after Native Americans.
• Freemium isn’t Free – the message of the episode came off as “freemium gaming” is a scam and the producers of freemium games made them to exploit profits out of gamers. Three years later, they released the game South Park: Phone Destroyer, which went against the very message this episode taught.
• Stunning and Brave – in PC Principal’s debut episode, it was a mockery of how SJWs viewed Caitlyn Jenner as their transgender hero. Later episodes that season and the season after show Caitlyn Jenner allied with Mr. Garrison (a far-right character), adding the irony that Caitlyn Jenner was more allied with the right than the left. Many years later, that irony was true, because Caitlyn Jenner opposed letting trans women into women’s sports, and she voted Donald Trump in 2024.
  • Adding more to the irony, PC Principal also opposed letting trans women into women’s sports, given his conflict with Heather Swanson in “Board Girls”.
• Fort Collins – some of the scenes show Cartman dreaming about being on Mars. When the weather was calm at the beginning, it symbolized a strong relationship with Heidi. But after learning that TrollTrace would leak his internet history and that Kyle would show it to Heidi, he fears that Heidi would find some misogynistic e-mail he sent to Butters, which can ruin his relationship. So we see a scene where he imagines a Martian dust storm ruining the paradise he was on. If you saw the ending of the Paramount+ movie South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid, you can imagine an even bigger dust storm on Mars. The reason is because Cartman became a lazy, homeless, friendless, and alcoholic person who had nothing better than to curse everyone. This is a very depressing fate for Cartman.
  • It’s also worth mentioning that his relationship with Heidi did end at the end of Season 21 because of how toxic his relationship with her was. While she never found out what he said that would offend her, she was fed up with his abuse, and that’s why he lost her as a girlfriend.
• The End of Serialization as We Know It – at the end of the episode, there was an internet apocalypse, where the entire internet was wiped out. Kyle did this to give everyone a chance, including his father, who went extreme with his cyberbullying. Well, when the COVID-19 Pandemic happened, nearly everyone was to follow stay-at-home orders, which forced more people on the internet. If both that and the internet apocalypse occurred, that would be a double whammy on society.

I can’t speak for episodes from later seasons or earlier seasons because earlier seasons weren’t as interesting in their topical material, while later seasons are still too recent for these kinds of connections.