Easygoing Features

One of JOE’s favourite television shows South Park is back this week after an absence of 6 months. To celebrate here’s some of favourite things about South Park.

From the outset we should note some of these clips are NSFW.

Randy Marsh

Over the years Randy Marsh has emerged as everyone’s second favourite character to Cartman. He has become steadily more obsessive and deranged. Whether it’s trying to give himself cancer to get medicinal cannabis, becoming addicted to the internet, alcohol, guitar hero, cooking or World of Warcraft, everyone loves a good “Randy” episode.

Here he is in “Two Days before the Day after Tomorrow” speaking about the dangers of global warning:

Nothing is off limits

South Park has a core that is emotional and real and deals with topical events in an ultimately balanced and circumspect style...however they’re not afraid to go for the jugular either.

In their time they have gone after the Catholic Church, Muslims, Mormons, Scientology, Republicans, and Democrats.

This was a pretty gutsy move however, as many American’s grief over 9/11 was being exploited by shameless artists pulling at the heart-strings in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy South Park, attacked those artists in “A Ladder to Heaven”

Attacking celebrities

South Park loves cutting celebrities down to size and most of the time they deserve it. They attacked Barbara Streisand and Kanye West over their massive egos, Rob Reiner over his hypocrisy and Paris Hilton over being a “stupid spoilt whore.”

Here is a more recent one as they slag off the horny Snooki in the episode “It’s a Jersey Thing.”

Sticking to their guns

You have to hand it they may be doing a stupid, funny little cartoon show about four boys living in the mountains in Colorado but creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone have their principles and they stick to them.

There have been two moments where this has been tested, one was when Comedy Central were refusing to show Muhammad in an episode and the second when they got into a spat with Tom Cruise and Scientology when they threatened legal action to get an episode pulled...but times South Park stuck to their principles and came through with flying colours.

Here are the boys from South Park annoying Mr. Cruise in a subsequent episode:

Eric Cartman

Quite simply the best character on television at the moment and probably the only character to rival Homer Simpson from the glory days of The Simpsons. He is utterly evil, but still likable – how does that work?

We were torn between Cartman’s final revenge against Scott Tenorman or this clip from the South Park movie as his greatest moment, this just edged it: