Thread 149714020

Why is there no clear consensus on when (or if) South Park started to decline? Most people default to season 20 being the series Armen Tamzarian for the series. Yet I have heard estimates that the series started declining everywhere from the South Park movie, to Season 5, to when Chef died, Imagination land; I was surprised that a majority believed the show never really declined in quality of if it did is now back to being good.

No idea. I enjoyed the show until Season 20 decided it doesn't want to be fun anymore.

>>149714020 (OP)
for me, at least, it was when after that 2 part Mohammad episode where they ended up pussying out at the end and showing they can be censored if you threaten them with violence

>>149714020 (OP)
Problem is, what is "peak South Park"
It's not like Simpsons where seasons 2-8, especially 3 thru 7, were just fantastic and intelligent writing in general
If you liked South Park because you liked the concept of a kids show about suburban kids having fun little adventures except they're foul mouthed in an openly degenerated world and that's it, the shift to any sort of coherent writing might have been a decline
Did you like it when South Park actually told good parody and satire stories with coherent characterization and arcs? Did you like it when it took the piss on social trends and issues but generally stayed away from overt politics?
Did you like it when it got overtly political or became self aware of its own memes and impact?
I personally feel like South Park peaked in the Bush II era. 2002-2006 was the perfect possible era for a show like it because we still took edgy raunchiness and cynical misanthropy seriously and it was easy to make fun of Bush era American culture in that snotnosed disaffected punk rock sort of way and most of the normies didn't give a shit about our stuff enough to get involved in the discussions
Unlike today when all our favorite nerd shit are just fronts for normie discussion
and the show was just boyish dude bro shock comedy but taking every fluid ounce of piss at early/mid 2000s middle American society
The Obama, Trump, and Biden eras don't have that same energy for whatever reason

South Park stopped being iconic around the time of Imagination Land. It still has had some iconic episodes since, but it wasn't like the seasons before then where almost every single episode is considered a classic. South Park's decline definitely didn't start with the movie or season 20, and in my opinion the decline hasn't been nearly as bad as other series. It stopped being as good because they ran out of ideas, but the way they stuck to even the stupidest of plot lines like Tegridy Farms or Randy being Lorde is something I can respect and I personally think even post-prime South Park is still worth a watch at least once. The pre-Imagination Land episodes are so good they can be watched over and over again though.

>>149714097
>>149714109
Imagination Land aired in 2007 so this tracks.

>>149714097
>I personally feel like South Park peaked in the Bush II era. 2002-2006 was the perfect possible era for a show like it because we still took edgy raunchiness and cynical misanthropy seriously and it was easy to make fun of Bush era American culture in that snotnosed disaffected punk rock sort of way and most of
>Unlike today when all our favorite nerd shit are just fronts for normie discussion
>and the show was just boyish dude bro shock comedy but taking every fluid ounce of piss at early/mid 2000s middle American society
That same mentality gave us Green Day's best album, but it also gave us those shitty Seltzer and Friedberg movies, so I can see the point

>>149714020 (OP)
I tuned out completely around 2018 or so. The show was already going downhill for a while before that. Creativity was replaced with LE CURRENT DAY parodies.

>>149714097
>If you liked South Park because you liked the concept of a kids show about suburban kids having fun little adventures except they're foul mouthed in an openly degenerated world and that's it, the shift to any sort of coherent writing might have been a decline
That's basically me, lol. And for me, the decline happened after season 6. Felt the randomness, lax morals and absurdity was gone.
This is from season 6
>Kyle: Dude! How are we gonna move 23 calves to your house?
>Stan: I don't know.
>Cartman: I've got it. We could kill Butters, and then float the calves on a river of blood.
>Kyle: Don't be stupid, Cartman! Butters doesn't have that much blood in him!
>Butters: Eh, yeah, I do too!

This kind of "subverting expectations" stuff was drew me in originally. If this episode out 6 years later, it'd just be Kyle calling Eric and asshole for moral reasons. Like, it started following the same tropes as other Tv shows. Another example would be Wacky Molerstation Adventures. If that came out today, it'd be like this.
If Wacky Molerstation Adventures for example
>Cartman would be the only one framing his mom.
>No fun "Dancing Kyle" Risky Business reference, instead it'd be Kyle and Cartman do their generic back and forth "You're an asshole for doing this Cartman!" "You're a Jew Kyle!"
>No threesome gag with Liane, instead some corny moment about her "needing to stand up to Eric" with some faggy piano notes playing in the background
>The prison officers would have ugly realistic looking faces
>no fun and interesting plot where all the kids live in lawless society free from grown ups, instead we have a plot about how Prison doesn't work, and Liane having such a hard time in prison, getting sexually and physically abused by the prison wardens.
>Probably ends with some gay scene where Cartman's mom, dressed in that faggy trenchcoat, has a "powerful" scene where she stands up to Eric.

Because it was a gradual fizzling out and people have different tolerances for what they think is shit and what isn't, it largely depends on what you're even watching the series for.

If you liked it for the stories with the kids, you probably started hating it when Randy became the focus. If you hate the episodes focused on current events in American culture rather than the more original story focused episodes, you probably started getting tired of it somewhere in the middle seasons. If you just watch it for the jokes you probably started hating it by the time they started really dragging out a single joke into the ground for an entire episode, or worse for entire fucking seasons.

I think it's pretty agreeable most of the shows issues became too prominent by the time they introduced PC Principle. The moment he shows up you know more episodes are becoming misses because it feels like Trey is fucking clocked out mentally with writing the show.

>>149714020 (OP)
Who cares? It's another stupid American show that deserves to be cancelled.

I think they lost the plot around season 15.

I haven't really watched South park in the last 7 years, so I have one question: did they even acknowledge Biden during his term?

>>149714426
They didn't have any content during his term except Into the Panderverse and the Post-Covid future special

>>149714020 (OP)
Whatever season started making Randy more of a main character, instead of a background character.

>zoomers trying to figure out which times they missed out on were the best

You really had to be there.

>>149714497
No, season 7 and season 13 are without a doubt the best ones and they aged well.

>>149714354
Translation:
>I think it started to decline when they aired the last episode

>>149714020 (OP)
I recently started re-watching the show to decide how many seasons I wanted to actually keep in my collection, and the "golden age" for me was seasons 1-3. Those were the episodes that felt most like some college friends making an edgy cartoon for the sake of their own amusement, and that was always the biggest appeal to me. That's not saying that season 4 is a huge downgrade, but I just remember the show feeling like it had run its course at that point.

I tend to be a purist with shows. For example, I think Simpsons peaked at seasons 2-3, because those were the episodes that felt most like legitimate family sitcoms/dramas with lots of character exploration and tons of expirimental storyboarding and animation. I like when shows feel as though they're spearheading their own genre, and while many shows start that way, there's always a point where they begin to restructure things to pander to the audience they've built. I'm not saying that's a bad thing—it's probably what you should do to be successful—but I just find that's usually when shows become really formulaic and predictable, so I lose interest, even if they might technically be funnier or more entertaining.

>>149714155
Also, the girls constantly doing the Women are Wiser trope. Why can't we have an unhinged girl?
Fat!Heidi was close, but they had her break up and banished her to the background

>>149714020 (OP)


Family Guy doesn’t have a clear consensus on when it fell off either.

Some people like Seasons 4-7, some people like the super dark edgy humor of season 12, and some like the softer tone of the Disney era.

Same with South Park, some people liked the serialization, some people liked Tegrity Farms. It’s all about people’s differing tastes

>>149714020 (OP)
the heavily censored Muhammad episode was the end of real south park.

>>149714020 (OP)
The decline started around 2016 but the first major true drop in quality and respectability was the COVID specials.

>>149715223
but it's not the women, it's literally just Wendy. All the women in South Park are crazy and the other girls are all fucking stupid, too.

>>149715314
Nah, all the girls collectively are always more mature, like the scene in Pajama Day

it was pretty bad by the time it got to that episode where Stan sees everything as shit
people pretended the stuff making fun of political correctness was good because they agreed with it but it wasn't really funny

>>149715625
Funny enough, You're Getting Old was never meant to be a finale or commentary on the show.

drumpf won

>>149714020 (OP)
the one where they stopped making slightly less boomer propaganda

>>149714020 (OP)
The show is still watchable for the most part, but I think it would have ended perfectly at season 14 because of the great super hero trilogy and the censorship of 200 and 201 showing the show no longer has its edge. I also think there was a decline after Chef died because that's when Matt and Trey admit in their commentary they decided they needed to be fully topical. But my favorite era is seasons 1-3 because of being when the show was at its most surreal with the strange adventures the kids go on while having the most of my favorite side characters.

>>149714020 (OP)
>Why is there no clear consensus on when (or if) South Park started to decline?

Most people got sick of it and quit watching long before the supposed bad part started.

>>149714020 (OP)
Most people would say since after season 17. Season 20-23 were when the show was rock bottom but even after it hasn't really been the same.

The recent episode with Trump Saddam gave it some relevance back, but it's only a matter of time before they run another joke to the ground.

>>149714020 (OP)
It was the britney spears episode for me.
I consider season 4-11 the golden age for the series

>>149716013
>But my favorite era is seasons 1-3
Based. I don't even think season 4 is that much of a shift, but something about season 3 is just super comfy for me. Probably has to do with being the last time we hear Mary Kay Bergman, as well as Mr. Hanky's Christmas Classics, which is just a top-tier Christmas special all around. The meteor shower saga is max comfy as well.

4 has some classics, but nothing really hits as hard for me. It funny that Trey and Matt are both on record saying they think 4 is the point where they started to like the show and became "good writers" because it's exactly where things started to feel formulaic—every episode started with the same structure where the kids encounter a problem based on a current event, then the rest of the town encounters the same problem and somehow responds even more childishly than the kids, and then it's just a slow compounding of stupidity in order to prop up jokes about whatever cultural dichotomy the show is trying to craft that week.

Trey and Matt actually "learning how to write" only gave them the tools to firmly dig themselves into a rut, imo.

>>149714020 (OP)
>if South Park started to decline
It didn't. MIGA tourists are just malding.

>>149716750
Both are true

>>149716750
For many people, there was a noticeable drop in quality at certain points, but yeah, these threads are blatant raid bait for /pol/ tourists.

It started to decline on October 7th

>>149714020 (OP)
I stopped watching it regularly around the PC Principal time. Stopped watching it completely a few season after that. Now if I watch reruns, if the season is not single digit, I don't bother.

So cartman is going to become full zionist now because jews bomb palestinians?

>>149717320
Hamas and Hezbollah need to stop trying to destroy Israel as part of the fundamental reasons of existing and accept their neighbor and stop filing rockets at it if they don't want people to get bombed in retaliation.Also they need to get back all of the hostages today illegally took from the country of Israel .

>>149717320
What? Why? Doesn’t he hate jews?

>>149714020 (OP)
Last 6+ seasons of south park have this thing in most episodes, where the episode stops and multiple times a character will explain something to a literal audience
I can't stand this lazy shit

>>149717320
You can be damn sure South Park will NEVER talk about Palestine and Israel.

>>149717928
>I learned something today

>>149718097
They already did go watch Ginger cow.Made me the two guys just have a fundamental disagreement on understanding of what happened in the conflict so they don't want to act like they have an informed opinion on it.

>>149718205
If you actually watched the show, you faggot retard, you would have known that this is a parody segment

>>149718381
The "I learned something" segments are parody? What's the parody in the Death one?
>Dammit! You know, I think that if parents would spend less time worrying about what their kids watch on TV, and more time worrying about what's going in in their kid's lives, this world would be a much better place.
>Yeah, I think that parents only get so offended by television because the rely on it as a babysitter, and the sole educator of their kids.
>(You know what I think? Basically, if you let the decision of what you watch stop at the parents' control, then what can you see? It'll stay the same because they'll just get offended although their kids are not delighted with the television series they put on for their kids.)
Please identify any parodic elements

>>149714020 (OP)
After their one season of continuity.
PC Principal introduced
Finding out about the Ads
Leslie being an ad
All of that was enjoyable
It was entertaining because South Park didnt do season long continuity
Theyd do throwbacks laters on but not this
The next season doing it showed why South Park doesnt work as a continuity show
You can do pretty much anything one or for a season but you cant do it forever
Tegridy
Memberberries
Everything about that next season just wasnt funny
None of the jokes landed
It was mostly, remember current/past thing, man that was a thing wasnt it
Old south park episodes were pretty random
Now it feels like they have a team of execs that approve scripts before they go to production

feel after season 10, it started to go downhill. Like it was still good but it wasn't as funny as their previous seasons. Started to slip down up until season 18, where it just worse and worse by each year:

>Season 18 was an awful attempted at serialization, but at least had a few good episodes, and sides stories that stood on their own
>Season 19 doubled down on the serialization, introduce PC principal who was in every single episode repeating the same jokes that got tired so fast, Barbrady getting written off, Soadasopa line that went nowhere, with a rush two parter about Ads trying to destroy the world
>season 20, tripled down with even more serialization focusing on trolling, was an attempt to be a serious dramedy, but you can tell Matt and Trey had no idea what to do, and was a project that you couldn't wing and create within just a week. So it was a mess. Not to mention Trey thought Hillary was going to win, and had to scrap a storyline about Hillary and the girls of South Park kidnapping guys to harvest semen. Trump really mind broke Trey that year
>season 21 was about Cartman's toxic relationship. Every single episode was bland as fuck and I really didn't give a shit about Cartman bullying his gf, as we're so used to see him bulling his friends, that it really wasn't anything new or shocking. Loads of episodes about President Garrison, where you can tell Trey doesn't know what to do with him still, as he's such a shitty Trump stand in. This was the season where I stopped watching regularly.

That being said, I think the first episode I just couldn't watch was HumanIpad one.

>>149714020 (OP)
When did Tegridy start?

>>149716730

Holy shit, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Seasons 4-5 were fairly solid but those first three were a different show entirely. I don't even care about the overuse of fart jokes, they were cozy as hell.

Its weird that the harder Trey and Matt tried, the more that normies lauded the show as some great source of 'satire', the shittier it got. Many episodes by season 6-7 were shitty low-effort parodies of whatever was big in pop culture that week, all incredibly rushed because, well, they fucking were.

>>149718724
As someone who's an old fart and was a massive south park sperg, and has watched the show since the beginning, a lot of the old fanbase from dial-up internet era days did the drop the show after season 5, as they hated the drastic changes, and how Cartman became a murderer. Like it's pretty common opinion on the show for those who are 35+. I know a lot of my friends dropped the show during season 6-7 as well.

>>149714020 (OP)
Ginger cow

>>149718871
Surprised fart fetishists didn't latch onto it. You'd think they'd have a subsection of people who edit other South Park characters over that scene

>>149718793

Lol, old fart here myself. I made it up to season 10 or so before I gave up. The show was something magical in the early days and the zoomers on here will never understand the cultural impact SP had during those first few seasons when they were really, truly pissing a lot of people off. It was great.

Oh well

>>149714020 (OP)
Because you're asking this question of intellectually dishonest people that know the answer is 'when they started making fun of my side' but can' admit to that.

>>149714020 (OP)
I honestly have no clue who they're even parodying here.

>>149719092
I lost interest when it stop being a show about four boys going on wacky adventures

>>149719145
a D-list lolcow who was fading into irrelevance. Now that South Park is mocking him, he's basking in it's attention as he knows it's gonna keep him relevant for a another year or two.

Season 6. It is always Season 6.

>>149719181
sorry, for >>149719128

>>149718793
>>149719047
I'm a zoomer who watched the show out of order and still thinks the older stuff is more charming.

>>149719181
He has the biggest following of any right wing social media personality. The second biggest is Asmongold, so they don’t get a lot to pick from

>>149714020 (OP)
Strangely enough they stopped being good around the time I graduated high school.

>>149719543
What season was that?

>>149715284
>Some people like Seasons 4-7, some people like the super dark edgy humor of season 12, and some like the softer tone of the Disney era.

It's SEASON 6. It's always Season 6.

>>149714020 (OP)
After the coon and friends fought ctuthlu with mint berry crunch

>>149719938
Hey, that was kino!