South Park: Season 15

This season of South Park is notable for representing both the creative nadir of the show and also a very satisfying return to form, and it contained what will likely go down as one of the series' all time unique and memorable episodes. I've lamented before that Season 14's second half felt pretty uninspired, and Season 15 continued that unfortunate trend right out of the gate. The first six episodes were just terrible. Here are brief descriptions of each one:

• Apple's products and policies are lampooned with an episode-long Human Centipede reference.
• The Germans, sick of being considered unfunny, engineer a perfect joke-telling robot who intends to destroy all human life.
• The Princess of Canada has been kidnapped, leading Ike and three other Canadians to save her. Meanwhile, Mr. Mackey directs the kindergartners in a play about tooth decay, getting more and more infuriated at their incompetence with every scene. Seriously, the entire B-plot consisted of the same dead horse being beaten over and over again, harder and harder each time.
• Cartman has a tiny penis.
• The NCAA's business model (student athletes do all the work that makes billions of dollars but get paid nothing) gets ripped by South Park by means of the "Crack Baby Athletic Association." Also, Slash isn't real, and is in fact a Santa-like figure made up for the amusement of children. (Alright, fine - this one was actually pretty good.)
• A Japanese guy starts a sushi restaurant right next to City Wok, whose Chinese owner is livid that people can't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese people. The B-story is that Butters' parents see him playing by himself in the yard and think he has multiple personality disorder.

Very few references to current events, very little screen time for the four main kids, and far too many jokes and gags that just fell flat right out of the gate and never got better. Now, the dip in quality is explainable and forgivable given that the showrunners were busy making The Book of Mormon, the most acclaimed musical in ten year. I don't only say that in hindsight; I was saying so while dealing with the aforementioned stretch of bad episodes, and so were tons of other fans. In fact, public opinion just over a year ago regarding South Park could be summarized as, "I know they're really busy, but I hope the show doesn't stay this shitty for much longer." Then, showing a full sense of self-awareness, South Park totally flipped the script with a (half-)season finale centered on Stan suddenly becoming a cynical asshole. Everything Stan used to like, he suddenly found himself hating. All of a sudden, everything around him looked and sounded like shit - literally. The episode wasn't just funny; it carried a certain sense of anger, or at least frustration, throughout it's twenty-two minutes. And then in the final act, Stan's parents, who had been fighting all episode, get a divorce. His mom says something to the effect of, "I can't just keep doing this same old routine week in and week out. I'm tired of this." The episode ended with an unexpectedly touching montage (over Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide") played entirely straight rather than for laughs. When the episode ended, the reaction from fans and critics alike was swift and confused. Some figured that the divorce was meant to be a metaphor for Matt and Trey's relationship, wondering if it had been overstressed after so many years and projects. Others focused specifically on the line from Stan's mom about being too tired to deal with the same old crap week after week, and saw that as a confession from Matt and Trey that South Park had gotten old and frustrating for them after fifteen years. The episode title itself - "You're Getting Old" - gave wings to this idea. Stan's cynicism was taken by many to represent the fans' growing dissatisfaction with the show. All of this detective work led several people to come to the conclusion that, holy shit you guys, South Park had just given us all a gigantic middle finger and ended itself right out of the blue. There was even a consensus reaction to this rumor, with people saying things like, "well that's exactly how those two counter-cultural duded would want to go out! Good for them."

Of course, all of this was an overreaction based on a collection of assumptions and specific inferences. Sure enough, when fall came, South Park was scheduled to return. Several people wondered if, given the serious down note the last run had ended on, the series would return with a very drastic tonal change. After fifteen years, maybe some mature and nuanced storytelling was in order. Instead, the show returned with an episode called "Ass Burgers." The premise? Cartman tries to fake having Asperger's, misunderstanding it to be a disease that causes your ass to, umm, have burgers. He spends a majority of the episode walking around with hamburgers in his pants. Wow. Maturity and tonal changes be damned, that was just classic South Park. The latter half of the season would keep up the tempo, featuring topical references and legitimately funny ideas. An inversion of the Mexican immigration crisis. Jerry Sandusky. Musicals as a means for men to get women to give blow jobs. A fervently agnostic foster family. The "Occupy" movement and the extent to which it was overblown by the media. WikiLeaks. The long overdue return of Lemmiwinks and his companions. The only real dud in the season's second half was an episode that mocked both the movie Thor and the History Channel's propensity to bullshit alien conspiracy theory programming, but admittedly I never saw Thor and couldn't care less about the History Channel's newly found disregard for actual history.

All in all, it was a roller coaster of a season. Just a really subpar first six, followed by a potential game-changing episode, and then a pleasant but unexpected run of quality South Park episodes. The show is alive and well after 15 seasons and over 200 episodes, and that's really just remarkable when you think about it.