It’s considered a true rarity for a TV series to remain epic after 22-years on the air. South Park somehow seems to only get better with age, like a fine wine. Matt Stone and Trey Parker continuously bring brilliant and relevant content to the table which manages to tackle serious issues in an incredibly unique way. South Park is as hilarious as it is thought-provoking which is a near-impossible task to master, yet Stone and Parker seem to achieve this with finesse. There are so many magnificent episodes of the satirical animated series, making it almost impossible to choose which is the best. According to IMDb, here are some of the highest-rated South Park episodes of all time.
CASA BONITA
“Casa Bonita” is one of the most beloved episodes of South Park because it relies more on characters and plot than topical events (which don’t always age so well once they become irrelevant). In this episode, we get to see the true evil of Eric Cartman who might take the crown as one of the most heinous TV characters of all time. The episode revolves around Kyle’s birthday party which is going to be held at “the Disneyland of Mexican Restaurants” aka Casa Bonita.
It is no surprise when Kyle tells Cartman he is not invited to his birthday party because of all the ridicule and blatant antisemitism Eric has spewed at him through the years. Cartman then makes an elaborate plan to get invited to Casa Bonita with the rest of them, which includes locking Butters up in a bomb shelter while convincing the town that he has gone missing. It’s Eric Cartman at his absolute worst which equates to South Park at its absolute best.
THE RETURN OF THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING TO THE TWO TOWERS
What happens when a group of fourth-grade boys accidentally get their Lord of the Rings DVD mixed up with one of the most “offensive pornos” of all time? “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers” will tell you! Spoiler alert: it’s not pretty. This episode easily has one of the most hilarious plot mishaps on television and it perfectly captures South Park at its finest.
If you ever need to convince someone that Matt and Trey’s comedy central series is a work of brilliant art rather than just a trashy toilet-humor cartoon, this is the episode to convince them otherwise. Any episode that revolves around the four boys embarking upon a crazy adventure always leads to an insanely fun experience.
GOOD TIMES WITH WEAPONS
Calling all anime fans!
If you love anime and want to see a hilarious parody that praises the genre, “Good Times with Weapons” is the perfect South Park episode for you. For the most part when South Park does a parody something, it is usually to make fun of it. Yet series co-creator Trey Parker is the ultimate anime fan, so he decided to make an episode that honored the genre.
It is an awesome change of pace to see all of our favorite characters get re-animated anime-style as they go on their next great adventure. Of course, like any South Park episode, their adventure goes awry. What started off as a fun time playing with weapons turned into Butters getting a ninja star stuck in his eye! That poor kid can never catch a break, can he?
CARTMAN JOINS NAMBLA
A good majority of fans believe the best episodes of the series don’t come until around season five when the show fully transforms into satire gold. Most episodes from the first couple of seasons don’t receive as much praise as the newer episodes, yet “Cartman Joins Nambla” might be the exception here. In this laugh-out-loud episode, Cartman is sick of how “immature” his friends are. So in an attempt to make some new friends, our favorite foul-mouthed psychopath uses the internet to find these people. He stumbles upon a website where he can get close to “mature” folks, and accidentally ends up joining the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
Yikes! Maybe Eric should stick to bumming around with Stan, Kyle, and Kenny instead…
CHRISTIAN ROCK HARD
In this brilliant episode, Cartman decides to start a Christian rock band in order to win a bet he has going with Kyle. If he can get his album to go platinum, he wins the bet. Taking his bet way too seriously as always, he puts all of his focus into making music that sells. He does this by taking love songs and replacing words like “baby” with “Jesus”. Meanwhile, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny decide to start their own band, Moop, where they refuse to play and go on strike because they’ve discovered the “horror” of illegal music downloading. This episode tackles so many issues at once, yet still manages to somehow be one of the most hilarious episodes of the series.
MAKE LOVE NOT WARCRAFT
People can’t get enough of this South Park episode! It has won several awards including an Emmy and is considered one of the best episodes in the history of the series. In this episode, it tackles gamer culture in the most hilarious way possible and further depicts our culture’s addiction to technology over real life. In the episode, the boys end up getting warped into the world. The world of warcraft, that is. It takes over their entire lives and they end up unable to function in the real world despite the fact that they are thriving in their online game. One of the most iconic quotes in the episode is “How do you kill that which has no life?”. A solid question, indeed.
KENNY DIES
Kenny Dies was an extremely bold episode of South Park, not only because it dealt with wildly controversial issues, but also due to the fact that it altered genres pretty drastically. While Matt and Trey’s series is usually displayed as a crass comedy, this episode was entirely depicted as a drama. In the episode, Kenny McCormick is dying of a “terminal illness”.
Usually this wouldn’t be a big deal at all because that poor kid dies in practically every episode as a running gag, yet in this episode, it is as though he has never been killed before. The boys react in the same way that any normal group of kids would respond to their best friend slowly deteriorating. It is a tragic episode that ultimately makes you love these characters even more than you ever did before. Well, with the exception of Cartman of course.
LE PETIT TOURETTE
This episode is fantastic for those who dig the more controversial episodes of South Park. In this one, Cartman learns about Tourettes Syndrom and he falls in love with the idea of being able to say whatever he wants without consequences. So of course, like the terrible manipulative kid that he is, he decides to pretend he has Tourettes in order to blurt out obscenities whenever he pleases.
Like always, Cartman totally gets what’s coming to him when he actually develops Tourettes in his process of faking it, and this causes him to reveal all of his most embarrassing secrets to the world. It’s incredible that this episode was ever allowed to air because of the myriad of curses uttered throughout, but we’re so glad it did because it is just fantastic.
AWESOME-O
“Awesome-O” is an incredible South Park episode with plenty of laughs in under 22-minutes. The episode revolves around the most unlikely duo consisting of the miraculously evil Eric Cartman and the loveably innocent Leopold Stotch (better known as Butters). In the episode, Cartman tries to trick Butters into thinking he’s an actual robot by showing up to his house in a robot costume. Butters tells the robot (who he names Awesome-O) that he has dirt on a boy named Eric Cartman. He reveals to Awesome-O that he has secret footage recorded of Cartman dressed as Britney Spears as he makes out with a Justin Timberlake cutout. Cartman has to fake his robotic identity so he can find those recordings and destroy them. It’s such a creative plot filled with so many epic moments that’ll make you say “classic South Park.”
SCOTT TENORMAN MUST DIE
If you ask any South Park fan what there favorite episode of the series is, there is a heavy chance they’ll say “Scott Tenorman Must Die”. It is the top-rated episode of the series on IMDB and for good reason. It is the episode that changed the entire series at large, having it go from a hilarious toilet-humor comedy to something much darker and more brilliant than ever before. It is the quintessential South Park episode because it reveals the true evil genius of Eric Cartman. He manipulates Scott Tenorman as much as he manipulates fans of South Park, and it’s kind of incredible.
What is your favorite South Park episode?
