Does anyone else feel like South Park was better when it was less topical?

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ScOULaris

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Let's get one thing out of the way here: this is not a thread intended to bash South Park. I think that the show is still among the best animated comedies on television today, so I'm not trying to make the claim that the show has gone to shit by any means.

What I am saying is that I feel like I preferred the plot-lines and writing style of episodes from the seasons in the middle of South Parks' continuing run on Comedy Central. I'm talking about everything in between its rough/crude early seasons (that don't hold up all that well anymore IMO) and its switch to more topically-focused episodes that are created each week leading up to airtime.

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Seasons 10 and 11 represent South Park at its best, in my opinion.

Episodes pictured above: Imaginationland (Season 11) and Go God Go (Season 10)
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While I think it's fascinating that South Park's current production pipeline allows them to create episodes that are nearly real-time in their recency and can poke fun at things that are happening right this very moment, I can't help but feel like this structure is slightly limiting compared to the more Simpsons- or Futurama-esque approach of their older work. Since episodes in earlier seasons weren't anchored to current events and concerned themselves less with continuity, it felt like Parker/Stone and their writing team were able to be more free-form and creative with the show. Multi-part episodes like Imaginationland and Go God Go are among my all-time favorites, and they come from a time when the show had reached its present-day level of polish but hadn't yet shifted to almost exclusively parodying current events.

For my money, Seasons 10 and 11 were the show at its best. What do you all think?
 
South Park has always been topical. My issue is that Trey and Matt's commentary has gone steeply downhill. As a long time fan, the fact that they devoted an entire season to whining about PC culture is a little embarrassing.
 
Being topical isn't a problem, nor is it a recent thing with them. Just they've gotten worse at doing it. They've leaned more and more on some "both sides are just as bad" lazy commentary than anything particularly clever.
 
I say the best SP is the one where M&T gets to do the SP they want to do, rather than the SP the fans wants them to do.

Maybe a less topical south park would have suffered because it wouldn't have been the show they wanted to do and the topic of your post would instead have been "when did SP jump the shark and go the way of the Simpsons"

So i'm happy because the show is still good. After 20 seasons. That's pretty damned special since most good shows get 5 seasons max before they start to turn bad.
 
Seems like the rush to jump on whatever is happening kills the writing. The season premiere was just a mess of random pop culture shit, odd since they were lampooning random pop culture shit.
 
I like it better when it's topical, even when the topic is not political in nature. The show would have grown stale a long while ago if they just did gross out humor and fart jokes like they used to.

I haven't seen the most recent episode though.
 
It was better when they put more effort into building out their world and characters, instead of plugging current events back into an already-established framework.
 
they've always been fairly topical, but they've also been lapped by the internet on their relevancy and 'controversy' crutch.
 
They became way more obvious about what they're talking about. South Park has lost that creative flare, definitely. I can see them in a few seasons just having the moral of the story being the entire show.
 
I remember on a lot of the dvd commentaries Matt and Trey admit their favorite episodes are usually when the kids are just being kids. Which does usually lead to gems like the little league episode.

Lately i think their topical stuff is a bit more hit or miss but i don't want them to not do it.
 
South Park has always been topical, but I think the way they are handling things now in the past couple of seasons have been a bit more blunt.
 
pbayne said:
I remember on a lot of the dvd commentaries Matt and Trey admit their favorite episodes are usually when the kids are just being kids. Which does usually lead to gems like the little league episode.

Lately i think their topical stuff is a bit more hit or miss but i don't want them to not do it.
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What sucks is the kids have been smart adults for a while now in the show.It was best when they were innocent.
 
Anth0ny said:
member season teeeennnnnnnnn
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Yeah basically something like this. 10 years ago people were already complaining it had become too topical. Obviously, it's become far more topical than ever in the last two seasons, that's not really debatable, but the show had always been very topical. It's also around the time you're talking about that these fairly weak movie parody episodes happened (like D-Yikes) and I'd say season 12 ranks amongst the worst of the show.
 
I enjoyed the randomness of the earlier seasons than the "lets lampoon the most popular recent news stories" episodes we've been getting since the early 2000's.
 
Problem with South Park isn't that it is topical

It's that despite the edgy humor and fart jokes, the actual commentary in the show is remarkably bland and lacking in any real insight.

Matt and Trey's middle of the road, the answer is always somewhere in the center, both sides are the same was tired in 2008 and its incredibly tired now.
 
Not so much the topical part, I preferred before they tied the seasons into long overarching stories. I feel it gives them less freedom to cover whatever they want, though they do still cover a lot of topics.
 
Season 19 was the best yet. Im also loving this 'member' skit.

The only issue with the continuation is it can leave certain episodes feeling stale dragging out a point or beating it to death. Caitlyn Jenner being a permanent repeat now is running its course but I will probably still laugh the next time she runs someone over.
 
i like both approaches but we had seasons after seasons of the old south park. i think it's great that they try a new approach and it's necessary to keep the show fresh, not only for viewers but also for the creators.
 
It seems like the kids being kids material is relegated to the RPGs now. Personally I'd say Seasons 5 through 8 was the show's peek. I think it kinda sucks that we never really the four boys together as a unit anymore.
 
Its become a bit boring if anything.

They have been doing the super topical thing for so long its kind of become predictable. That'll happen after 10+ years I guess
 
I do wish Trey and Matt would make more episodes in the vein of 'Lil Crime Stoppers' and 'Good times with Weapons'. The four being just kids is the core of the show.
 
BigDes said:
Problem with South Park isn't that it is topical

It's that despite the edgy humor and fart jokes, the actual commentary in the show is remarkably bland and lacking in any real insight.

Matt and Trey's middle of the road, the answer is always somewhere in the center, both sides are the same was tired in 2008 and its incredibly tired now.
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Middle of the road compromised thought is refreshing in this age of extreme polarization, and I find that I still enjoy it, although I get more pure comedic entertainment from their non-topical episodes (i.e. Casa Bonita).
 
I never disliked the topical ones (although I did think the entire last season being about PC culture was overdone), but I always enjoyed the episodes that were just plain stupid. The episode about Butters returning to Hawaii and the episode where they're hostages at the colonial america reenactment place are the two that come to mind immediately for me.
 
funkystudent said:
Its become a bit boring if anything.

They have been doing the super topical thing for so long its kind of become predictable. That'll happen after 10+ years I guess
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Does that mean we're about to cycle back to the OG seasons where it was just random stories with some references thrown in?

That could be fun :)
 
I don't mind it. However I have noticed they try to play the middle more and more often in what seems like an attempt to come across like "we are better and more enlightened than either side so fuck you!"
That I find a little obnoxious. Especially since you can usually tell where their opinion would likely lay if they weren't playing that game.
 
Yep. I liked the show a lot more when they put more effort in coming up with their own original comical stories, rather than relying on current events as much as they do now. It's likely that later seasons wont hold up too well at all in the future for that reason, as it relies so heavily on pop-culture that people will have forgotten, or ceased to care about.
 
siddx said:
I don't mind it. However I have noticed they try to play the middle more and more often in what seems like an attempt to come across like "we are better and more enlightened than either side so fuck you!"
That I find a little obnoxious. Especially since you can usually tell where their opinion would likely lay if they weren't playing that game.
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Doesn't their opinion always lie with Kyle? Or is that just the "I learned something" speech at the end?
 
The 'epic story lines' is alright every couple of seasons, but the most recent one went too hard into continuity. I'd prefer it if those ambitious story lines get put into films like Team America. (Though I understand that in itself is monumental work and risk)

Gay Fish remains one of my favourites, that said.

Infinite_Daremo said:
Doesn't their opinion always lie with Kyle? Or is that just the "I learned something" speech at the end?
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I think it criss-crosses between Kyle and Cartman, depending on which fits the character better.
But Kyle is one explaining why something isn't worth fussing over, which seems to be in line with Matt and Trey's line of thinking, right?
 
TheXbox said:
South Park has always been topical. My issue is that Trey and Matt's commentary has gone steeply downhill. As a long time fan, the fact that they devoted an entire season to whining about PC culture is a little embarrassing.
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Probably one of the seasons i most enjoyed
 
Nah, season 19 was the best thing on TV last season and the opener of this season was pretty strong too. People's problem is that GAF is a very left-leaning board. The left isn't used to being made fun of and predictably labels everything that includes them in their satire as lazy/nihilistic/racist/alt-right, etc. Last season pulled off a fantastic philosophical dissection of PC culture as analogous to advertising/gentrification, and this season's 'Memberberries hint at doing the same for nostalgia. But of course, in their mockery of Trumpism they also pointed out that a lot of people dislike Hillary Clinton, whom most people here are desperately trying to convince themselves is a great and wonderous candidate and everyone who won't vote for her is racist/alt-right/[insert buzzword here], so you get the usual regurgitations of 'they say every side is equally bad, how lazy' when recent SP has, in fact, been better than anyone at satirising issues in their full complexity and expressing very clear intellectual points of view, albeit supporting neither the left or right and thus pissing off both (but especially the thin-skinned left on boards like this), who see anything not offering them complete validation and support as being inherently stupid or evil.
 
Over the last few years the show has definitely felt like a grab bag of whatever's in the zeitgeist, but the way they've started doing season-long story arcs makes up for it.
 
Shaanyboi said:
Being topical isn't a problem, nor is it a recent thing with them. Just they've gotten worse at doing it. They've leaned more and more on some "both sides are just as bad" lazy commentary than anything particularly clever.
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That was one of the best seasons tho.
 
Yes, just like how shows that use memes as humor age terribly, with South Park it will be doubly so as so much of the humour seems to depend on "you saw this exact scene on the news only a few days ago!".
 
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