I Watched All of SOUTH PARK and I Love Eric Cartman

American Legend.

Not too long ago, I gave myself a task, a treat, a treat-task—everyday during my lunch break, I would watch two episodes of South Park, and, by that, I intended to watch the entire series (with all attendant specials and the movie—nearly 330 separate embodiments of the four foul-mouthed boys in their “quiet mountain town” in Colorado). Sometimes I took in a few episodes over the weekends and, of course, the film South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, deserved its own special screening.

Watching the show in this manner brought to mind several of the major and some minor but interesting American cultural moments over a vast swath of time (the show first aired in the fall of 1997), capturing (literally) a generation of American hysteria over one thing or another. I still believe South Park is at its best when it is entirely random and the humor is more Pythonesque (and has no overt ripped-from-the-headlines story)—episodes like “Free Willzyk” and “Quest for Ratings,” the latter of which resulted from the creators not being able to come up with an episode. I still think, overall, “Woodland Critter Christmas” is the best episode of the series. But, as I had already made my own Top 10 (and the show has had many seasons since the writing of that list, most of them of a generally lower quality than the earlier seasons yet never missing some spot-on satire, such as the PC Babies), it was interesting to re-evaluate after being a fan since high school.

It also reminded me that though America has produced a few great fictional characters—Ichabod Crane, Captain Ahab, Hester Prynne, Zack Morris—we do have our equivalent of Hamlet, King Lear, and Falstaff—Eric Cartman. What surprised me as I watched the show in order was how much there is to admire about the filthy racist and sexist who does (“whatever, whatever”) what he wants. Who demands his mother has no gainful employment because he is her job. Whose “little schemes” are diabolical (“Scott Tenorman Must Die”) and hysterically funny “Christian Rock Hard.”

First of all, unlike the new crop of American TV characters, he knows who he is and what he’s about. He likes himself. Occasionally, he briefly believes he’s a bad person, but this is always resolved at the end of the episode (back when that’s how South Park acted, before it became more “cereal”…I mean “serial”). He is only temporarily cowed down by Cesar Milan in one episode (“Tsst”) before once again turning into a raging nightmare that has kept us laughing for nearly thirty years.

Some moments from my trip to South Park:

The initial episode (after two pilot specials) was “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” which later became fodder for the terrific season seven opener “Cancelled.” It was clear, early on, that Cartman’s bark was worse than his bite, much like Stewie in Family Guy (I know Trey Parker and Matt Stone would hate that comparison). It took a few seasons for him to act out on his promise. The best episode of the first season has to be “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo,” but who doesn’t remember “Weight Gain 4000?” “Beefcake! Beefcake!” While “Gnomes” comes out on top in season two, we are introduced to Eric’s extended family in “Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson!” who all are plus-sized with intentions to kick people “square in the n*ts.”

Season three, though it has terrific episodes like “Sexual Harassment Panda” and “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics,” is all over the place, mainly because of the simultaneous making of the film adaptation in which Cartman performs a song I, personally, think is better than the Oscar-nominated “Blame Canada”—“Kyle’s Mom’s a…” well, you know. Season four began South Park’s golden age with at least eight terrific episodes including Cartman accidentally joining NAMbLA, becoming a Marjoe-like evangelist, and showing off more remarkable singing abilities when he misses the simplicity of the third grade.

Season five brought us “Scott Tenorman Must Die” which officially established Cartman as a genuine threat to peace and stability. In this season, Cartman acquired his own theme park just for himself and joins the Blainetology cult in an episode we can no longer watch legally—“Super Best Friends”—because it featured an image of Mohammed. At the time, it raised no red flags. But, after 9/11 which occurred mid-season, no more “Super Best Friends.” In season six, Cartman enjoyed the ironic Museum of Tolerance, particularly its ride that featured several ethnic slurs—not beyond our xenophobic Eric.

The slapped mouth.

Season 7 had some terrific Cartman moments: forming a Christian rock band to beat the music-free band Moop, hiding Butters from society so he could accompany Kyle to Casa Bonita (a real restaurant now owned by Parker and Stone), and the time Kyle called Eric’s bluff and slapped the crap out of him in Canada. The one scene required a new mouth for Cartman to be etched into the animation. Season 8 reveals Cartman to be the author of “Woodland Critter Christmas,” an episode so jaw-droppingly funny and offensive that it pre-dated Parker and Stone’s accomplishment with something similar in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon (co-written by Robert Lopez).

Season 9 eventually gained momentum after a few episode slumps, culminating in three classics to finish out the programming: “Trapped in the Closet,” “Free Willzyk,” and “Bloody Mary,” episodes that build on the strength of the other kids and Randy Marsh (at first an ancillary character who has become more prominent because of the aging and maturation of his creators). Season 10 was particularly strong in the aftermath of Isaac Hayes’ departure. The season featured ManBearPig and Cartman taking on a bounty hunter/hall monitor position as he helps expose a scandal at South Park Elementary.

Season 11’s best Cartman moments were in “Le Petit Tourette” (where he faked Tourtette’s syndrome only to succumb to its symptoms) and the “Imaginationland” trilogy in which Cartman takes his hatred for Kyle to strange places. Continuing in this low-brown vein, Season 12 sees Cartman get AIDS from a blood transfusion, which he passes along to Kyle and this somehow leads to a cure being found. He also “fought” the Chinese using Butters (as he always does) as the one to carry all the harder work.

While Season 13 gave us Cartman’s superhero character “The Coon,” his best moment is in one of the worst episodes of the series, “Pee,” in which his song about the plurality of race in America is the satiric stuff that should keep us laughing, except we’re not supposed to laugh anymore. The Season 14 slump did have one saving grace—an episode where Cartman becomes Scarface as he works schlepping and slurping KFC.

Cartman as a Jewish man in the POST-COVID specials.

To me, Season 15 is when South Park broke. A false promise of more serial storytelling and change in the nature of the series, the two episodes “You’re Getting Old” and “@ss Burgers” are bizarre in a non-SP way, so much so that the show has barely recovered from it since. In its later seasons and specials, long-form storytelling (not Trey and Matt’s strong suit) took more hold and as the mid-2010s approached, South Park was one of only many off-color satirical shows that Americans could tune into see. The same problem has happened with The Simpsons, Family Guy, and other shows which have no business running ten series.

After that, don’t get me wrong, there are good episodes and good stuff for Cartman to do: Season 16’s “Raising the Bar” is a splendid episode I can quote from memory as Cartman begins riding a mobility scooter and forcing the town to comply with his disability (being fat); Season 18 saw Cartman lampoon crowd fundraising in “Go Fund Yourself;” and a few others. In general, the show has lost so much of its bite because what is being satirized is already so ridiculous. Tom Lehrer once said he stopped writing humorous satirical songs because he started reading the paper and, instead of laughing, he began crying. One can see Parker and Stone in the same vein as they have chosen not to even premiere the next season until later this year as they wanted to skip the last election entirely (probably because it was Mr. Garrison who was Trump in the first term and that would be a bit much).

Do I still love South Park? Of course, but more the idea of it. I will always love Cartman. He stands for nothing I stand for and is against everything I am and, yet, just the way he says “Kyle” or “Kenny” can always make me laugh.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker. American Geniuses.

ESQUIRE's HBO List: All That's Wrong

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I like making “best of” and “worst of” lists. I think all critics do and, of all of my writing gigs, I have been paid the most for reviewing films and television series. I got kind of tickled when a March article from Esquire was being shared recently on social media, ranking the top series of HBO, the overall front-runner of the best television in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The list, on the other hand, is a hot mess. Compiled by Justin Kirkland, Adrienne Westenfield, and Josh Rosenberg, there is so much wrong with it, I had to voice my concerns. I know the list is the opinion of three people and not much to be worked up about, but it’s 2025—we’re all worked up about something.

The criteria for the list is absurd, mixing anthology series, mini-series, and full series together. A big mistake because The Jinx (number 41 on the list) would be number one on a list of documentary series. Actually, it shouldn’t be 41 on any list. There is also a bevvy of shows still on the air that appear, which is another absurdity as how can one know they are great series when we have no idea how they were resolved. An ending is as important as a beginning, even a controversial one like The Sopranos’. Oh, and by the way, Sopranos is number two. So, believe me, you can’t trust Esquire on this one. Here are some observations from their “list.”

Right from the beginning, HBO has been much more successful at dramas than comedies. While they are a premium cable network and can get away with more edgy comedy, the results are not always endearing. Number 50 on the list is Entourage, 39 is Ballers, you get the idea. Yeah, Arliss is not on the list, but those shows were just as grating. While it is appropriate they are low on the list, they do not belong on the list at all. Fifty is the wrong number. If brought to 25, Esquire would have had something. That being said, the best comedies—Silicon Valley, Flight of the Concords, and Curb Your Enthusiasm—are appropriately closer to the top, but Silicon deserved a higher status than 36.

Then, there are just downright terrible shows. True Blood is 49, Westworld is 42, The Newsroom at 26, Boardwalk Empire is 22. There are dozens of things wrong with these shows—three are pretentious (an appropriate designation for many of HBO’s shows, unfortunately—including the number 15 slot, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver) and the other, True Blood, is Alan Ball’s worst work. His greatest work, the series Six Feet Under appears at number 17—a travesty as it is one of the most remarkable narrative series ever created.

Then, there are the miniseries. The authors of the article wish you to believe number 38, The Night Of, is some lost classic. It is not. Like all prison shows and movies, once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Prison life is dull and restrictive and fairly planned out. Not much excitement there. Up from that, at number 37, are the atrocious series The Young Pope and The New Pope, both of which make Conclave look like a masterpiece. Chernobyl and Band of Brothers are at the top of the miniseries on the list, but I still think it’s unfair to lump these in with the dramatic series of three seasons or more.

I have already discussed Euphoria once on the blog. The writers of the list apparently think it is today’s answer to Kids or Skins, but that film and series, respectively, are alive and vibrant, horrifying and gripping. Euphoria gives us the horrifying alone. And that does not a great series make.

I have other quibbles. True Detective ranks at 13 and that’s probably deserved, since it never lived up to its phenomenal first season; so, it deserves a slot, but the fact that it’s only a hair higher on the list than The White Lotus, a niche anthology series without a thought in its head, is a shame. Game of Thrones, another work that started out well and then crashed and burned, lands at number nine. So, let’s talk about “the best.”

It was probably always assumed The Wire and The Sopranos would vie for the top spot. In these overly political times, The Wire received number one. A remarkable show in its first seasons, it petered out in the last one in spectacular fashion, ruining everything that had come before. But, it’s a take on politics (for the most part) and so it gets the top spot in this day and age. It doesn’t take a genius to know it should have gone to The Sopranos, bested only by Twin Peaks and Six Feet Under as the greatest masterpieces of television.

But, even then, where’s Big Love? What’s wrong with Esquire? Do you agree or disagree? Comment below!

Throwback: The Theatre and the Blues

This essay, collected in Everyone Else is Wrong (And You Know It), reflected a kind of artistic manifesto for myself circa the mid-2000s I find it interesting to read periodically as I contine to navigate my writing life. Happy reading!

Theatre has a lot in common with blues music. That is because both forms come out of one singular human endeavor. They may be nothing like each other, but they are oddly and inextricably linked. I shall explain this, but first—think about the blues for a second. Why would anyone on earth want to dress up, pay a cover fee, go out in public and sit with other people to listen to music called "the blues?" Similarly, I suppose, one could ask why we pay money, dress up, and go to the theatre to see plays that will bum us out?

The reason we do this is because both forms come out of the human impetus to share the experience of humanity with other humans. Blues musicians and the great playwrights understand as well as any other human the pangs of joy, hope, and faith that can occasionally permeate this world. But, in the end, their art forms do not let them deny the experience of pain, loss, and death from which the world is also made. These thoughts do not depress them because they face them continually. I suppose, in this regard, I do not put Sophokles and Shakespeare on any different plain than John Lee Hooker. All these great men and women understood why their art forms existed.

News of the workshop production of one of my most recent plays had reached the ears of a casual acquaintance—someone whom I had met briefly through a friend. My friend had explained to this person that my play was a tragedy. This word is very frightening to people nowadays. Some are frightened by its connotation, others are frightened because if you say you've written a tragedy, you're obviously pretentious. This acquaintance, with fatuous heirs and a slick smile, told me to make sure I threw a little hope in there—no one likes to go to a play and be upset at the end of it. I thought about this for a long time. When he told me this, I simply smiled and moved on. Later, it made me angry. Someone who obviously has no idea about how hard one works to create human drama had just told me my business and had done so in a way that stepped on the integrity of what I've worked half my life trying to do. Even later, it depressed me. This person obviously had no idea why my art form even exists.

I suppose he was right, though. This is a world, after all, in which everyone is obsessed with happy endings—works that explore peace, joy, harmony, hope, etc. In doing that, though, we've lost sight of one of the most fundamental reasons why drama exists. Drama is not, as people might have you believe, there to make you smile or give you hope. We live in a world where you can carry around a iPod that will blast "Walking on Sunshine" in your ear or show you last week's episode of Ugly Betty as you're doing the nominal things of the day. Music and the dramatic form can be experienced anywhere, at any time and, more than likely, you're not going to carry around Requiem for a Dream on your portable player.

But, theatre, music—the great art forms—understand we share all the experiences of human life. Not just the good times, but the bum times as well. Drama, in fact, came out of the need to confront the gods. It came out of the need to make sense of this world. It is no different now. We are essentially very lonely people walking around a very confusing planet. And we are trying to make sense of it. We have false senses of ourselves, hopes, ambitions, faux confidence. We keep trying variations of ourselves on other people. Most often, they don't work. And we keep on changing, rearranging. Through this experience, there are many stories. Stories of love and hope, yes. Also, stories of family, children, death. It is from this impetus that we gather together to represent life in an arena and share close contact with people who will watch us. Together, we hope this will uplift us all by the fact that we've gotten together and explored an issue, told a story, shared an experience. This experience can be the joy of love in the face of hardship in Much Ado About Nothing. Or it can be the experience of Waiting for Godot watching Estragon and Vladimir as they have only each other. Suddenly, we look around and we realize we (the audience) also have only each other. A connection is made. An experience shared.

Onstage, a blues musician tells an old, old story. A story of someone who had a wife and lost her. The pained expression on his face, the strains of the weeping guitar go to our very souls and make us ache. We've all been there—in some way. The experience of life is often having something and then having had it taken away. Does the song leave you with a smile? No, it leaves you with something better. The knowledge that there are other people who've been through exactly what you've been through.

Tragedy is similar. Do you think the Greeks had any more interest in getting together and getting upset watching a story as we do now? Of course not. But they knew they would learn when they did this. They were not afraid—as Shakespeare's generation was not afraid—to face the realities of our existence, to let the poet speak for our hardships and troubles as well as our peace.

I recently got into an argument with a very passionate, very religious person who simply did not see in any hope or holiness in my most recent play—The Summer Bobby(ie) Lee Turner Loved Me—the one that experienced a little-seen workshop production this last March. He felt like having something to do with my play impeded upon his Christian integrity because I had not allowed for any hope to shine through at the end of the work. I stood up for myself. I had to. I'll admit—the play is challenging. It is bleak. And no, there is not a clearly defined hope inherent in the script. I explained to him my purposes behind the writing of it. I explained to him that I felt the hope was that, through the allegory of my main character's consistent mistakes and ultimate demise, that it would challenge the audience to search within themselves to find the hope. After all, when you've hit rock-bottom, there is nowhere to look but up. I told him he was right—there was not hope in the text. The hope is that people come, listen to mine and the actors' words, open themselves up to the experience of human sharing—the truth, the honesty of the event. And the hope is, when they leave, they will be left to investigate themselves as deeply as I have had to. And as we all must.

I explained to him I was sympathetic to his religious conundrum. I've been there before. I have, at other times in my life, experienced not wanting to do something for spiritual reasons. And had I believed my friend was right in his decision to excise himself from my work, I would have continued with this sympathy. But I told him the real tragedy was that his integrity as an artist and as a human being was the thing being tarnished by him denying himself the experience of something that is truthful. I do not say this because I think my work is all that great. My work is what it is. You can take it or leave it. I said this because I'm sure I was right.

I asked him what he thought the purpose of theatre is. He answered that it was to show God. While this has its place, one can’t fully agree. The experience of theatre came out of, again, us being able to try and make sense out of this cockeyed existence that God has given us. That is the beauty of what we do. That is the hope. That is the purpose of living—as an artist or otherwise. And I can't tell you how much we must stand up for this. I suppose my friend must've thought my work was harming him. I can't tell you how much his words harmed me. And I will make sure I spend my life fighting for the right to tell the truth, to share this experience. Because, without you people, who I lean on and who read my work and listen, there is no me. There are no stories without each other. And without each other to lean on, there is no story.