South Park wasn’t a constant parodying of pop culture in the beginning, and never should have become so

South Park wasn’t a constant parodying of pop culture in the beginning, and never should have become so.
The show was at it’s best on ‘cow days’ and ‘rainforest, schmainforest’ when South Park was a town full of hicks and Cartman was a spoiled brat that squealed at his cat for trying to eat his pot pie.
Now it’s on it’s last leg, trying to keep relevant by making fun of politics and memes. Just kill it, Matt and Trey
R.I.P Primus Intro

>rainforest, schmainforest

If thats the episode with Getting Gay With Kids, that *was* pop culture parody, it was specifically about save the rainforest bullshit and american charity culture

The very first South Park short was about Santa Claus and Jesus fighting over the true meaning of Christmas.

It. was. always. about. culture.

you can only keep original plots up for so long before pulling from headlines

South Park needed to STAY pop culture and stop being "LOL POLITICS!!!!"
this is a raisins thread now or at the very least early south park thread

>South Park shouldn't be so political
>It should be like these episodes again
>One of the only two examples is a political episode

South Park episodes are best after you let them stew for a few years, seriously, am I wrong

South Park was ALWAYS meant for adolescents. It's main demographic is 13-18 year old boys.

I personally hate it when a show gets too up its own ass with messages.

I'm gonna come to OP's defense here.
I had no idea Rainforest Schmainforest was mirroring a current event, I just thought it was a generic "let's save the rainforest!" deal. Episodes like that still have a timeless feeling, while the episodes with the early YouTube memes, the Pewdiepie episode, and episodes focusing on current events that are entirely insignificant are NEVER going to be memorable, and are going to age like shit.

the thing is south park used current events and satire to tell stories about the characters, instead of using characters to tell stories about current events, which is what they usually do now. put it down was really good though and it was the former, so no coincidence there.

and yes, it's true taht they used to have way more episodes that weren't based on current events and social commentary.

trey parker said The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers is his favorite episode of all time, and that if he could he would make every single episode like that one, but since he runs out of ideas he has to rip stuff from current events

I miss when cartman was cute
technically the rainforest thing was issuey but it was funny because they just said fuckit to something that everyone else was unified about.
unfortunately when they did the same thing with anti-smoking they were a little confused and basically they fell for trolling (the tobacco companies make those anti-smoking ads). Sadly trolling seems to be their one blind spot, as they didn't pick up on the clickbait debate nomination process thing either.

wait, there was a more specific thing than just 'teh rainforest' ?

Butt Out is one of the few episodes where they don't depict the people they disagree with in a sympathetic light. the way they dehumanized the opposition was literally family guy-tier, however it was so exaggerated that it was obviously self-aware/partially joking, unlike family guy where they're 100% serious. it's a very funny episode but yeah.

I never understood why the rainforest choir group was called 'getting gay with kids' and said that saving the rainforest is totally gay, meaning... i guess they think it's a positive meaning? gay as in happy?
but then at the end when they 180 their position re: rainforest, they leave the name and the slogan alone, indicating that somewhere in the process they have also changed their personal definition of gay
i mean i'm not going to nitpick how the fuck they got a new professional song recording done in the fucking jungle, but the logic there is odd. I can't follow what i'm meant to think they think words mean at any given time, and why

>What are the kids into nowadays anyway?
>Home renovation shows and fidget spinners?

>Scott Tennorman must die
>The Death of Eric Cartman
>Awesom-o
>Volcano
>The Wacky Molestation Adventure
>Casa Bonita
>Good Times With Weapons
>Pre-School
>Imaginationland Trilogy

What's sad is my sister and dad bought into that kind of thinking for a while. Really, the intentionally-schmaltzy anti-smoking ads that drive people to smoke were really effective (not sure if they're still around), and the government actually made them do it. After all they still profit from taxing them.
basically we have to remember that the south park guys are just.. a couple regular guys. that's why their shit has that 'real' feeling to it. but regular guys aren't super clever at seeing through conspiracies 100% of the time, they just see through a lot of emperor's new clothes bullshit. You can still dazzle them if you try, and they have taken the bait here and there.

Are you actually

Have you suffered from some sort of severe brain damage or perhaps a brain eating virus

they didn't mean good or bad morally by 'gay', it just means like uncool/camp/the boys don't wanna do it because they dont' wanna seem like gaywads, y'know?
it's liek when you're an 8 year old boy you're not gonna get caught watching barney but you don't think barney is evil

dude i miss obvious gags sometimes, you can spoonfeed me, make fun of me, or ignore me, but you can't try to claim you have never been confused about a line from a TV show

>‘rainforest, schmainforest’

That episode was very political. You are not very perceptive OP.

This past episode was more like the old ones, in their absurd humor.

Randy dressing like Columbus for his wedding. So random. xD

But clearly the environmentalist group does not use the term to mean "uncool" when they make it the name of their group and use it in the song
but by the end, they do. Why would their terminology conveniently keep the same word for their new reversed attitude towards rainforests?
Like, if the song had originally said destroying the rainforest is bad, then by the end it was saying the same thing, but now they mean 'bad' in the michael jackson sense, all of a sudden. I feel like i have to be missing something

While I liked that small scene of him dressed as Columbus beating that Native outside of his house, it still fucking bothers me how this has become Randy Marsh the Show. Last season was him along with Gerald. 19th was him and PC Principal. Like come on, they're fun to watch yes, but not to give them main exposure. I wanna see more dumb stuff by the 4 kids, and please keep Butter's dick suckery out of it.

yeah the transition was not nearly as smooth as the transition of focusing on bart to focusing on homer. that was actually an improvement to the show (until jerkass homer)

you're overthinking it
they don't understand what's 'uncool' about having a fucking kids' choir called 'getting gay with kids' cause they're dorky out of touch adults
if they change their position from save the rainforest to fuck the rainforest, why does that affect the name? I don't understand

>dumb stuff
well there's yer problem. the kids are all super smart and calm now. the only moods they ever have are angsty moodiness. cartman doesn't even have a fatty speech impediment anymore.
you want to focus on the dumb ones, so we focus on randy, who has become an idiot, when he used to be grounded and insightful

That's stupid, like saying that Chinpokomon will age like shit because it was about current events. South Park has always been 60% pop culture parody minimum.

Episodes that parody 90s anime, Patrick Duffy, the pedophilia hunt of the 90s, ASIMO, that one Star Trek episode with Pike, and a trilogy that has thousands of pop culture references.

Okay, I understand your premise, you're suggesting that they still think getting gay with kids sounds cool, whether they're pro rainforest or anti
but at the end of the anti-rainforest song, they still say saving the rainforest is totally gay. so clearly, by this point, they no longer think gay is a positive thing

oh god, chinpokomon has aged rather poorly, but not for that reason
it's still fucking hilarious and it's a time capsule of that weird point in time when normies were like 'wtf is this anime thing why is it so big suddenly?' and had trouble understanding it. Matt n Trey captured the headscratching perfectly, but were savvy enough to actually represent it pretty well,
then they did what they do best and tossed in the nonsense angle, the idea that it was imperial japan trying to attack us again, because that's exactly what your grandpa might suspect.

but the reason it doesn't age well is the resolution is 'once your parents like it, it's lame'
kids at the time CRAVED the idea of our parents liking things we liked. we adored it if they could. OUr dads grew up watching cartoons with us and it was just sad how as we grew into teenagers for some reason they lost interest or couldn't keep up. My parents were more into pokemon than anything else I was into, even if that isn't saying much, and now when we watch that, yknow, WE are the parents (well, not us obviously, because we never got laid). Shit's bee popular for decades, parents are almost definitely playing with their kids now. cantankerously remarking at how dumb the new designs are but how great the new mechanics are. Shit, I never even played the games. not a handheld guy.

also one of the best jokes in awesome-o just shits on adam sandler who is extremely successful at the time

>the pedophilia hunt of the 90s
I don't think we can really call it that when it hasn't actually gone away, but only gotten worse, and on top of that finally come out and revealed itself as the leftist thing it was all along

Little known fact but the cows killing themselves was based on a real event.

south park is pretty fucking good considering the short time span each episode is made in.

Yeah it's always weird when someone shits on someone or something that isn't even bad yet
like remember that simpsons episode that dead-on slammed hollywood superhero movies of the early to mid 00s, except it was made back in the late 90s when superhero movies were still damn good? That was weird.
adam sandler BECAME terrible, but back at AWESOME-O he was still great

it actually reminds me of that bizarre point in the fourth futurama movie when they take time out to start bashing robin williams of all people. who the shit doesn't like robin williams?

I don't think that's a handicap

All you people complaining about Southpark not being political were just to young to understand the references.

Cow Days was about cults and suicide.

yes it is dude. it worked 10 years ago but not now. can you fucking imagine how good south park would still be if they spent like 2 weeks/episode?

>They they use gay as a term for uncool
Man, South Park is going to age really weirdly.

>back in the late 90s when superhero movies were still damn good?

>adam sandler BECAME terrible, but back at AWESOME-O he was still great


What the fuck are you talking about

Fuck it just go back to doing Star Trek and 80s movie parodies. How about The Abyss? Or Gremlins? Or Breakfast Club?

Yes. They were using gay as a double entendre. For the group they use Gay meaning happy. Lets all get happy and positive and save the rainforest, yay. But it can also refer to the fact that choir groups are fag shit. That's the joke.

I think they (and to a lesser extent, I) am a bit older than you because everything you said about parents and children eagerly sharing an interest in cartoons and games in no way applies to me or anyone I knew growing up really. And the idea was definitely if mom and dad are pretending to be hip and into the stuff we are, we'd have moved on by then. Maybe it was like that for kids born in the 90s or even the late 80s but not so much before then from my experience growing up.

The main issue with modern south park is that it confuses being current with being clever.

>South Park wasn’t a constant parodying of pop culture in the beginning
Yes it was. They had an episode about the time when the news were talking about people finding a frozen mamoth ffs.

>>Volcano
Parody of 2 1997 Volcano-themed movies. Sorry champ.
>Good Times With Weapons
>imaginationland trilogy
Oh you're just fucking with us.

>when South Park was a town full of hicks
Wealth has turned Parker and Stone into urban liberals, they are now incapable of writing about poor whites without falling into "evil bitter retards stuck in 1950" tropes.

I thought the first one was about an evil Frosty the Snowman

>Raisins is early south park

Relativity's a bitch, I just keep dying faster.

It's been shit since season 10
and yeah i agree those really early seasons were the best

But ratings are fine. They can keep making shit

>They had an episode about the time when the news were talking about people finding a frozen mamoth ffs.

Do you really not see how that's different. The story about the frozen guy from the 90's is so far removed from the news story

South Park has always been consistently good, but never really great. The true peak of South Park and the only thing from the show that's genuinely amazing is the movie.

>South Park has always been consistently good
no its been shit for ages

God I love the movie

Well, South Park kinda always parodied pop culture. But it did not focus so much hard on one pop culture aspect per episode or season. Rather, it would go on its own episode, but also add pop culture parody references to it. Be it political or non political.

Chinpokomon would feel rather dated if Pokemon and anime weren't still pop-culture staples today. In 10 years, is anyone gonna give a shit about what Pewdiepie was?

>Pokemon and anime weren't still pop-culture staples today.
They're not.

>South Park wasn’t a constant parodying of pop culture in the beginning, and never should have become so.
Do your impersonation of David Caruso's career!

That's from the very first fucking episode

South Park has always been counter culture, and its why its still good to this day.
The Simpsons on the other hand, started counter culture, and became so popular that it became the culture and gained a identity cause of it, and with nothing to counter it became celebrity episodes the series. South Park is best when it is counter culture and attacking all of the extremists on both sides.

Pokemon go was huge and very recent.

>Pokemon Go
You mean something that died after one fucking month and hasn't been relevant ever since?

Pokemon Go was nowhere near the cultural phenomenon of the original and it was onlt a hot topic for one month until people moved on while the original for big for roughly 5 years before it cooled down.

>I had no idea Rainforest Schmainforest was mirroring a current event
Exactly. YOU had no idea because you were a stupid kid. And now you're letting nostalgia for your naivety get in the way of realizing that South Park has always been topical humor and the biggest things that changed between the "golden age" of South Park which everyone got bored of after a few years and the more modern stuff from, say, Season 8 onward is that they toned down the shock humor and increased the quality.

What?
Did you run this through Google Translate?

No you're just illiterate and being a grammar nazi won't stop from being wrong

>Season 8 onward is that they toned down the shock humor and increased the quality.
This. I can see why Try and Matt aren't too proud of the earlier seasons anymore can consider season 2 the worst one they are incredibly crude both humor and animation wise.

Season 2 was great and 6-9 was the golden age

wait, you think 2 weeks an episode is good?

The joke doesn't work though, within the logic of the episode and the characters.

>Season 2 was great
Your tastes is shit. S2 was terrible and the movie was made to make up for it

Pretty sure that was the second one. First one was the Jesus v Santa with Brian Boitano saving the day

obviously having more episodes is preferable, but I'd rather have good episodes.
season 2 is the south park aesthetic