Journal 7

Last Wednesday, the TV show South Park returned to Comedy Central with the second half of its 14th season. I chose to evaluate South Park because it is a popular show that has had a large amount of controversies and its episodes still remain relevant with every season. South Park has remained a very popular show since its beginning. So far, it has aired 203 episodes and has been renewed for a 15th season. In 1999, a South Park movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was released and was a box-office hit and received great reviews. The TV show has also won four Emmy awards and a Peabody Award for Comedy Central. Although popularity and awards show how well the show is received, the most important thing for a comedy is how funny the show is.
While some episodes cause almost non-stop laughs and others have only a few funny moments, South Park has had consistently funny episodes over its span. One of the reasons I think this is true is because it uses a very wide range of jokes. Some are really simple jokes, like killing off the character Kenny in ridiculous ways in many of the early episodes, or more complex jokes, like an episode that uses comedy to show how “Wall-Mart” can destroy small businesses and take over an entire town. Another reason South Park is so funny is because it uses satire to make fun of current events. Episodes of South Park are able to be created very quickly; usually an episode takes only a week to be made. Because of this, episodes are able to be very relevant to current events, which make the jokes about the events much funnier. For example, an episode about the results of the 2008 presidential election was released less than 24 hours after Barack Obama was declared the winner.
Another reason why South Park is a consistently good show is because it covers an extremely wide range of topics. South Park’s episodes have centered around just about everything , including alien abductions, the kids building a clubhouse, rainforests, Saddam Hussein, child abduction, illegal immigrants, hippies, global warming, Tourette’s syndrome, Guitar Hero, Canada, Facebook, and even a giant mechanized Barbara Streisand. Since the creators of the show are able to make episodes about so many topics, the show is able to stay interesting and avoid becoming boring or not funny.
Since the show’s creation, it has created many controversies and is considered one of the most controversial shows on TV. Besides the large amount of profanity and violence that revolves around a group of fourth-graders, the show has had many episodes about sensitive topics. While some episodes may upset people, the creators are not afraid to explore most topics, and since the show is on Comedy Central and rated TV-MA, the show is rarely censored. One show I could compare South Park is Family Guy. Both are comedy cartoons that revolve around a group of families and other characters and have had many ridiculous episode topics and controversial episodes. Also, there were a group of South Park episodes that revolved around making fun of Family Guy, which shows that while Family Guy, a show on prime-time Fox, is not able to get away with as much as South Park, they are still both easily compared.