5 classic South Park episodes that speak to our current moment

If you know anything at all about South Park, you know the show kills off Kenny a lot. And just like Kenny, some issues keep coming back no matter how dead and buried we thought they were. This episode originally aired in 2001, and while the political and scientific landscape has changed drastically since then, the debate over stem cell research (the subject of this episode) is relevant again because of the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, creating a legal quagmire that extends beyond the procedure itself.

“Kenny Dies” starts out with an abortion, so you know right away we’re heading into politically incorrect territory. The rest of the episode skirts the abortion conversation, though, in favor of another issue Parker and Stone wanted to take on: a ban on stem cell research. When the boys find out that Kenny has a fatal muscular disease, Cartman sets out to find a cure and learns about the potential of stem cells in fighting such illnesses. At the time of this episode, President George W. Bush, under pressure from his pro-life backers, had placed a ban on such research. So Cartman goes to Congress, makes an impassioned speech on behalf of his friend, and even leads a singalong of Asia’s “Heat Of The Moment” for some reason. Anyway, it works and congress lifts the ban, but it’s too late to help poor Kenny. If this sounds like uncharacteristically altruistic behavior for Cartman, rest assured he has an ulterior motive.

Beyond the stem cell and abortion discussion, there’s another timely argument here that’s worth mentioning: the episode’s biting commentary on the dangers of opportunistic politicians messing with science they don’t understand for the sake of scoring political points. If only we’d learned the lesson back then.

It was tempting to include the classic season-two episode “Gnomes” on this list. After all, comparisons between their moneymaking scheme and sketchy Web3 initiatives are rampant (if you’re not familiar, it goes like this: “Phase 1—Collect underpants, Phase 2—?, Phase 3—Profit”). South Park has come a long way since then, and Parker and Stone have only gotten more anti-capitalist with time. “Unfulfilled,” which pulls no punches in its takedown of Amazon and other exploitative corporations, is perhaps the culmination of this impulse.

The opening of a new Amazon Fulfillment Center in South Park brings nothing but misery to the town and highlights the company’s most egregious practices. This leads to a worker’s strike that has such an impact that Jeff Bezos himself (or, the creepy South Park version of him) comes to sort it out. He states the company philosophy clearly—the customers are all that matters. But really it’s just their money he cares about. There’s even a sad song underscoring images of the townsfolk waiting for packages that will never come. It shows that workers do have some power, but they can be replaced. In this case, by the mutated employees of the town’s abandoned mall. It’s horrific and inhuman, but so is capitalism. And in case the socialist message was too subtle, the show literally has one worker (who was previously mangled by an automated robot) quote Karl Marx directly.

This is the first of a two-part story that concludes in the season finale, “Bike Parade.” It’s also good, though not as tight thematically as this episode. With the supply chain still sorting itself out and the gap between the winners and losers in our economic system growing wider, the critiques raised in both episodes will likely continue to resonate for some time to come.

South Park has taken on racism frequently in its long run, memorably dropping the n-word 42 times in one episode (“With Apologies To Jesse Jackson”) to make a point about cancel culture and performative redemption before those words were part of the cultural conversation. In that episode, Randy Marsh has to face the stigma of being called “[n-word] guy” after he guesses it (wrongly) as the answer to a puzzle on Wheel Of Fortune. The point was that white people like Randy may not consider themselves racist, but are blind to the harm slurs inflict until they’re the ones being targeted.

“The Big Fix” shows that Randy still hasn’t learned anything 15 years later. At a marijuana growers convention, he attends a talk about racial inequities within the industry. Not surprisingly, the message that communities of color are excluded from the profits of legalization despite being most affected by the racist war on drugs is totally lost on him. Instead, he focuses on the warnings of potential consumer backlash against all-white-owned businesses. To improve his public image, and thus his bottom line, Randy latches on to the closest Black person he can find, the father of Stan’s classmate Token (more on him later). It’s pretty clear Randy’s shamelessly using the guy, who catches on quickly and winds up flipping the script, harnessing the power of his own street cred to become Randy’s biggest competition

Randy may never recognize his racist blind spots, but at least Parker and Stone seem to be aware of their own. It’s also in this episode that they retcon the name of the only Black kid on the show, up until this point known as Token Black. It’s revealed that his name is actually Tolkien, in honor of his father’s favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien. Stan—and by implication, the audience—has supposedly been hearing it as “Token” all this time due to unconscious biases. It’s a pretty good meta joke that forces us to examine the biases we have in real life, as Stan’s doctor instructs us to do at the end of the episode. Addressing the audience directly, he says, “If you or someone you know thought the name Token didn’t come from J.R.R. Tolkien, then please call 1-800-I AM A GIANT PIECE OF SHIT.”

One of South Park’s strengths has always been its lightning-quick turnaround time. Sure, these instant reaction episodes can lack the insight that comes with letting things sit for a while—and can also become quickly dated—but those disadvantages are often outweighed by the show’s nimble ability to comment on current events while they’re still current. That’s the case with “Back To The Cold War,” which premiered in March of this year and deals with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The invasion itself provides the background of the episode, which plays on the nostalgia it brought out in those old enough to remember the Cold War. Parker and Stone channel their Gen X anxiety into Mr. Mackey, who dives head first into a midlife crisis when he hears the news the Russia is our enemy once again, blasting ’80s tunes and looking for spies around every corner. There are lots of ’80s movie references too, including Rocky IV, War Games, Red Dawn, and The Hunt For Red October. And also a subplot involving Butters and a dressage competition, which may have been fixed by the Russians.

It’s ultimately Mr. Mackey’s mom who brings home the theme of the episode: the perils of nostalgia and the fear of getting old. She reminds him that those good old days weren’t as good as he remembers. People were scared. People died. At the end, the episode neatly connects it all back to Vladimir Putin himself. Or, as South Park puts it, an insecure and aging madman who started a war because his dick didn’t work anymore.

After living through the pandemic in 2020 and well into 2021 the last thing many of us wanted to do was watch something related to Covid-19. And though the disease is still a lingering threat, maybe enough time has passed that we can watch something like South Park’s “Pandemic Special” with a little critical distance.

The writers address the risks of making light of Covid-19 in a typically meta way when Randy gets the idea to release a Tegridy Farms “pandemic special” strain of weed. Sharon points out that it might not be a good look to profit off of something that is killing people. But Randy can’t help being Randy (and South Park can’t help being South Park), so he plows forward anyway. At least, until he finds out through the news that he may be the one responsible for starting the outbreak while on a hedonistic trip to China. Well, he and Mickey Mouse. And a bat. Or maybe a pangolin. Yeah, they go there. The episode also takes shots at distance learning, anti-masking, police shootings, and President Trump’s botched response to the greatest health crisis the country has ever faced.

Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) they do find humor, much of it crude, in these sensitive topics. South Park is infamous for pushing boundaries, often in the interest of making a broader point but sometimes simply for the sake of boundary pushing alone. “The Pandemic Special” is an example of the show doing both at the same time. And although it didn’t make this list, the follow-up episode, “South ParQ Vaccination Special,” is also worth watching. It shifts the focus of satire to vaccinations and QAnon, so it makes for a good follow-up if you can handle even more Covid content.