The Best And Worst Things About South Park

If there's one thing "South Park" never does, it's sitting on the fence on a topic that piques the writers' interest. The drawback is that as a result of an imperative to speak out and the quick turnaround time for their episodes, they frequently make mistakes. And after 25 years of production, the best approach to these mistakes is to simply own up to them every once in a while.

Multiple times, "South Park" has returned to a previously covered topic and admitted that they were mistaken in their initial assessment. This is most clearly demonstrated when Al Gore (the fictional "South Park" version of Al Gore, anyway) and ManBearPig return in the episode "Time to Get Cereal" from 2018. In his first appearance in the 2006 episode "ManBearPig," "South Park" mocks Al Gore for his claim that a part-man, part-bear, part-pig monster is going to cause global catastrophe. But in "Time to Get Cereal," the characters on the show admit that they were incorrect to mock him, and ManBearPig is a serious threat after all. (ManBearPig is a metaphor for climate change, if that's not obvious.)

It's critical for a show of this level to consistently call themselves out when they make errors. We don't want to think there are a ton of people out there who base their politics and their worldviews on "South Park," but to whatever extent those people exist, Parker and Stone can't let them get too many of the wrong ideas.