When we played South Park: The Stick of Truth for the podcast, I could not tell you the last time I watched a full episode of the show. It's pretty impressive that the show has been on the air for so long with basically the same two dudes at the helm the entire time. I've seen many episodes over the years, but never watched through an entire season. I'm not sure if I still have them, but at one point I owned a few seasons on DVD but I don't think I ever watched them. South Park was pretty much a show that I had seen a few episodes of, thought was pretty funny, and no strong opinion of. I do remember the movie being hilarious, though.



I had it in my head that I really should watch a few episodes to get a better context for the podcast recording, so I somewhat randomly dropped in and watched season seven thinking it would be a good quick refresh on the vibe of the show. I watched all of season seven and enjoyed it so much that I decided to roll right into season eight. While watching season eight I wondered which season had that episode where Cartman feeds that kid his own parents in a bowl of chili? I looked it up and discovered "Scott Tenorman Must Die" was in season five, so I went back and watched season five. Then I watched season six. It was at this point that I surrendered myself to a commitment to watch all twenty three seasons. I went back and watched seasons one through four and then jumped back to nine and I am currently working on season ten. From this point on I will watch the seasons in order. The jumping around between the first ten seasons happened only because I hadn't yet decided to watch the whole show.
 
As I write this, I have only been watching about one episode per day. At certain points, however, I was putting away six or seven episodes in a day if it was a weekend. In seasons with the opening song, they have always been thirty seconds so it's very easy to skip and roll right into the episode. With the length on an average episode I can roll through about three episodes in an hour. I usually don't watch television shows like this, not even anime, but I replaced some of my lazy YouTube time with the show and it actually felt like an improvement in my leisure time. The show is extremely funny to me and overall very consistent. Almost all of the episodes are entertaining at the very least but many a knee-slappingly hilarious. I can only think of one or two episodes so far that have fallen flat with me.


By watching the show, I was able to retroactively 'get' the references in the game. For example, in the UFO section I wondered why the hell the aliens kept saying "moo, moo!" I found out in an early episode that the aliens talk this way because the first beings they encounter in South Park are cows. Another thing that confused me in the game is the weird John Denver-esque Christmas song that plays during a certain medical procedure in the game. Turns out that is a reference to said medical procedure being performed in one of the Christmas themed episodes.

I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the seasons of the show, and perhaps keeping up with it in upcoming seasons. I can't deny it at this point, I am a huge South Park fan now. I recently secured a copy of The Fractured But Whole and will probably dive into it when I'm done watching the show.   

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