How Serialization Killed South Park 

What'd you think of the South Park Vaccination Special 🤔

where south park really shined in the last years was the 2 video games

if it took until season 20 for the show to be considered bad, thats still pretty funkin impressive

Even when South Park isn’t doing to well, It’s still enjoyable to watch Can’t say the same thing about The Simpsons or Family Guy

Things I liked about the special were: The sole focus wasn’t Randy Actually focused on the kids Mr Garrison isn’t president anymore and Mr. Hat came back The news reporter freaking out on Tom

South Park isn’t as good as it was before, but it still is way better than current Simpsons and Family Guy.

I kinda missed when the boys are just either playing or doing something mudane and goes from 0 to 100 real quick like them fighting aliens or monsters or pissing off celebrities or getting caught in there other crazy Bs.

South Park was better when: Cartman was the main villain, when Kyle was the self righteous smart one, when Stan was the leader and went on a righteous rampage and his character wasn't just the sake of being relatable, when Kenny was a perverted prick with Cartman, when Butters was naive and gullible.

I can’t imagine a South Park without the 4 iconic characters as friends. No way they keep the change

The pandemic special wasn’t the best but it definitely highlighted how a lot of people felt about the pandemic the vaccination special also wasn’t the best but the main plot about the boys trying to revive their friendship but then splitting up was pretty relatable

They aren't the sole writers. Trey writes all the scripts but there's a writing staff.

I want a mix of serial and irrelevant episodes. Like the one of the old seasons when Cartman kept looking for ways to make a million dollars or something like that lol

The fact that we lost Mr hanky, illiterately having ManBearPig actually becoming real and killing fucking Satan, like how are you going to kill off one of the best characters from the fucking movie. Like it actually cheesed me out that they actually killed him off and explained the logic to how

I think that kenny being treated like a kid (probobly unintentionally) was because the boys may have realized that their friendship is what's actaully making kenny have a somewhat decent life, considering that his parents are abusuive and he's in poverty, so without the boys kenny would be miserable

Modern South Park: Not perfect, but still stable. It went from S-Tier to upper A-Tier.

The stuff about the "BroShip" ending in the show really hit close in my gut lol.

The whole part with Garrison being toned deaf and thinking people had a problem with him being gay felt a lot like a Kevin Spacey joke. Which I really like, like you said it felt more like they were playing off of topics instead of being reactionary

It might be going downhill, but even at its current lowest point, it’s still really good. And if it goes back up, it’s gonna be even better than before! It’d be awesome if the creators saw this video!

I'm still not inviting you to casa bonita.

What a lot of people don’t know about Family Guy is that Seth McFarland wanted it to end after season 5 but Fox wouldn’t let him do that.

For being on the air for over 20 years now it has handled seasonal rot way better than any other show.

what's even more surprising is that the downfall only lasted for 3 seasons

The serialization was so forced at the beginning, it was basically just a normal episode and then all of a sudden every so often it would focus on something from the previous episode like "HEY, REMEMBER THIS? THIS HAPPENED BEFORE!"

''serialization killed South Park'' for people who liked stories about the 4 boys, but personally i think the PC Principal era and both specials were very good, Band In China and Board Girls are amazing too, it seems just like, for many fans like you, if the episode does not focus on the 4 boys then it's bad.

South park is still the goat though. The serialization stuff wasnt that bad either. For some people maybe, but not everyone feels that way.

A show being good for 19 seasons is a SERIOUS flex though

South Parks problem is that it’s humor became too centered around parodying reality. Same problem with Family Guy and the Simpsons. If you notice other animated shows that were well received (Regular Show/Rick&Morty etc etc) all of those don’t need to rely on parody based humor. Even Bojack Horseman parodies reality but still finds a way to be unique from being JUST a parody.

11:08 Some random kid? That's David from season 19's "You're not Yelping"!

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this special, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I found it very funny, and they seemed to be coming back to their roots. Also, thank god it was about the kids and not Randy

"Seth Mcfunny man Farlen"

There's an interview where Seth MacFarlane says that he hasn't written for family Guy in over 10 years so yeah he's pretty much just talent on family Guy and American Dad

I hate how they made Randy the main character of the show. A little Randy goes a long way

South Park was always one of those shows that even when I felt like one season or episodes was tapering off. It could come back in an instant to being good. I’ll never write this show off completely, unlike Simpsons or Family Guy.

South Park is always at its best when it's about being kids growing up in a crappy town. That's probably why the best thing to come out of the show in a decade was the two games. Also BASEketball is one of the best drunk watches ever.

The creators of this seem so much more genuine than everyone else in the industry.

My main issues with how the serialization era were Randy was flanderized in the same way as Homer Simpson Lack of character development for side characters that were known for years (the girls) Their over reliance of current topic events to guide their story Lack of the kids in general

I used to be a huge south park fan but I completely fell off when they started with the election stuff. I've never been politically minded so a ton of jokes feel like they just flew over my head and it was really depressing

South Park was ahead of it’s time Kyles mom is the first Karen

South Park getting a serialization is like an editorial cartoon turned into a comic book.

Remember how sp responded to bin laden with a bug's bunny act? That was gold, they aren't bottling that lighting twice with this one...

The funny thing is even with South Park at its lowest with the Tregrity Farms stuff, it was still far funnier and better written than most other adult animated comedies airing the same time. When the bar’s set so high even the low points are quality

While I did grow tired of the serialization, I do still enjoy South Park. The Pandemic and Vaccination Specials have been pretty cathartic, and it seems they are trying to go back to the old style of storytelling. The Vaccination Special isn't even centred on Randy, for once.

South Park has gone down hill recently but its still really good

They had a divorce episode between sharon and randy where they basically broke the fourth wall and said how burnt out they were.

I miss the old days before they just started copying what happened in society to an extreme

He’s gotta rank all of the South Park episodes lmao Edit: Holy shit 1.1K thanks! Another edit lmao: Dang this is the first my comment got popular thanks everyone appreciate it!

I'll admit , whenever I marathon south park I always make it a priority to skip season 20 .

LS Mark, you're 100% correct. South Park was a pretty good show, but overtime, it can be a little predictable at times. I think we can all agree that it needs to end at some point.

The thing that killed South Park for me is that they’ve completely shafted the main boys for mostly Randy, an incredibly annoying and awful character

South Park became less special since the RU-vid era, where everyone can produce a parody of current events.

I hadn't watched South Park in a long time and saw the pandemic special and hated it so much I turned it off halfway through.

I think Matt and Trey just really stretched themselves too thin over the past several years. They had the sequel to their highly successful game theybwere writing, they had the serialized seasons that had an overarching narrative, and then had to come up with new topics to cover on top of all that. If anything then having less going on and getting a break since they really only had to write two long episodes instead of ten.

I misread it as sterilization and was quite confused.

I do understand your concerns with modern South Park. I started watching at 12 years old and I loved it ever since. However, ever since they started using Randy for every episode, that’s when the show started to be a lot boring for me. Randy is a great and funny character but making him the main focus of the show just doesn’t seem to work. I’m really glad that in the vaccination special, they were able to focus more on the boys. I’m still pretty bummed that the boys aren’t together. I hope they can do something with the boys being separated in the next episode instead of sweeping it under the rug like most shows do.

Something I could see you doing a great job with is making a video like your Simpsons episode rankings in each season but with the concept used for South Park's episodes and seasons.

You got something wrong: season 18 was when they first experimented with serialization (in small elements) and it was a success, so *season 19* became the first serialzied season, and it too was a huge success. Season 20 was one long plotline, but season 19 was also full on serialized as well, just not to the same extent.

Talking about hating the show they literally had a season called End South Park or something close to it... Big lol

2:08 The Scoots was pretty cool too; felt a lot like the older episodes with the whole "seemingly inoffensive event blowing way out of proportion and causing chaos" plotline

An ad for South Park Phone Destroyer came on before this lmao

South Park feels so corporate now

FINALLY THE 2nd SOUTH PARK MARK MADE

Honestly I stopped caring about South Park, not that I hate the show, it's just that my interest in it lessened with time.

Completely agree, I tried to tune in to a recent episode but had no idea what was going on

One of South Park’s greatest strengths, especially with the later series is something neither Family Guy now The Simpsons have, the ability to make stories based around other people (yeah; the other shows do the odd episode but the main characters are still heavily involved) which is perfect for them when they are having trouble writing, the standard may not be as high but it still delivers no matter whether the four boys are involved or not. It’s become a show about the town rather than just Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny.

Me, who's never watched a single episode of south park in my life: Interesting.

This show might have gone down hill, but it did not fail As much as Family Guy or The Simpsons

Honeslty, I think the show really dropped off when they introduced PC Principal... They need to toss out a few episodes of just the boys being naive children again. The whole reflection of everything on the news is burning out. It is like they just sit around flipping between News stations and make a show about everything being covered. I get it though, they have run through everything else already. Luckily you can alway rewatch older content and still get quality entertainment.

I was watching a South Park clip on RU-vid, and I saw a comment which really struck a tune with me. It said "I miss when the boys actually acted like kids".

Trey is so lucky,he got to be in the prestigious despicable me 3!

As soon as I see the words Tegridy Farms, I switch over

If South Park ends good riddance. That soulless cartoon needs to get lost

FINALLY IVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO MAKE ANOTHER SOUTH PARK VIDEO

Three comments saying "first". This is honestly the first time I've seen this in the 2020s

LS mark and South Park go together like peanut butter and jelly

Funny how South Park turning into cereal killed the show.

The random kid with Clyde and Timmy is David. He got introduced as a new kid during the Yelp episode and has occasionally appeared in the background since.

I personally liked how they mentioned the Pandemic special during the Vaccination special, it was a neat little touch

I REALLY hated Randy in You're Getting Old and the moment he moved to/opened up Tegridy Farms, that hatred grew even stronger. He openly admits how unhappy he was in the aforementioned episode and once he decided to become a farmer, it feels like he wants to make his family feel just as miserable. But the worst thing about him is how (in the SHOW'S continuity, at least) HE was the one who started the COVID Pandemic. HE shut the planet down, drove so many people out of business and killed so many lives. So, I'm sorry to all the Randy fans...but you've bet on the wrong horse here

Some part of me think the reason for the shift in serialisation and character drama was because they wanted to have what Rick and Morty or similar shows have but they can't replicate it because this show is from a different time and it's not easy being transtioning to mostly self-contained comedy show to having a storyline is not easy.

Of course we all have our opinions. I personally don't get the people saying stuff like: "If it took up until season 20 for it to degrade in quality, then that's pretty good." The thing is, this was happening way before season 20, in my opinion. It hasn't been the same for years now, probably due to the creators getting tired of it, ageing and running out of ideas. I watched season 25 after not watching South Park for years and it's just not that good. I don't think I laughed once. New episodes are good enough to watch passively or if you just want something on in the background. A couple of episodes were half decent but they didn't feel like classic South Park. Maybe I just have to admit that I've grown out of South Park's current style of humor.

This show was killed by a serial killer, *serialization.*

In the words of the words of M Bison: *YES, YES*. Describes my feelings when I saw this in my recomended.

I thought all the weed stuff was just them reflecting on the insane cannabis boom in the US post-legalization in many states

Anyone wondering, the song at the end is We're Finally Landing. You might have heard it in a Summoning Salt video and I know i always wondered what it was called so there you go.

Serialization didn’t kill South Park. It just got it sick.

You’re literally reading my mind, I also thought the show stops really being good after season 19 and also find Put It Down to be one rare exception of a good episode beyond that point. Even my brother only prefers to look back at seasons 4 to 19. That time just felt the most when Matt and Trey knew what they were doing.

Oh come on, South Park is not going downhill, season 20 was meh, yes, but after that, SP has slowly but steadily going up again, i don't understand what people want from SP anymore?

Haven’t Trey and Matt both been reported saying that they’ve been actively trying to get the show cancelled for the last like, 10 years at least?

I personally love South Park’s serialization! Season 20 wasn’t my favorite, but I like that they switched things up to keep the show fresh. I love the serialization on a smaller scale, like Seasons 21-23. I can see why people aren’t a fan of it, though. At least the last two specials have been pretty great (in my opinion) :)

I liked it for a bit in the serialization but I haven't watched any since its mainly become the randy show and I don't find him funny anymore. I haven't watched any of the last part of the the last season because it sucks. This kind of hurts to see it suck so much because I grew up with this! I wasn't allowed to watch it but my mom worked nights when it started and I waited until she left and watched because I thought it was hilarious. This show for me is like how most people grew up watching the Simpsons. My friends and I never talked about the Simpsons as kids and I never discovered it until college. South Park was my love. I freaking hate randy I hate tegridy farms and I hate that they don't even do a real Halloween show or any like that and South Park Halloween and Christmas episodes were my love.

I really enjoyed your video but what made me like and subscribe was "we're finally landing" at the end :D

Best south park season's 4,5,8,11,14 2000-2007

I highly disagree. HOWEVER. 20 is bad.

Before watching this video gotta say this, Trey and Matt were basically saying the old format was burning them out and a serialisation was the only way and doing it on a current topic was they could keep making episodes. By that, serialisation keeps it alive so the video title is a little bit spurious. It's production cycle demands the show being structured as such.

i thought i was tripping when i started hearing the "Summoning Salt" synth music start playing, but that was a pretty great video

Maybe it's time to cancel south park and make spin off show.

I feel like South Park is going to end soon, they killed satan, mr Hankey’s gone, and the friends broke up, it all just feels like a build up to a big finale

Seasons 1-17 relied on current events, but they were also written in ways that would make them timeless. With season 18+ at this rate, i can't imagine future audiences enjoyingthe series that much.

is it a coincidence that I got an ad for the vaccination special WHILE he was talking about the vaccination special

You've got balls for using Sonic Forces' Classic music for BGM lol