South Park Review

South Park's method is the whole argument for it. Parker and Stone build most episodes inside a single week, which means the show can answer a news cycle while the news cycle is still running, and no other comedy on television can do that. The deliberately crude animation, unchanged in spirit since 1997, is the production choice that buys the speed, and while critics long ago stopped treating it as a failing it is why the visual grade sits two tiers under the rest.

What the series is praised for is nerve: it goes at religion, celebrity, corporate cowardice and its own network with a consistency that has survived more than twenty five seasons, a Peabody and six Emmy wins for animation. The recent run of political episodes proved the machine still works. The faults are equally consistent. The topical installments age badly, the third act frequently collapses into a speech that explains the joke, and the both sides reflex the show reaches for can flatten a target that deserved sharper treatment.

Parker and Stone voice almost everyone and give the town a personality no imitator has managed. It is the most durable satire in American television.