Featured Image Credit: Paramount+
Topics: South Park, Film and TV
Gerrard Kaonga
If you wanted to feel old just know that South Park has been on screens for almost 30 years, having since become a mainstay for satirical TV, however, one of the show's creators has said he still has regrets.
South Park has been making fun of, well, everything for decades at this point and like it or not it has remained popular, prevalent and relevant over the years.
While many fans of the show have fond memories of episodes from loads of different seasons, the creators of the show, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have previously reminisced about their humble beginnings and things they wished they could change.
While a furious argument will likely break out if you had to pinpoint when the show was at its best, according to Parker and Stone it certainly wasn’t in the first three seasons.
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Looking back at those seasons, they just don't see the merit in them.
Understandably, a considerable part of this regret stems from how they've matured since the early years of the show.
At the beginning of the show, Parker and Stone's priorities varied between 'trying to get laid' and 'f**king around', as they previously told The Hollywood Reporter.
But now they’re not twenty-somethings behaving like kids anymore, instead they’re actually parents to kids of their own.
And so it’s no surprise then that their earliest seasons are the ones which have left the sourest taste in their mouth.
Notably, Parker said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: “If I had to permanently erase anything from the library, it would basically be anything before season 4”.
And he was very clear in his reasoning why, citing pure embarrassment as the source of regret.
He added: “It’s just embarrassing to watch. OK, we were, like, 26, 27. But it’s like, ‘Really?’ We thought that was funny?
"We thought that was well-written? Oh my God, this is terrible.”
It’s hard not to sympathise with Parker’s reasoning for such embarrassment, because nostalgia-induced cringe is a rite of passage for most of us. How often have we all found ourselves haunted by memories of our early years?
But now 28 years have passed, and creators Parker and Stone have evolved and refined their craft. They follow the same age-old formula with a touch less cringe.
Parker shed light on the script-writing process in an article for The Los Angeles Times on the show’s 25th anniversary, saying: "The writers' room always starts with us sitting around a table going, 'All right, what's going on?' Just like in any office.
"But even in the season we just did, some of my favorite things were Butters riding a horse and Cartman living in a hot dog. Just kid stuff."