I definitely disagree with Brad's original comment that the space gangster episode wasn't very strong. Although I didn't like the alien himself, other parts of that episode were the funniest in any SP episode in the last 3 seasons. The part where Randy Marsh says "Someone who speaks Spanish yell at Mexico. They're going to ruin everything", I almost puked, I laughed so hard. And then when he says to his wife, "Sharon, h-hey Sharon, they found alien life in space because of our pinewood derby car, but it's just a piece of wood with wheels, right Sharon?". I needed an adult diaper, cuz I almost crapped my pants. And when they nuked Finland, holy shizz... This entire season so far has to be one of my favorite seasons in a long time. I've been watching since the very beginning and compared to the last few years, which has had a few good and a few mediocre episodes, this one is totally solid. That one dude who said this season sucked needs to have his head examined and go back and watch early seasons of SP to be reminded of why it is the best and smartest series on TV.

Didn't laugh once.

Don't forget 'The Coon'... classic riff on TDK and Watchmen,

I loved that one. The fact that Cartman is so obsessed with being the No1 Hero, he becomes the No1 Villain - but doesn't realise it, or anyone in the episode.

I also agree with you, this has been a really strong season compared with 12. Cartman casually bringing the boat back to the Somalian dock saying "now that's a pirate ship"... awesome!

Only two weak episodes this season thus far, queefs and last week's space cash. Even they were better than much of S12.

Are you guys serious?
Margaritaville was one of the best EVER.

Maybe a lesser season overall, but that one episode raises it up a couple of notches.

I didn't like the Queef episode all that much (got old fast) but for the most part it's been a good season. South Park tends to get better and better, on average, though obviously some episodes are worse than the one before it. I agree there has not been as much social commentary lately, but south park doesn't have to be about the #1 news story to be a good episode. Historically people rave about episodes that are incredibly timely (awesome! they must have written and animated that in the past 48 hours!), however when you look back the episodes are not necessarily as funny as they were when first watched... the hilarity is based a lot on relevancy. The "About Last Night..." episode right after the election (Obama won!) is a great example - everyone I know went nuts over how great it was, because it was 3-4 days after election night... greatest episode ever, I heard. But go back and watch it now. It's okay, but that's it.

I liked the notion that earth is a backwoods planet where the one intelligent lifeform is, objectively speaking, not very intelligent at all. Pretty good episode I thought. I also liked how it showed one lie can lead to others - just stop defending a lie. It's gotten to the point where, over the last 50 or so years, our political debate has gone from debating whether we should have the oil depletion allowance to whether or not we should be torturing people we don't like. All because certain people get committed to a position, can't say they were wrong, and keep on lying to justify their actions.

I also have to disagree that this season has been "strong". Other than "Mr. Mouse" and "Fishsticks", season 13 has had a habit of taking a single joke and painfully stretching it into a full episode. The writing just seems uninspired and bordering on lazy.

Yeah, I don't think it's been *that* strong so far. The jab at Disney was funny, and I'm all for humbling Kanye West, but what makes South Park funny to me is the sharp social commentary, and I don't feel like it's really been on point so far this season. The bail-out episode was good, but not great. If anything, I think last week's installment was the strongest. Dealing with the greed and anthro-centric of people today, I thought it was stronger than anything else so far. Could you imagine if we ever encountered intelligent life out there? They'd probably ask themselves "who are these retards?"

I completely disagree. I think this season has been absolutely horrible thus far. There's been nothing "fantastic" or "strong" about any of the episodes they've been unfunny, lame, and have used shock humor as a crutch instead of actually adding anything truly funny.

As someone who was a teenager when South Park started, I've watched every single episode, and I do feel some sort of obligation to my inner youth to continue watching it, but if the second half of this season turns out to be as crappy as the first half I'll stop punishing myself and finally stop watching.