Dethroning Moment of Suck (Darth Wiki)/Western Animation/South Park

South Park makes its name in offending its audience and Crossing The Line Twice. However, it can only go so far before it begins offending people for the wrong reason.

A special note for South Park: as mentioned under the Crowning Moment of Awesome page, the show really does make a sincere effort to offend everyone, so if you laughed at everything else but then suddenly got offended when something you liked became the target, the problem might not be with Matt and Trey. We won't just up and delete your entry, of course, but you should be prepared to do even more explaining than usual about why it's a DMoS.

Keep in mind:

• Moments only, no "just everything he said," "The entire show," or "This entire season," entries.
• No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
• No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
• Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment of Suck.
• No Real Life examples including Executive Meddling and Fan Dumb. That is just asking for trouble.
• No ASSCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.

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• When Kyle lampshades the fact that every adult in South Park is Too Dumb to Live (His exact words were "Agh, the adults here are just as dumb as the ones back home!") in "Night of the Living Homeless" is a Dethroning Moment of Suck for the adults. The plot of the episode itself is rather nonsensical, especially having No Ending. (The episode ends by the kids building a bus with a giant stereo system, blasting music to lead all the homeless to California...where the homeless will be Somebody Else's Problem.)
• The episode "More Crap" in general. I mean, poop jokes are one thing and Mr. Hankey was at least entertaining, but an entire episode centered around who can take the biggest crap? With graphically detailed description of said crap?! Hang on for a moment while I go out and retch.
  • Worse still was the completely pointless stab at Bono. Yes, I am perfectly aware that the man can occasionally be a pretentious twit, but equating him to a literal sentient shit when he hasn't done anything particularly offensive in recent memory? That's not "Bono sucks--and we want to show you why".^[1] That says, "it's a slow news week--so here's a disgusting episode with a popular musician we don't like thrown in for the hell of it".
• Cartoon Wars cemented South Park's level of suck in my mind. The preachiness and smug attitudes this show exudes over people each week is astonishing. Then of course, there are people who submit wholeheartedly to their concepts and ideas. Keep in mind that I don't care about Family Guy at this point, but I don't think people realize that South Park is lampshading the concept pretty heavily.
• The very worst moment I ever saw in South Park's long-running anti-activist, pro-Status-Quo crusade, was the episode "Butt Out." With little remorse, the creator's depict the tobacco company as friendly and forthcoming, and anti-smoking activists are shown as willing to kill children to make a point. This episode seems outright worthy of being sued for slander.
• The episode "Eek, a Penis!" So SO many Unfortunate Implications and Family Unfriendly Aesops ("you'll never be a real man/woman, so why try? Plus Trey and Matt seem to have a thinly veiled contempt for Transsexuals.
  • The biggest sucky moment for the former would have to be the whole "Jews can't play basketball" crap. I'm not Jewish myself, but the subplot is basically one of the worst ways to make poor Kyle the Butt Monkey again! I have nothing against blacks, but Kyle is cuter in his normal, white and short self. And I'm certain that 2 years prior to this episode, there was a Disney Channel movie called Full Court Miracle, which was about, guess what? Basketball-playing Jews.
• Rain Forest Schmainforest is the biggest DMOS South Park has ever produced. Advocating the destruction of the rain forest, the Kick the Dog moments to Costa Rica, Cartman's constant bitching about how sucky the place is which is how what Trey Parker really feels after going to vacation there. The horrible Getting Gay With Kids song. And Kenny's one shot girlfriend who revives him at the end. All add up to a horrible episode.
  • I concur with the reasons for this episode being a DMOS, but it really emphasizes itself since it runs against the message the show usually gives, which is taking a moderate approach to environmentalism, like in Smug where they said hybrid cars were good so long as the people driving them weren't smug jerks, or in Goobacks, where they (at least temporarily) advocated fixing the earth now so that it doesn't suck later, so this episode was also inconsistent in terms of message.
• I just got done watching "It's A Jersey Thing" and I was really enjoying the episode (Keep in mind, I personally dislike Jersey Shore despite the fact that many people I know, including my sister, watch it), it was one of the funniest episodes I've ever seen. But near the end, I just completely lost my smile that I got from the episode when Al-Qaeda (South Park was trying to find people to stop the invasion of New Jersey... long story short, they turned to Al-Qaeda) came in with American Airlines planes and crashed into the ground right as a bunch of Jersey-ites were invading. Earlier in the episode, someone said that the tragedies of 9/11 would be funny in 10 months, but I had no problem with that. And in the end, they congratulated Osama Bin Laden for this act? (At least before he gets killed, anyway.) Well, at least most of the episode was good.
• The Scott Tenorman Must Die episode. Come the reveal that Cartman ground up his parents and fed them to him... that was just so ungodly creepy and portrayed Cartman as the biggest Complete Monster in the history of cartooning IMO. I totally gave up on the series after that.
  • I was bothered by the fact that Cartman confessed to a particularly deranged double murder in public, and everyone but Stan and Kyle stood around and did nothing while Stan and Kyle just said "Let's not make fun of Cartman anymore".
    • Not taking away from the above and I'm not entirely sure of the precise wording, but I think they said "I think it's best for us to never piss off Cartman again." It seemed like they said it out of fear, having never thought him capable of such a thing, especially since he spent the entire episode getting pranked during his own pranks.
      • Agreed +1. One of the things that made Cartman a good character is yes he was a racist asshole, but he was at least likeable and relatable. And I so wanted him to get revenge against Scott. But that moment was a complete jumping of the shark and Cartman has just become unbearable to watch on screen. Maybe it was the fact that I first saw this episode with my Dad, who wasn't exactly a fan of the show. I didn't exactly blame him for his reaction to the episode's ending.
• The recent plagiarism scandal involving College Humor. To make it short, the writers stole a CollegeHumor sketch about the confusing nature of Inception and pasted it into their episode spoofing said film. Here's a comparison between the two. Note how many lines remain totally unchanged. ("Sometimes, thoughts of my dead wife manifest themselves as trains.") Even though Trey and Matt later apologized for it, I really expected better of them than to have done it in the first place. South Park has been on the air since 1997; they should have known what they were getting into.
• For me, it was Go God Go, making Dawkins get it on with Ms Garrison. It was lazy - I mean for one thing Dawkins is already married and for another it is simply using homosexuality specifically to generate offence. Its like they couldn't come up with anything really offensive they could say so they went with the standby subtext of "bros don't do bros".
• I didn't care for the second part of season 14 too much, aside from the "Coon Vs. Coon and Friends" trilogy, but what I'm gonna mention here is "Creme Fraiche." It was a huge disappointment. My friend had this theory that they made it right after the aforementioned trilogy because that got people so excited to see the next episode that they didn't need another reason, and as long as people are likely to watch it anyway, might as well not put any effort into it. I think that's what happened, but anyway, it just wasn't funny, especially after all the Shallow Parody episodes that half of the season had anyway. After seeing three episodes that finally were not parodies of something (I guess I'm biased because I just happened to not be familiar with any of the things that were parodied), the season ends with another one. The Shake-Weight subplot was based on an unbelievably obvious joke that everyone and their mother thought of as soon as they first heard about the thing, smirked at once, and then moved on with their lives. And as for the main plot, the joke that was also sort of obvious was stretched out for about the whole thing, and then there were other jokes that only people who watch cooking shows will get. I just really hope next season has less obscure humor; it makes me feel dumb when the only jokes I can understand are "lol, shaikwate eekwuls peenus"
• As much as I like the series, "Stanley's Cup" never happened. I know what they were trying to do, but to me, the ending just comes off as unspeakably mean-spirited.
  • Yeah, I hated that, too. I thought the boys were the stars of the show! This episode was a complete waste of 22 minutes.
• Funnybot. Basically it was a half hour of them saying they didn't deserve the award that they won at the recent comedy awards and that Tyler Perry isn't funny. The jokes were predictable and were so few and far inbetween it is one episode thats so bad that even my friend who'd defend against every DMOS on this page yet would agree on this episode sucking.
• For the most part, I enjoyed Crack Baby Athletic Association, but I immensely hated Kyle in this episode. The way he was so easily convinced by Cartman that crack baby basketball was a good idea, and his constant attempts to justify his decision to Stan, made me think much less of him as a character. Fortunately, Stan brought about a Crowning Moment of Awesome when he told Kyle that he sounded just like Cartman.
• The early episode "Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus". The episode didn't feature the boys at all and instead of them, they played nothing more than fart jokes condensed down into a 22 minute half hour episode. That isn't the worst part though, the worst part about this episode is that it originally aired inbetween the "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut" two-parter special as an April Fools Day prank. I'm very sure a lot of early viewers weren't pleased about this at all. Parker and Stone sure weren't.
• "You're Getting Old", specifically the ending. It started out as a good episode but the ending totally ruined it. Randy and Sharon get a divorce and they leave South Park over Randy's Serious Business addiction. I'm given to understand that it's a way for the creators to vent their frustrations because they're sick of South Park. Which is horseshit. If they don't like South Park they can stop working on it, and that's fine. No fuss no muss, but there's no reason to ruin a perfectly good show just because they're having problems with it.
  • Agreed, it seemed like a huge Take That to their viewers due to them bitching about latest movies and video games. But sadly, they can't just stop working on South Park until 2013, they're still under contract.
  • I feel like the odd one out that found something to fuss about other than the aforementioned Author Tract. The thing that bothered me the most was Stan's 'cynicism'. It was basically just Matt and Trey celebrating their newfound ability to say "shit" uncensored... by having the word be said as often as they saw fit. Sound familiar? Maybe because they did the same thing 10 seasons ago with "It Hits The Fan".
• I'll go with "Marjorine". The boys think some cootie catcher is a future predicting device, so they decide they have to infiltrate Heidi Turner's slumber party to get it. They fake Butters' death, which is scary by itself, but with a more serious look, the people should have been smart enough to know that was NOT Butters who jumped off the building. And when the boys finally get their hands on the device, they decide to destroy it. ...So basically, they faked Butters' death and made him disguise as a girl for nothing. Meanwhile, when Butters returns home, instead of taking time to listen to him, his parents trap him in the basement, and to feed him they have a stranger visit them and kill her. What.
• While Season 15 is turning out to be the worst season yet in my opinion, off the top of my head I have to say the season premiere, HUMANCENTiPAD. A Squick-worthy and possibly Nightmare Fuel inducing parody of a Squick-worthy and Nightmare Fuel inducing Horror flick among other things can turn one's stomach enough to quit the show for good.
• I would defend most of the episodes listed on this page, but not "Douche and Turd." Basically, the school has to vote for a new mascot after PETA complains about their mascot being a cow. Both Kyle and Cartman put joke options on the ballot; Kyle puts a Giant Douche on, and Cartman puts a Turd Sandwich on. Stan doesn't feel like voting because he thinks both candidates are stupid. His parents dumbassery is expected, but then Kyle gets in on the action by calling Puff Daddy to intimidate Stan into voting. This by itself is just a Wall Banger, but when Stan goes to vote, and votes for Turn Sandwich, Kyle gets on Stan's case... again, for not voting for Giant Douche, and tries to call over Puff Daddy again. Stan sees that his best friend is being a Jerkass, and decides to not vote and get banished from town. When Stan is forced to leave, Kyle says all this can be ignored if Stan would just vote... for Giant Douche. Stan refuses, so Kyle spits on him. Kyle asked Stan "Whose friend are you?" when he should have been asking himself the same question. Kyle's worst moment in the whole series.
• The China Problem is the one episode that I can't stand to watch. It's basically 20 minutes of unnecessary Wangst over how Indiana Jones was "raped" in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We are then shown Indiana Jones being graphically raped by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg three times during the episode. The boys keep annoyingly breaking down into tears every time it's mentioned, to the point where they report Lucas and Spielberg to the police. The worst part is that it ruins an otherwise hilarious subplot involving Cartman and Butters holding up a P.F. Chang's while pretending to be Chinese.
  • Agreed. The graphic rapes scenes are far too uncomfortable to watch and is enough to ruin the entire episode. It's far more unpleasant than the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that's for sure.
• For me, the episode "Cartmanland" was really Kyle's worst moment. Now, yes, I realize many shows Negative Continuity for humour, but in a series with Satan, God, and Jesus all hanging around like nobodies business, it seemed pathetically stupid and whiny of Kyle to bitch that God can't exist because Cartman gets a million dollars. Then he get's a hemorrhoid and complains more, and his parents read him the story of Job to help renew his faith, but they forget (like a lot of people seem to do) that story ends on a high note with Job being rewarded twice over for his faith. Oh, and in the last 30 seconds, Kyle's faith is renewed because Cartman gets screwed over. Yep, apparently you know God exists when bad things happen to people you don't like.
• The ending to "Ass Burgers" was horrible. Long story short, right when Stan decides to embrace the changes to his life, everything returns to normal: Kyle and Cartman are at odds again (at least that was funny), Randy and Sharon suddenly get back together, and Stan suddenly stops seeing everything as shit. That has to be the laziest Writer Cop Out ever. Even more so than "Donnie Fatso". The only saving grace the episode (which I otherwise enjoyed) had was that Stan stopped being cynical by hiding beer. Even with that, the episode still ends up being a DMoS. Before you say something like, "That was the joke! It was supposed to be stupid!", it was still lazy, and Rule of Funny doesn't work when it's done for the sake of laziness.
  • As someone with Asperger's Syndrome, this troper wasn't found of them making fun of it without doing any research on it. First off, it's not a disease. I'd liken it more to a social dyslexia. You cannot catch it from anyone or anything. Second, they had the balls to make a statement signifying that it's the fucking same as being retarded. Last time I checked, someone with Asperger's is not retarded. To me it looks like all they did was decide that Asperger's Syndrome has a funny name to make fun of and went with that idea whilst having absolutely no idea what it really is.
• "The F Word": A few days after the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed, South Park did an episode about the word "fag" being applied to bikers instead of homosexuals which argued that the word is arbitrary and featured a black man being tied in chains and dragged around by bikers in a manner reminiscent of James Byrd, Jr.'s death. The show thrives on Ripped from the Headlines, but completely dismissing the legitimate concerns about slurs (which they themselves articulated in "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" and "Chef Goes Nanners") while mocking the death of a man killed for racial reasons, all in response to hate crime legislation, was disgusting. If there's a single solitary moment, it would be the bikers dragging a black man around in chains - because clearly, recreating an act of racist violence and playing it for comedy is a great way to make a point against hate crime legislation.
  • I laughed at Cartman crapping on the motorcycles but in general that episode was obnoxious. It's obvious that Trey and Matt just want to be able to use "fag" as a more general pejorative and are annoyed that people might object to this. Get over it, fellas.
• "Bass to Mouth" was just a mess from beginning to end. A kid defecates his pants and commits suicide because of Cartman's bullying, so when another similar incident occurs, the teachers turn to... Cartman? I can only assume that absolutely anyone else was busy because that's who'd be more appropriate for the job. As his compensation, Cartman demands to beat up Selena Gomez, which they cede to. Why Selena Gomez? His beef with her is never explained. Usually they have a solid reason for picking on a celebrity, but I can't think of anything heinous or mockable Gomez has done besides star in a vapid but altogether inoffensive Disney sitcom; did they just pick a celebrity name at random? Also there's a gossip website called the Eavesdropper posting embarrassing information about students, and for some unexplained reason Cartman is never suspected of being behind it - I don't know why because that's just the kind of thing that's right up his alley. Oh but get this, the person behind it is a rat named Wikileaks. Not only is that oh, so very subtle, but also very much still relevant in late 2011. And it's clear they have no idea what Wikileaks actually is; the looks and content of the Eavesdropper are much more like TMZ if anything. And here's the best part. In the end, not only does Cartman get off scot-free for pushing a student to suicide and two others to the brink, but he also gets the last laugh on the teachers, after their half-baked attempt to kill him goes awry. When someone acts so retardedly that it makes Cartman look like the moral high ground, you know you've made a real clusterfuck of an episode.
• The ending to Jared Has Aides. After Butters gets grounded again, he has to have Cartman cover for him when he left the house. It's like Stan, Kyle, and Butters thought that there was no way letting a Jerkass like Cartman cover for someone he picks would backfire in anyway. When the Stoches call, Cartman, imitating Butters, calls his dad a pussy and his mother a horse-banging skank. When they get home at the end, they are heard punching Butters and whipping him with a belt while he whimpers off-screen. I've said this to Rumiko Takahashi, Gosho Aoyama, and Mike Judge: child abuse is not fucking funny! If saying AIDs was funny wasn't what got this episode banned for half a decade, then the ending sure as hell did.
• History Channel Thanksgiving. Thank you Matt and Trey, for once again telling everyone that anyone who believes in UFOs, Cryptozoology and ghosts are stupid, gullible idiots who believe anything they hear, but also going the extra mile by saying that any "experts" are actually fraudulent morons. The worst part of this is the fact that they did this already with Dead Celebrities and handled it much better there. Here, however, they decided to just wing it and make up a bunch crummy unfunny gags (the only thing remotely funny about it was the scenes involving Natalie Portman). Mixing in the horrific Canon Discontinuity, even by this show's standards (sooo, we're all just going to forget that Cartman was probed by aliens twice?) and the Unfortunate Implications that all Native Americans are evil, thieving monsters who must be gruesomely destroyed and you have the worst episode of South Park ever.
• Cash for Gold was just a massive failure of an episode on all levels. Satirizing cash for gold kiosks and stores is a pretty soft target anyways, but throwing in random semi-satires of Foxcom and home shopping networks made the episode even more unbearable. There's a retread of Cartman's "...while you fuck me" routine from HUMANCENTiPAD which manages to be incredibly unfunny. There's an attempt at pathos with Stan's grandfather that falls incredibly flat, considering that Parker and Stone, in the previous episode, managed to wring a lot of genuine emotion out of Clyde's mother's death (YMMV, of course, but for me at least). The lowest point was easily the shopping network man killing himself - Matt and Trey have pulled off humor much darker than this before, but since the whole episode was off, the capper seemed incredibly mean-spirited and awful instead of a fitting send-off. Just a horrendous mess of an episode.
• “Broadway Bro Down”. While this episode did an excellent Take That at Broadway musicals, the DMOS for me was the third act: after a horrified Randy finds out that Shelley had already gone off with her new boyfriend (named Larry Feegan) to see Wicked, he (without taking a second look at audience in the theater that would prove him evidence that none of them were doing the ‘blowjob’) goes through a disastrous attempt to stop the show (long story short, he was kicked out of the theater for being disruptive) by breaking the water main that resulted with Larry fatally drowned (another long story short, Larry was always forced to wear a life preserver and took it off to prove his independence when he went with Shelley to see Wicked). Thanks, guys. You made a probably heartwarming subplot, and then ruined it by using Randy to kill off Larry. Seriously, I find this episode two-times worse than any American Dad episodes involving Steve Smith attempting to win a girl’s heart that ends in a failure.

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1. ↑ We aren't given any reasons why we should dislike Bono other than "he does a lot of charity work" and the generic "he's a self-absorbed celebrity".