South Park: Season 1, Episode 1: "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe"

South Park:
Season 1, Episode 1
Grade: 6.3

It’s so weird how primitive the animation looks at the earliest point of the series. Its pretty close to the way things look now but not quite. The animation almost looks 30 years old in a way that makes the early animation a lot cooler than the way it looks now which is great but not as cool as this early animation. This first episode is really focused on creating the world and the pace and dynamic of the show for us. The type of humor the show wants to convey is put on priority here as its just trying to give us a sense of what the tone of the overall show is. It’s weird how different this first episode is from the others I’ve seen and I wonder how long this feel that the show has is conveyed. The voices are a bit different as well. Kyle’s voice is higher and Cartman’s voice is much harsher. I do enjoy that there is a portion of the shows episodes that seem to concentrate in humor derived purely from the characters and the world of South Park. This episode features aliens at South Park and Cartman getting an anal probe as the episode title says. He continually denies it because of the embarrassment it brings. Favorite moments include Ike because he is so cute, the music that pays when Chef drive up to the kids, Mr. Hat telling Kyle to go to hell, the cows wanting to board the train. Anything involving Wendy Testaburger in the early seasons when Mary Kay Bergman did the voices of the girls and women on the show before tragically killed herself. Stan’s smile when he sees Wendy, the milk is yummy poster, “I love to singa about the…”, Kenny’s death and subsequent decomposition by rats, “Yeah, I want cheesy poofs!”, Cartman and the kitty, the bird landing in Stan’s puke, “Don’t be difficult Eric!”, the cows in general, “Hey look a French fry!”. Overall this was quite a good episode but it’s almost more fascinating as the first episode of South Park than it is just as an episode on its own.