The 5 Worst South Park Episodes, Ranked

The best "South Park" episodes combine the show's signature vulgarity with a genuinely meaningful message that says something about the world, and might even present a few ideas of how to do things better in the future. Failing that, the show can still usually be relied on to deliver a good laugh at the expense of whatever weirdness is dominating the zeitgeist at any given time. 

Still, despite the surprisingly grand pedigree the animated series has managed to build during its 26 seasons and counting, it hasn't always been at the top of its game. Every once in a while, "South Park" puts out a stinker that has nothing to do with Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo (voice of Trey Parker) and everything to do with ideas that fall flat on their face. Let's take a look at five of the worst episodes "South Park" has ever unleashed upon its viewers.

"South Park" season 2 episode 1, "Terrance and Philip in Not Without My Anus," isn't quite the worst episode of the show, but it's certainly among the most hated. Season 1 ends with a huge cliffhanger about the identity of Eric Cartman's father, and fans were expecting the sophomore season's opener to finally answer the question. Instead, the episode tickles these expectations with a lengthy recap of the Cartman's dad situation ... and then rolls out a completely unrelated story about the Canadian stars of "The Terrance and Phillip Show," and their fart-fueled fight against Saddam Hussein (voice of Matt Stone). 

Over the seasons, Terrance Henry Stoot (Stone) and Phillip Niles Argyle (Parker) grew into some of "South Park's" best characters, but at this point they were still the series' take on the deliberately crude show-within-show trope á la "The Itchy and Scratchy Show" from "The Simpsons." In other words, Terrance and Phillip were not the kind of characters you'd have expected to see headlining an episode of their own, especially at a moment this pivotal. 

This, of course, was the point. The episode aired on April 1, 1998 as an elaborate April Fool's joke on every "South Park" fan's expense. Unfortunately, it simply wasn't very good. A sub-par toilet humor episode featuring two underdeveloped side characters was one thing, but purposefully derailing the show at a pivotal moment was completely another — and fans weren't happy. Despite (and because of) this, Matt Stone told Entertainment Weekly that "Terrance and Philip in Not Without My Anus" is the creators' favorite "South Park" episode:

"I love that episode. It's so f****** weird, and it's so different, and the fact that nobody else really liked it makes me like it more."

The problem with "Funnybot" is that it's not very entertaining, very bold, or ... well, very funny. This "South Park" season 15 episode goes a bit meta and tackles the very concept of comedy — something the show had already done quite effectively with, say, "The Terrance and Philip Show." In "Funnybot," Parker and Stone opt to deliver their satire payload by making the episode as predictable and bland as possible, a decision driven by either misguided design or particularly ironic accident. 

It all begins when Jimmy (Parker) hosts a painfully boring comedy award ceremony that irks the whole of Germany when the country wins the award for Most Unfunny People. Yeah, that old chestnut. It would still be a fine setup for a truly left-field spin — remember what the show did to Canadians — but instead, the episode doubles down with its predictable stereotypes. The Germans opt for an engineering solution and manufacture the Funnybot, a vaguely Dalek-looking technological answer to the country's inherent humorlessness. From that point on, the episode continues to go through the motions: Funnybot's jokes are awful, but people like them anyway. Soon, his joke programming goes awry and he goes homicidal, delivering yet another "classic" joke at its country of origin's expense as the German robot threatens the world.   

"South Park" is a rare show that can usually be expected to deliver at least one narrative sucker punch per episode. Because of the high bar the show has set, it's doubly disappointing to see a run-of-the-mill episode like "Funnybot" go through the motions and waste all of its potential by taking the easiest route in every turn. The most boring episode of a middling "South Park" season, "Funnybot" is something this show should never be: cookie-cutter and lazy.  

"South Park" is at its best when it dares to get seriously weird. Unfortunately, when it does this and experiments by focusing on minor supporting characters at the expense of the core cast, the result is sometimes less than the sum of its parts ... and in the case of "A Million Little Fibers," even the parts themselves aren't all that. Of all characters, the episode focuses on Towelie (Vernon Chatman),the show's resident sentient, drug-addicted towel who attempts to disguise himself as a human to get people to read his inspirational autobiography. When Oprah Winfrey (Nicole Draco) chooses Towelie's book as her Book of the Month, this ends up causing a world of trouble — along with a significant amount of the show's characteristic gross-out comedy. 

Chronologically speaking, "A Million Little Fibers" is stuck in a bad spot. Season 10 is one of the strongest "South Park" seasons that features, among many other highlights, the Emmy-winning "Make Love, Not Warcraft." Still, even if it was connected to a far less prestigious group of episodes, "A Million Little Fibers" simply wouldn't work. Focusing on Towelie and Oprah at the expense of everything else simply can't sustain an entire episode, and more often than not, "Fibers" seems to be trying too hard to stir the oddity pot. As Stone told Entertainment Weekly, he certainly agrees:

"It was weird on top of weird with weird in the middle. I'd erase that one. I think you could take that show and split it into two different shows. But putting it together, it just feels like, ”What the f*** is this crap? Why am I watching this? I tuned in to watch 'South Park.'"

Thanks to the fast-paced making of "South Park," the show can often afford to be extremely topical and has scored some massive wins with its ability to react to current events. However, this approach can mean that some of the episodes rely so much on their context that they can't stand on their own two legs. Perhaps no other "South Park" episode suffers from this more than "Jakovasaurs." The season 3 episode introduces the titular creatures that, it almost immediately becomes apparent, are meant to poke fun at the much-maligned "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace" comic relief character Jar Jar Binks. As nearly every character (and no doubt the viewer) agrees, the Jakovasaurs are absolutely intolerable, and their presence is the cartoon equivalent of nails on a chalkboard — deliberately so, of course.

The problem is that even back in the day, this approach made "Jakovasaurs" a grating watch ... and the joke has aged extremely badly. The world is now aware of just how badly the Jar Jar Binks hatred from "Star Wars" fans hit actor Ahmed Best, and it was delightful to see "The Mandalorian" give him the redemption arc he deserves, courtesy of his new role as Jedi Master Kelleran Beq. Even Jar Jar the character got rid of the majority of his silliness and became a respected senator. With the crutch of timely parody removed many times over, all that remains of "Jakovasaurs" is a disappointing "South Park" episode that's further dragged down by the constant intervention from some of the most annoying characters in animation history. 

I'm a big fan of a good one-off episode. Give me an unexpected musical side quest, a bold narrative experiment, or even the much-maligned "The Fly" episode of "Breaking Bad," and I'm happy. However, the very point of such narrative adventures is that they often  explore familiar characters in a setting we're completely unaccustomed to see them in. 

"Pip" might have been an excellent example of this had it focused on its main big idea — "South Park" does Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" — from a different angle. Unfortunately, it drops the ball by eschewing every major character in the show and only features the minor and perpetually downtrodden British kid, Pip (Stone). This makes sense in a small way since the protagonist of "Great Expectations" is also called Pip Pirrip, but what doesn't make sense is the complete absence of every other recognizable "South Park" character. This is explained away by the episode's prequel nature, as it essentially tells what Pip was up to before he arrived in South Park. 

"Pip" is an episode that even its creators consider subpar – a pointless experiment that, despite its attempt at a huge and unexpected finale, ultimately just isn't very exciting. And if there's one thing you absolutely never want "South Park" to be, it's "not very exciting."