The thirteenth season of South Park, an American animated television comedy series, originally aired in the United States on Comedy Central between March 11 and November 18, 2009. The season was headed by the series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who served as executive producers along with Anne Garefino. The season continued to focus on the exploits of protagonists Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny and Butters in the fictional Colorado mountain town of South Park.
The season was the first of three new seasons Parker and Stone agreed to produce for the network under a renewal deal. It consisted of fourteen 22-minute episodes, which aired in two groups of seven episodes separated by a six-month gap. Prior to the season's premiere, all South Park episodes were made available for free viewing on the official series website, South Park Studios. The 13th season was the first to be broadcast in high definition and in widescreen. Continuing their practice from previous seasons, Parker and Stone wrote and produced each episode within the week before its broadcast date.
The 13th season satirized such topics as the ACORN scandal, Japanese whaling, piracy in Somalia and the marketing tactics of The Walt Disney Company. Celebrities were spoofed throughout the season, including the Jonas Brothers, Kanye West, Carlos Mencia, Paul Watson and Glenn Beck, all of whom publicly responded to their portrayals. The episode "Fishsticks" attracted particular media attention due to rapper Kanye West's declaration that its jokes about his arrogance were funny but hurt his feelings. "The F Word", in which the central characters attempt to change the definition of the word "fag", was especially controversial and prompted complaints from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. A broadcast of "Pinewood Derby" in Mexico was pulled, allegedly due to its depiction of President Felipe Calderón. "Fatbeard" was praised by the crew of , which was involved in the 2009 rescue of from Somali pirates.
The 13th season received mixed reviews: some critics called it one of South Park's strongest seasons, while others claimed the series was starting to decline in quality. The season maintained the average Nielsen rating viewership for the series, around 3 million viewers per episode. The episode "Margaritaville", which satirized the global recession then affecting much of the industrialized world, won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).
Episodes
Production
Crew
Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were the executive producers of the 13th season of South Park, along with Anne Garefino. The season was distributed by Comedy Central, where the series has aired since its inception in 1997. Frank C. Agnone II served as supervising producer, while Eric Stough, Adrien Beard, Vernon Chatman, Bruce Howell and Erica Rivinoja worked as producers. Parker also served as director and writer for the thirteenth season. Saturday Night Live cast member Bill Hader, who had previously worked as a consultant on the show, was credited as a producer starting in season 13. Hader said of his role with the show, "It's really Trey and Matt who kind of write everything, and you're just in the room kind of helping them.
Basically, I'm friends with them and they're just nice enough to invite me into the room and let me goof around." Ryan Quincy served as director of animation during the 13th season.
Development South Park was set to expire in 2008, but in August 2007 it was announced the series would be renewed for at least three more seasons, extending it through 2011. The new seasons, 13, 14 and 15, were each to consist of 14 episodes. Stone said of the announcement, "Three more years of South Park will give us the opportunity to offend that many more people." Parker and Stone also announced they would partner with Comedy Central to create a Los Angeles–based digital animation studio called South Park Digital Studios, which would serve as the center for all digital extensions of the South Park franchise and other animated projects.
Prior to the broadcast of the 13th season, Parker and Stone made every episode from the previous 12 seasons of South Park available for free viewing on the official series website, South Park Studios. New episodes from the 13th season were made available for one week after the original airdate, then removed for 30 days, after which they were returned to the site permanently. The episodes were uncensored and ad-supported, so no membership fees were required to view the shows. In a statement, Parker and Stone said, "We got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative."
Two months before the 13th season premiered, South Park Studios announced that it would be the first season to be broadcast in high definition and presented in widescreen. Episodes from previous seasons were also converted to high definition. The season's episodes first aired in the United States on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Comedy Central, and were repeated Wednesdays at 12 a.m., Thursdays at 10 p.m. and 12 a.m., and Sundays at 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., all EST. The first seven episodes of the season aired from March 11, 2009, premiering with "The Ring", and ended on April 22 with the mid-season finale "Fatbeard". The season returned with seven more episodes, resuming on October 7 with "Dead Celebrities", and ending on November 18 with the season finale, "Pee".
Writing Continuing their practice from previous seasons, Parker and Stone wrote and produced each episode within the week before its broadcast date, although as in previous seasons, only Parker was listed as writer in the end credits. The duo conceived a list of episode ideas at the start of the season, but said they preferred to wait until the last minute to start working. Deadline pressure, they explained, energized them as if they were doing a live show. Stone said of the practice, "We kind of need that [chaos] to work. We're, like, 'We have to do something right now. It's going on the air in just a few minutes.'" For example, three days before the broadcast of the season premiere, "The Ring", the script was only half-finished and the animation was incomplete. Likewise, they did not start work on "Whale Whores" until five days before the episode aired, and the scripts for "Margaritaville" and "Pee" were both still being finished the day before the episodes were first broadcast. Parker and Stone said "Dead Celebrities" was a particularly challenging episode to make—they were up all night working on it the day before it aired, and did not finish until 11 a.m. on its broadcast date. Some critics have said that this short turnaround process helps South Park stay fresh and allows the show to address current events in a timely fashion.
The 13th season introduced the characters Katie and Katherine, stars of a television show, The Queef Sisters, that consists largely of vaginal flatulence jokes. They are female equivalents of long-time characters Terrance and Phillip, who are initially angered at the competition from Katie and Katherine, but end up romantically involved with them. Season 13 also marked the final appearance of long-time supporting character Gordon Stoltski, the third grade student who read the morning announcements for South Park Elementary. In the episode "Dances with Smurfs", Gordon is murdered while reading the announcements by a gunman who mistakes him for a truck driver who slept with his wife. Some critics found the scene disturbing and inappropriate in the light of recent school shootings in the United States. In the 2009 Blu-ray commentary for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Parker mentioned that they originally had an idea for the season to bring back Saddam Hussein, one of the show's most prominent antagonists during its early run and who last appeared in the 7th season finale "It's Christmas in Canada", but such plans didn't come to fruition.
The running gag of killing protagonist Kenny McCormick continued, though he was killed only three times during the season: in the episode "The Ring", he contracts syphilis after engaging in oral sex; in "W.T.F.", he is shot by a rocket launcher during a professional wrestling match; and in "Pee", he drowns in the urine that inundates the water park. During the final half of the season, aliens were hidden in images throughout the episodes as part of a contest offered by South Park Studios. Viewers able to find the alien in the episode could enter a contest, with the grand winner getting an animated version of himself or herself placed in the South Park opening credits starting the next season. In December 2009, Matthew Klinner was announced winner of the contest.
Cultural references The 13th season also continued a South Park tradition of lampooning celebrities and timely issues. The episode "Margaritaville" satirized the global recession affecting much of the industrialized world at the time of the episode's broadcast. Parker and Stone said they had long planned to do an episode about the recession, but did not want to rush it because they wanted to make sure the script was strong. "Fatbeard" was based on real-life piracy in Somalia, which began receiving increasing international media attention in 2008; the Somali pirates are portrayed in a sympathetic light in the episode. "Dances with Smurfs" parodied the political commentary of Glenn Beck, a nationally syndicated radio show host and Fox News Channel political pundit. In the episode, Cartman makes outrageous claims with no basis in fact under the guise that he is simply asking rhetorical questions and seeking further discussion, a practice for which Beck has been criticized.
The episode "Whale Whores" addressed the controversies surrounding Japanese whaling, condemning not only the whalers who engaged in the practice, but shows like Whale Wars and activists like television celebrity Paul Watson who profit from fighting whaling. "Butters' Bottom Bitch" featured a scene in which Butters visits an ACORN office seeking benefits for prostitutes working for him, a reference to a similar 2009 scandal. The episode "Eat, Pray, Queef" demonstrated a double standard between rights of men and women by showing the South Park men, who have no problem with farting, strongly objecting to vaginal flatulence from women. The season finale, "Pee", satirized the disaster film genre, especially the movie 2012, which was released five days before the episode aired. Cartman interprets the large number of minorities at his favorite water park as a sign of the 2012 phenomenon, the prediction that cataclysmic events will occur in the year 2012, which is said to be the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar.
"The Ring" featured parodies of the pop-rock boy band Jonas Brothers and a foul-mouthed, greedy, physically violent Mickey Mouse, satirizing the Walt Disney Company's exploitation of family-friendly morals to disguise its profit motive. "The Coon" served as a parody of dark-toned comic book movies, like The Dark Knight (2008), The Spirit (2008) and Watchmen (2009). "Dead Celebrities" mocked numerous recently deceased celebrities, including Michael Jackson, Billy Mays and David Carradine, as well as the show Ghost Hunters. "Dances with Smurfs" mocked the 2009 James Cameron film Avatar, suggesting the plot borrows heavily from the film Dances with Wolves and comparing Avatar's blue aliens to the cartoon Smurfs. The episode "W.T.F." parodied professional wrestling in general and World Wrestling Entertainment in particular, highlighting the soap opera aspects of wrestling storylines and fans who believe the stories are real.
Music