You're Getting Old (well not you)

Spoilers ahead for the fifteenth season of South Park.

South Park has always been one of those shows that as a kid I realized tended to make adults argue. One mention of South Park in middle or high school would have people angrily calling it out for the extremes it goes to make certain jokes while others would say it’s messages were very serious and done well. Recently season twenty of this infamous show started and I decided to rewatch some episodes.

 “You’re Getting Old” is the episode I’ll be  talking about. It’s very different than other  episodes of South Park in general. The episode  was one when I first watched it when it aired, I  had this overwhelming feeling of “this cartoon  just became too real”. In the episode one of the  main boys, Stan Marsh, has his tenth birthday.  One of the gifts he receives is a CD of a band  that is then taken away by his mother who  claims it’s just crap. Stan, before losing the CD,  has the music downloaded to his computer, but  once he listens to it, all he hears is literal crap  noises. The rest of the episode spends time  showing Stan deal with this change as  everything he once loved and enjoyed is crap. This change for Stan is labeled as just part of growing up, but this change also leads to his parents realizing they no longer love each other and Stan’s mom moves out of the house. The end of the episode shows Stan sees everything as crap. He doesn’t find anything as enjoyable anymore like most people and shows signs of clear depression, but the adults in his life are too caught up in their own problems to notice. He even sees his best friend as a pile of crap and gets alienated from his friends. The episode didn’t end on a happy note, and this was done to show that life doesn’t always happy endings. That sometimes growing up, means seeing people for who they are and deciding whether they can still be a part of your life.