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Trey Parker Wishes He Could Erase ‘South Park’s First Three Seasons

Trey Parker Wishes He Could Erase ‘South Park’s First Three Seasons

Alyson Lewis
February 24, 2024

Welcome to the Cracked newsletter!

This issue is about a banned ‘Doonesbury’ strip, mistakes in songs, cool feats no one witnessed, clever wordplay, and much more.

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Conservative Newspaper Conglomerate Proved Their Opponents’ Point When They Banned This ‘Doonesbury’ Comic Strip

You’d better not joke about Florida censoring speech that goes against their preferred narrative, or else Florida newspapers will censor your joke.

For 53 years, Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury has graced the funny pages of local and national newspapers, bringing dry, informed political satire to readers across the country six-to-eight panels at a time. Since starting the strip, the Yale graduate and Pulitzer Prize-winner has ruffled the feathers of the rich and powerful on many occasions, earning the ire of politicians like President George H.W. Bush and House Speaker Tip O'Neill over their portrayal in the political parody cartoon. With Doonesbury, Trudeau takes aim at the reckless and influential regardless of their party affiliation, making few friends in the process besides the papers that carry his comic strip – well, some of them, anyways.

Trey Parker Wishes He Could Erase the First Three Seasons of ‘South Park’ From Existence

Trey Parker wants to destroy the first three years of South Park and scrub them from the zeitgeist — it’s probably the only thing that he and Barbra Streisand have in common.

Like any TV show that’s been on for a quarter century, today’s South Park has some significant differences from the original product. For starters, the animation quality has improved from “intentionally shitty” to “masterfully shitty,” many O.G. characters have been phased out (rest in peace, Chef), the episodes don’t close with the boys learning a lesson and Kenny dies a lot less than he used to. Today’s South Park is more mature, but not certainly not too mature, just like the show’s creative heads, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And, just like many of us look at pictures from our teen years and cringe at our frosted tips and JNCO jeans, Parker wishes he could erase some of the mistakes he made in the late 1990s.