South Park

I mark the death of Chef as the ending of the classic Era personally.

I've always weirdly thought the episodes where they introduce new police characters outside of Barbrady was sort of a change in the show. Not necessarily for the worse or anything but around then is when I started to realize things had changed a bit

2003-2004

Hers how I see it

First short films: Origins

Seasons 1-3: Early South Park

Seasons 4-6: Classic era

Seasons 7-12: Early Golden Age

Seasons 13-18: Late Golden Age

Seasons 19-21: Serialization era

Seasons 22-23: Tegridy farms era

Season 24-Present: Exclusive event era

Scott Tenorman Must Die is the end of the classic era.

Shortly after Matt and Trey started leaning into the social commentary era with Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants.

If the classic era means the height of the show's influence on pop culture, like the "oh my god they killed Kenny" and "screw you guys I'm going home" stuff, that was over by season 4. I also think the show generally gets a lot better at that point

Classic era ended with Scott Tenorman eating his parents. Cartman's character development reflects the "eras"

Pretty much agree. Need the early cartoon madness back or it may as well be a live action sitcom.

Scott Tenorman Must Die is like first moment I feel the old South Park started to change. Went from silly stories of 4 boys to insane diabolical since then.

Other than that, the official end has to be Chef's death and ofc Issac Hayes. It is not the same without Chef.

For me, it’s -

Season 1-5: Classic era

Season 6-15: Golden age

Season 16-22: noticeable decline

Season 23-present: back on the upswing

Newer seasons and the recent specials have been amazing, but for awhile there it was just okay

After Mr Garrison becomes president

the last classic south park season was 13

when they started adding pc principal and all sorts of other stuff like that, that's when it got to be there were maybe 1 or 2 good episodes per season, if that

that's when it truly died

i've seen some of the later episodes, and apparently it came back after a while of being shit, but i don't wanna go back and suffer through it, trying to figure out exactly when that was

it could've only been bad for the few seasons i knew were bad before i gave up (14-16), or it could've been bad up until the last couple seasons, but i'm probably not gonna find out

Chef dying was the end of classic South Park.

Agree , nothing can top the first 6 seasons

When Mr Slave disappeared. U can't laugh at that anymore...

It depends on how you define “classic”. If you mean “the original style of the show”, then definitely I’d say Season 6. If you define “classic” as “the best era”, I’d say South Park STARTED really getting good with Season 6. Some people say the golden age ends at Season 10 or so, but I’d say everything up to 17 stays broadly high quality and still feels the same, so I include it in my “golden age”, which ends when the show delves into serialization.

To me it ended with season 19. After that everything felt lazy with so many reoccurring plots like PC principal, memberberries, Trump, weed, etc.

There was definitely a shift before that as well where humor seemed to far less prioritized than it was earlier. Like their earlier philosophy was "is there some current event going on that we can make a funny episode about?" to: "I want to make an episode about this current event, lets try to make it funny". But that change felt a lot more gradual.

S7E1 Cancelled Idk to me, the show felt more aware of itself, maybe it was the better animation (which I’m not hating) who knows

The old “crappy” animation is what i loved about the show. Member? I member it was better back then before JJ abrams 😂

End of Season 5, when Kenny died "permanently" then Butters got promoted to main cast

1-6 definitely, the show started getting a lot more satirical and story-focused in season 7

Cartoon Wars was the glorious finale of the classic era I think

• but it’s great it’s continued to evolve and have some great new eras since

Season 6

Season 11

No, tweak, Ms. Chokesondick

Once Kenny stopped dying every episode

They were all classic to me, until the Randy quit his job as a geologist and moved to a farm to sell cannabis.

Chef's death

Oh man, when does SP go from comedy show to Trey Parker's pulpit? I'm not sure where to end first era or start second era but third era definitely starts with PC Principal and the show declaring that they lost the culture war.

I think it ended around season 10. The early seasons had a charm the newer ones lack.

Yeah I'd say season 6.

Whenever the show became all Cartman/Butters all the time

When they stopped using celebrity pics