South Park: Every Emmy-Nominated Episode, Ranked

South Park may be controversial, but its searing social commentary has won the Trey Parker-Matt Stone series several nominations at the Emmy Awards.

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Although it’s often compared to Family Guy, due to both shows’ crude sense of humor, South Park is the much smarter series. It has a much more insightful take on current events, a more thoroughly developed cast of characters, and a stronger command of story structure.

As a result, the latter series is a bigger hit with Emmy voters, despite the fact that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have lampooned the vanity of the Emmys on the show itself. South Park has five Emmy-winning episodes out of 17 nominations. Here is Every Emmy-Nominated South Park Episode, Ranked.

17 It’s Christmas in Canada

South Park really loves to lay into Canada, and after a while, the joke becomes tiresome. In “Christmas in Canada,” Ike’s birth parents take him back to the Great White North, and Kyle ventures off to save him. On the weekend before the episode aired, Saddam Hussein was captured in Operation Red Dawn, conveniently providing the episode with the perfect ending. Still, the parody of The Wizard of Oz is a little basic for this show.

16 Crack Baby Athletic Association

In a sharp lampoon of the NCAA’s refusal to compensate its players, “Crack Baby Athletic Association” sees Cartman setting up an athletic league to exploit the labor of crack-addicted infants. He later gets a taste of his own medicine when EA does the same to him.

The scene in which Cartman infiltrates the NCAA and jokes that “stoo-dent ath-o-letes” is a euphemism for “slave” is really biting. Plus, the depiction of Guns ‘n’ Roses guitarist Slash as a mythical, Santa Claus-like figure was hilarious.

15 Member Berries

The residents of South Park fall under the spell of a nostalgia-inducing fruit in the Season 20 premiere “Member Berries.” The parallel drawn between the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the rise of Donald Trump doesn’t quite land. The scene in which J.J. Abrams is approached to reboot the national anthem and he communicates from his window with a lamp is brilliant, though.

14 Chinpokomon

This searing critique of the Pokemon franchise sees the kids of South Park being brainwashed by a Japanese corporation and trained to fight in a military force as they collect Chinpokomon toys and video games. The same basic plot would be recycled by The Simpsons a couple of years later in an episode called “New Kids on the Blecch,” but “Chinpokomon” is still the finer episode of television.

13 200/201

The show’s double-barrel 200th episode was nominated as a pair. This is easily the show’s most controversial installment to date — even more controversial than the one that got South Park banned in China — as it still can’t be found online or in syndication. It’s not even on the home media release for the season.

The main source of controversy was its image of the prophet Muhammad, which led to Trey Parker and Matt Stone receiving death threats. As a milestone episode, “200/201” was pretty spectacular.

12 Freemium Isn’t Free

Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to do a South Park episode about “freemium” gaming when they were offered the chance to license the show as such a game. As they looked into the “freemium” business model, they realized it was just a scam, playing on addictive personalities to bilk players out of a ton of cash, a little at a time.

This is one of those South Park episodes where the message is more important than the story.

11 Raising the Bar

In “Raising the Bar,” the residents of South Park decry the death of culture as Honey Boo Boo becomes the flagship star of a network called The Learning Channel. Meanwhile, Cartman enjoys the lowering of society’s bar and uses it to get himself a rascal mobility scooter and a reality show. This is the episode with James Cameron’s catchy seafaring theme song (“James Cameron / the bravest pioneer!”).

10 Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride

The Season 1 episode “Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride” tackled the issue of queer acceptance at a time when TV shows were avoiding it. When Stan finds out his dog is gay, he learns about homosexuality at Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Animal Sanctuary and tries to get the town to accept it.

The episode was praised by GLAAD and became one of the early episodes that really defined what the show was. For good measure, George Clooney guest-stars as Stan’s dog, Sparky.

9 Imaginationland: The Movie

Terrorists attack our imagination in “Imaginationland: The Movie,” a three-part episode that Trey Parker and Matt Stone considered making as a second feature-length South Park movie. It’s a really well-developed story that, despite not technically being a movie, still feels like a movie.

8 Put It Down

This episode is best-remembered for its titular musical number, done in the style of a preachy protest song, suggesting that the U.S. President shouldn’t be allowed to use their smartphone. Tweek fears an attack by North Korea and tries to extend an olive branch, but President Garrison keeps taking to Twitter to make matters worse.

7 Trapped in the Closet

South Park’s lampoon of the Church of Scientology, “Trapped in the Closet,” generated massive controversy when it first aired. Tom Cruise reportedly threatened to pull out of promoting Mission: Impossible III if Comedy Central didn’t pull the episode mocking his religion. The Church even reportedly sent people to sift through Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s trash looking for “vulnerabilities.”

6 Best Friends Forever

This satire of the Terri Schiavo case sees Kenny being kept alive on a life support machine. Soon enough, he’s at the center of a media frenzy, with protesters on one side saying he should be allowed to die and protesters on the other side saying it’s wrong to play God. Meanwhile, Heaven needs him to die so he can lead their armies as their “Keanu Reeves.”

5 Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants

South Park boldly aired “Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants” just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The episode expertly depicts the widespread paranoia that the attacks instilled in the American people (“Sharon, you’ve been watching CNN for about, uh…eight weeks now…”) and ends with Cartman taking on Osama bin Laden in some Looney Tunes-inspired slapstick.

4 You’re Not Yelping

A scathing indictment of pretentious Yelp critics, “You’re Not Yelping” hilariously draws on a couple of specific characters — including Cartman, Gerald, and Detective Harris — who start writing Yelp reviews.

Cartman abuses his power by forcing restaurants to give him free food and giving them a one-star rating if they don’t meet his every demand; Gerald writes long, unwieldy 50-page reviews chronicling every last poetic detail of his dining experience; and Detective Harris becomes more grizzled from his restaurant reviews than his police work. In the end, all the Yelp critics are so full of themselves that the town is able to cunningly use it against them.

3 Make Love, Not Warcraft

Deftly weaving World of Warcraft gameplay into South Park’s usual animation style, “Make Love, Not Warcraft” hilariously lampoons the gaming community. As a player starts terrorizing people in the game, the boys set out to gain enough experience points to liberate World of Warcraft from his evil reign. Meanwhile, Blizzard executives take notice and try to get “the Sword of a Thousand Truths” to the boys.

2 Black Friday

It’s rare that three disparate satirical subjects go hand-in-hand quite as perfectly as they do in “Black Friday.” In this case, those subjects are Game of Thrones, the Black Friday craze, and the PS4 v. Xbox One console wars. In the episode, the boys dress up in medieval fantasy garb and plot to get themselves PS4s on Black Friday. When some of the boys want Xbox Ones, they’re torn apart into two warring factions.

1 Margaritaville

In “Margaritaville,” South Park’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, Trey Parker and Matt Stone compare the U.S. economy to a religion.

From the banker in the opening scene (“…And it’s gone!”) to the headless chicken game making key financial decisions at the U.S. Treasury to Randy’s economic preaching (“Yea, it is an angry and unforgiving economy…”), this is South Park at its finest.

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