Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s animated series South Park got its start as a defiantly crude slice of counterculture, with the shock value of potty-mouthed adolescents and the bashing of various sacred cows. As it’s aged, though, it’s only gotten smarter and better, surpassing The Simpsons as the best animated comedy on television several years ago, and holding onto that title with ease.



South Park’s seventh season spanned March through December of 2003 — owing to Comedy Central’s offbeat programming calendar and the show’s staggered production schedule — and includes a number of instant classics. “Toilet Paper” offers up the series’ take on the classic middle school prank, with Kyle overwhelmed with guilt after the fact, Officer Barbrady hot on their trail and Cartman contemplating killing him so that he doesn’t rat them out. “Lil’ Crime Stoppers,” meanwhile, finds the kids on the other side of the law, as they start their own detective agency. After returning a missing doll to a little girl, the police department recognizes the boys’ efforts and officially names them junior deputies, leading to an assignment to break up a meth lab. “South Park Is Gay” assays the metrosexual craze, with Cartman, Stan and Kenny falling victim to its sway; only Kyle doesn’t “feel” gay. Mr. Garrison, meanwhile, accuses the guys from Queer Eye of selling out.

The series really hits its stride late in the season, though. “Grey Dawn” takes as its leaping-off point the real-life story of an elderly man plowing through a Santa Monica farmer’s market in his car and killing a number of people, and turns it on its end. When the same happens in South Park, the town considers legislation to strip senior citizens of their driver’s licenses. This leads to a mass gathering of the elderly, and when the meeting breaks up, the rest of the town realizes they’ve created the circumstances for a catastrophic event — all of the senior citizens on the road at the same time. “Butt Out” makes the representatives from an anti-smoking advocacy group look like such tools that Kyle and the kids take up smoking. The wickedly clever “All About Mormons” does for that religion what “Trapped in the Closet” did for Scientology.

It’s “Raisins,” though, that might be the most jointly hilarious and astute offering here. After Wendy breaks up with Stan — through a friend, of course — he’s utterly devastated. (“Why?” he plaintively queries said friend. “I haven’t said anything to her for weeks!”) In an effort to cheer him up, Kyle and the gang take him to the titular local chain restaurant known for chicken wings and prepubescent hot girls. It doesn’t work — Stan instead joins the goth gang and wallows in despair. Oblivious Butters, however, finds his heart set afire by the casual touch and chirpy sociability of a waitress, and takes that as a sign that she’s his girlfriend. Oblivious to the fact that she only spends time with him at the restaurant, he proceeds to spend all his allowance wooing her with tips.

DVD extras on this three-disc set — housed, like previous seasonal releases, in expansive gatefold packaging in a nice cardboard slipcase — consist of mini-commentaries by Stone and Parker. Running only several minutes apiece, these introductions contain a few bon mots here and there, such as when Parker reveals that the Mexican restaurant/fun park at the center of “Casa Bonita,” where Cartman tricks Butters into a bomb shelter so he can join Kyle on a birthday trip, is a real place in Denver. They also acknowledge the razor’s edge dance the series consistently engages in as far as the “political and religious shows that some kids don’t find funny.” It’s precisely those episodes, I’d argue, that make South Park so subversively brilliant. That said, a bit more behind-the-scenes material on just this very interesting sort of balancing act would really make this set sing. A (Show) B+ (Discs)