South Park has managed, perhaps more consistently than any other animated show, to get sharper, funnier, and more outrageous with each passing season. Not just a goofy bunch of potty-mouthed kids and their semi-clueless parents, South Park is often brilliant satire, taking the foibles, the pathetic tendencies and the utterly bizarre aspects of our own society and exaggerating them to point out the very idiocies of our culture. Their methods don’t always work in every episode (and not every episode is necessarily biting satire), but when it works, it’s absolutely fantastic. Season 14 is no different, with storylines skewering Facebook, the Jersey Shore, Shake Weights, Tiger Woods, the Food Network and even South Park itself.

The 14th season was notable (among other reasons) for the 200th and 201st episode milestones. Of course, in typical South Park fashion, they went for broke and decided to tackle the controversy of depicting Muhammad in popular media. Regrettably (if not predictably), this led to threats on the lives of the creators from some of the more extreme Islamic groups. The threats were issued between the airing of episode 200 and episode 201 and as a result, 201 was very heavily censored by Comedy Central. Sadly, the censorship carried over into this release, with the audio bleeping and censored block over Muhammad still in place.

QUALITY:
It’s a cartoon animated to look like moving construction paper cutouts, so having something like this on Blu-Ray is a bit of a joke in and of itself. That said, this looks really, really good on Blu-Ray. The colors are vibrant, the detail is sharp and as the series has progressed, the animation has improved. From time to time, the animators throw in something more complex than the paper cutout style and it adds to the overall visual humor of the show.

BONUS FEATURES:
Extra features include deleted scenes and animatics, commentaries from Trey and Matt, plus they threw in “The Coon” from season 13, the debut appearance of Cartman’s hilarious Coon superhero.

I loved this season. The satire is sharp, the humor is consistent and it’s a blast to watch these guys at work. Here’s hoping the next 14 seasons are just as awesome.