"South Park" [Stone-Parker, 1997] Season 4 [Apr.- Dec. '00] [TV-MA-L(V)]

One of the most astonishingly unchanging shows in A.C. history, this show's all-too-sparse humorous advantages have always balanced out its--you guessed it--all-too-numerous quasi-transcendent/-intellectual defects, thereby proceeding to settle around a B, with regard to overall quality. This is rather depressing news for the show's fans (and creators), but, unfortunately, is nevertheless true. Once again, as in season 11 and season 6, the best episode appears to be the first one, "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000," but in this case the one that must be tied with it is surely "Cartman Joins NAMBLA," the latter being definitely in the list of top 10 best SP episodes ever--though one of the show's characteristics that is as unchanging (wha...? huh?), as it is altogether strange, is that, as implied above, many of the "worse" ones slack not too far behind--note "The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000" and "Timmy 2000" as some of the numerous runner-ups, while the rest, including "Probably" and "Things You Can Do With Your Finger," are "just bad," so to speak, in the way unique to the show. Grade: B PLUS