The boys get a starving Ethiopian kid via a mis-sent mail order. It’s the most politically incorrect thing you can imagine, yet it somehow manages to raise awareness about world hunger while making you laugh at Sally Struthers eating a whole turkey.

Season 1 succeeded because it didn't care about your feelings. It made fun of the left, the right, the rich, the poor, the disabled, the able-bodied, Christians, Jews, Atheists, and even the network airing it. It was the first show to truly weaponize "equal opportunity offense" as an art form.

South Park Season 1 didn’t just arrive; it detonated. Before we talk about the plots, we have to talk about the look. The first season is famously animated using stop-motion with actual cut-out construction paper. It is jerky. It is ugly. The characters walk like they have hip dysplasia, and their mouths flap open and closed like sock puppets having a seizure.

It is hard to describe the precise feeling of watching the pilot episode of South Park air on August 13, 1997, if you weren’t there. To understand the impact, you have to remember the media landscape of the late 90s.

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The infamous holiday episode. To this day, conservative pundits cite this episode as the downfall of Western civilization. A singing piece of feces that talks? It was a deliberate provocation, and it worked. It also contains the hilarious, sacrilegious fight between Jesus and Santa Claus. The Legacy of Season 1 Watching South Park Season 1 today feels like looking at a fossil of a prehistoric monster. The animation is rough. The pacing is slower than modern seasons. Kyle’s "You know, I learned something today..." speeches are a little too on the nose.

This is the season’s secret masterpiece. While the humor is juvenile (a gay dog), the episode actually defends homosexuality with shocking sincerity. Big Gay Al is flamboyant, kind, and unapologetic. In 1997, having a cartoon character tell a kid that being "different" is okay was surprisingly progressive. The show proved it could have a heart between the fart jokes.

Is it the best season of South Park ? No. That’s probably Seasons 4-8. Is it the most important ? Absolutely.

Watch it if: You want to see how a cultural revolution started with construction paper and a dead kid in a parka. What was your first memory of watching South Park Season 1 live? Did your parents ban it? Let us know in the comments below.

Without Season 1, there is no Family Guy . There is no Rick and Morty . There is no Robot Chicken . They broke the gate, kicked the guard dog, and burned down the guard shack.

This episode satirized celebrity culture, Oprah, and infomercials. Mr. Garrison (voice: Trey Parker) falls in love with a gun. Kathie Lee Gifford gets assassinated (off-screen). It set the tone: No celebrity is safe.