South Park‘s Season 27 debut nabbed the series its highest numbers in over 25 years. Specifically, since the debut of Season 3, “Rainforest Shmainforest.” And Season 3 is exactly what we’ll be discussing today. Not because of its terrific viewership numbers, but because it was the first season to have a trilogy, which the show actually wouldn’t do again for quite some time. However, it’s almost not even an official trilogy. At least not the same way “Imaginationland” is. But it’s a ton of fun, and perhaps even better than “Imaginationland.” Fortunately, both of the trilogies are able to stream in full, unlike the two-parter “200” and “201.” Specifically, they’re available on Paramount+, as the show has now left its former home of HBO Max.
Here we’re going to go through Season 3’s “Meteor Shower Trilogy,” as it were. We’ll unpack each of the three episodes, observe how they (loosely) tie into one another, and what makes each of them so special and iconic.
The Cartman-Focused “Cat Orgy”
All three episodes of the “Meteor Shower Trilogy” have distinctly different focuses, but there is a throughline. Each episode has at least one of the core four boys as well as a focus on at least one character who, at that point in time, didn’t receive much spotlight. In the case of “Cat Orgy,” it’s Cartman and Shelley Marsh, who really only previously had an integral role in Season 1’s “An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig.”
“Cat Orgy” isn’t the strongest installment of the “Meteor Shower Trilogy” (that would be “Jewbilee”), but it is the most impressive. It manages to take Cartman, a character who wore an Adolf Hitler costume with reverence and joy in the first season, and make him come across as compassionate and something of a voice of reason. In Shelley, he meets his match. As his babysitter, she’s calling the shots, and he’s forced to do what she says. When she introduces her 22-year-old boyfriend (Shelly is 12), Skyler, Cartman immediately sees he’s taking advantage of her.
At first, Cartman is just trying to bust Shelley for having a boyfriend over, and that’s a funny scenario that the episode gets plenty of mileage out of. However, when Skyler dumps Shelley because she won’t give him “any action,” she’s heartbroken. Cartman both tries to cheer her up and ascertain just what she was thinking. Skyler’s a man and she’s just a little girl. He’s a creep and she’s his victim (it seems one of several victims).
Together, they team up to exact revenge on this guitar-loving pedophile, and it’s quite possibly the only time where Cartman’s vengeful nature actually manages to line up with an ethical response. In other words, it’s an episode that gives Cartman a genuine character arc, which isn’t usually something he experiences. Typically, he does something awful and then faces the repercussions of that action.
“Cat Orgy” also works because it features, well, a cat orgy. Mr. Kitty hasn’t been seen so much in recent years, mostly because there’s only so much Trey Parker and Matt Stone can do with him. He just meows a whole bunch, then gets yelled at by Cartman until he runs off. But, let’s face it, that worked really well throughout the first few seasons (especially for anyone who has a needy cat), and it was never done better than here. Not to mention, this is the episode with a bunch of references to the then-new release Wild Wild Westand it’s hilarious hearing Cartman call Clyde Frog “Artemus Clyde Frog.”
The Stan-Focused “Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub”
Even in the early seasons, when he popped up fairly often, Pip was a forgettable character. That was part of his point; he was dismissed by the core four boys and even by the staff of South Park Elementary School (e.g. in Season 1’s “Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride,” where Pip is the only kid to not get a helmet during football games). And thanks to episodes “200” and “201” being removed from streaming, now fans can’t even see that he was, in fact, killed off.
But “Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub” was an important episode for him. Specifically, in hindsight, it signaled the beginning of his end. This was the first episode where Butters got more than a single little line, and even that was rare prior to this point. In other words, this was the exact point where Butters entered the fray and took over Pip’s role as the oft-dismissed boy, and did it much better.
The narrative of this episode primarily follows Stan, Gerald Broflovski, and Randy Marsh. Gerald and Randy’s B-plot is them breaking away from being boring family men for one night and experimenting. Their definition of experimentation, as it turns out, is watching one another masturbate in a hot tub. Randy spends the rest of the episode worrying that anyone will find out, which a few have, since Gerald immediately spread the word.
The more interesting part is the A-plot, with Stan trapped in the basement of Mr. Mackey’s house as the party rages on the floor above. The only other kids there are Pip, Butters, and Dougie, all of whom Stan deems the biggest “Melvins” at South Park Elementary. By episode’s end, Stan learns that these “Melvins” aren’t so bad once you get to know them, but that’s swiftly dismissed as soon as Kyle asks him how his night was in the final scene.
This is the most political episode of the three, and like Stan’s plot, it’s very well done. Specifically, the ATF and its highly controversial handling of Waco. At one point, they blast music just like the ATF did in real life. It was more like they blasted the sounds of screaming and babies crying, but here it’s the music of Cher, a pretty great dig at her then-recent hit album Believe.
The Kyle and Kenny-Focused “Jewbilee”
“Jewbilee” pairs Kyle and Kenny, and between the two, it’s Kenny who runs away with the episode. Gerald and Sheila Broflovski are heading to Mr. Mackey’s meteor shower party, therefore solidifying that as the trilogy’s true connective tissue. They drop Kyle, Kenny, and Ike off at what amounts to a Jewish Boy Scout camp, which ends up being a pretty exclusionary place. An Asian boy is thrown out into the cold (where a bear is known to be lurking), and anyone who is not “Kosher,” like Kenny, faces the same fate.
And Kenny does face that fate once Moses arrives. And in Moses, we get the most bizarre South Park character up to this point. His appearance and voice are yanked straight from the Master Control Program in Tronand it’s hard to say why they went in that direction, just as it’s hard to pinpoint why it works so, so well.
“Jewbilee” has the best sense of focus of the three episodes. The single locale works really well here, even better than Cartman’s house or Mr. Mackey’s house. It’s a fresh location, and because of that, the episode feels a bit fresher by extension. It was also a heartwarming way to round out the trilogy. Kenny saves the day and the Cartman (not to mention the heads of the camp) learn to become more accepting of outsiders. And having the episode’s villain, Garth, say he’s from the Synagogue of Antisemites is really a top-tier early-season joke.
The Argument for the “Meteor Shower Trilogy”
South Park has always been a risk-taking show and arguably the best example of that came from the first time it had a two-part episode. That would be Season 1’s finale, “Cartman’s Mom Is a Dirty Sl-t” and the sophomore episode of Season 2, “Cartman’s Mom Is Still a Dirty Sl-t.” That two-parter wasn’t a risk so much because it ended a season on a cliffhanger, but because when the second season debuted, it did not answer the question that had been posed at the end of Season 1. Instead, it did a Terrance and Phillip special.
The “Meteor Shower Trilogy” was a different kind of risk. It was Parker and Stone’s effort to see how the central quartet could function when they were forced to separate, and in that, there’s the argument why this trilogy is the best.
It shows that they can, in fact, each have a compelling narrative and even (kind of) grow as characters. Cartman shows his sweet side to Shelley, Stan opens his mind to individuals he’s openly thought weren’t worth his time, Kyle learns to accept accountability for his choices, and Kenny sacrifices himself to save a group of people who just threw him out of their gathering.
The “Meteor Shower Trilogy” is also incredibly rewatchable, and it’s the one trilogy (or even multi-part narrative in general) where each episode is fun and functions as a single piece. If viewed as a trilogy, it works. If you just check out “Cat Orgy,” that works too.
What’s your favorite trilogy of South Park episodes? Let us know in the comments below!
