Karma Catches Up to South Park

It's no secret that the men behind South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, work a tight production schedule. The Emmy-nominated 2011 documentary, 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park, gives an inside look at how crazy their schedule really is. Like the documentary title suggests, South Park writes, records, animates, and edits each episode in six days. If you know anything about the production process, you'll realize how ridiculous this system is. Most animated shows have the episode written months before the air date. But South Park is unlike any other show out there. This risky set-up allows them to produce topical content, always making a satirical comment on current events. It is what makes South Park such a great show. For instance, the day after President Obama beat McCain in the 2008 Presidential Election, South Park came out with the episode "About Last Night..." Not only do they include the election results, the episode even has excerpts from the candidates speeches that took place the night before the episode aired.

The team has been able to meet each deadline as a result of an absolutely chaotic schedule. On Wednesday, an episode airs. Thursday morning, they enter the studio and brainstorm ideas. By the end of the day, they've thrown together a script. As soon as they arrive on Friday, they begin recording and animating. In the documentary, Parker and Stone admit that Tuesday is usually a 24-hour day. They get to the studio at 9 am and work until they finish, which is often 9 am on Wednesday. Then they send the episode to Comedy Central and it airs that night. Honestly, it's a miracle they went this long without missing a deadline.

After 17 seasons of this absurd production schedule, karma finally caught up with the team. This past Tuesday, October 15th, South Park Studios lost all electrical power for hours. This prevented them from further animating, rendering, and editing in their primitive crunch time. The unfortunately outcome was South Park's first missed deadline, on the show's 241st episode. It seems the creators were destined to miss a deadline eventually with such a down-to-the-wire production method. They have been tempting the production gods for far too long by delivering episode after episode last minute. Still, you have to give it to the team for never before failing to create a new episode from scratch in six days. To make up for not having a new episode, Parker and Stone live tweeted the re-run of classic episode, "Scott Tenorman Must Die."

Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the studio during the blackout, realizing they won't be able to make their deadline.

Missing this deadline does not damaged South Park's reputation in any way. At the end of the day, they're still the only show that brings us offensive, yet intellectual satirical comments on current events in our society. Though Comedy Central may be upset by the missed deadline, this is my opinion on the whole situation. If missing one deadline every 241 episodes is the price they must pay for maintaining the topical content, they must be doing something right. No other crew would be able to pull off such a chaotic schedule, especially in this industry.