We’ve come yet again to the mid-season end of South Park. Season fifteen. It’s a time to reflect – on past episodes and the future of South Park alike. The season started with the HUMANCENTiPAD episode, which I expected to be largely underwhelming. People have been saying for a while now that South Park has lost its glory, and I thought that it may just have when I saw that episode title for the first time. Shame on me for not having faith in Matt and Trey, though; it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, and actually made a decent point about how everything we experience nowadays just goes right through us and then we forget about it.

The second episode, “Funnybot,” found Jimmy hosting his own comedy awards, in which the Germans are deemed Most Unfunny People. It wasn’t amazing, but it was definitely better than the previous episode. The following episode, however, “Royal Pudding,” was one of my favorites in recent memory. As the British Royal Wedding passed, Matt and Trey decided a Canadian Royal Wedding would be much funnier to work with. And it was. You gotta love a South Park episode featuring Canadians, and this one was perhaps one of the best, in my opinion. The words “As is tradition” will never again find me not laughing.

“T.M.I.” was a bit of a strange one, in which the kids believe their penis sizes have been posted on the wall of the school, when in actuality it’s how many inches they’ve grown since last year. The resulting anger and posturing ends up getting Cartman and Randy thrown into anger management, where they form the “Pissed Off and Angry Party,” which resembles much of the Tea Party in furor and foamy-mouthed stupidity. How this episode got high ratings on IGN and A.V. Club yet they both disliked “Royal Pudding” leaves me at a loss. Anyway, they followed that episode up with a subject that it’s almost surprising they haven’t touched on yet: crack babies. Cartman’s “Crack Baby Basketball” league, which actually just consists of them fighting for a piece of crack. Despite being disgusted by the organization, Cartman convinces Kyle to join in a very The Social Network/Wall Street style scene. The episode was funny and also pondered the nature of taking advantage of something bad to benefit everyone involved, and how it’s usually a ruse.

The penultimate episode was easily my favorite of the season, for a few reasons. First of all, the episode was called “City Sushi,” so you know it’s going to feature the City Wok guy who is almost always hilarious. Second, it’s a Butters episode, which are consistently some of the best episodes. Third, it has a major twist that adds some macabre depth to one of South Park’s classic characters. That brings us to last night’s finale, “You’re Getting Old.”

The show takes one of its few leaps forward in time, finally reaching Stan’s 10th birthday. Of course, for every present he gets at his party, Cartman’s mom gives him one of his own, perfectly describing the nature of Cartman in one little scene. Kyle’s gift to Stan causes some trouble with Stan’s mom, who believes that “Tween Wave” music is crappy and Stan shouldn’t be listening to it, so she takes the cd. Randy chastises her for it, telling her to remember when they were young and their parents thought their music sounded like crap, so he takes the album to listen to himself. To his surprise, the music is literally just fart sounds over a drum beat.

Stan sneaks the music onto his iPod and gives it a listen, but finds that he’s afflicted by the same issue. It just sounds like crap to him. When he goes to the doctor thinking something’s wrong, he’s diagnosed with “Being a Cynical Asshole,” where everything looks and sounds like crap to you. While this may seem like a typical South Park plot at first, as the episode goes on it becomes clear that it’s not.

For years now, there have been rumblings and more recently direct statements from Matt and Trey that at this point, they’re largely burnt out on the show. Who could blame them? That kind of show-running for 15 years straight now would take its toll on anyone. Especially considering that they do most of the work on the episodes a week or two before they air.

As the episode progresses, things start falling apart for Stan. More of what he sees and hears turns to crap, to the point where even Kyle turns into a large turd, spewing bits and chunks of poop from his mouth. The other kids don’t want to hang out with Stan because he’s such a buzzkill now. But the episode starts to get really serious when Stan’s parents get into a big argument essentially over their character differences. It’s at this point when you start to realize that the crap metaphor isn’t just applying to the state of entertainment these days, but it’s also reflective of the show itself. As Randy and Sharon’s marriage crumbles in front of our eyes, their dialogue becomes overtly self-referential, with lines like this one: “It’s like the same story keeps happening every week, only it keeps getting more and more ridiculous.”

It would seem the frustration and fatigue from running the show has finally bled into it. And it has disastrous consequences. We see a montage of Stan’s family breaking apart as Stan, Sharon, and Shelly move out, set to Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide,” a song depressing enough on its own. We see Kyle and Cartman playing games together, smiling at each other as friends. The episode ends with Stan lying in his new bed, staring at the ceiling. The credits rolled atop a crescendo of silence.

Since it was only the mid-season finale for South Park, Matt and Trey are contractually obligated to give us seven more episodes later this year. Whether or not it will all be a troll (like when they showed the Terrence and Phillip episode when they were supposed to reveal who Cartman’s dad was) is yet to be seen; the next season could find Stan’s whole family happily back together like nothing happened, or this could be real. If so, it would be a hell of a set up for the last seven episodes of South Park. While it is somewhat of a depressing episode, there’s plenty of humor in it. Stan seeing everything as literally crap is disgusting, yet good for some laughs. The trailers in the movie theater had me absolutely dying (“Rated Argh for Pirates! Fuck you!”). If only real movie trailers would be that up-front about insulting our intelligence. This was an unexpected way for the season to end, but appropriate considering Matt and Trey’s current status. Whatever happens in the next season of South Park, it will be interesting.