Those alive in 1995 likely recall the impish virality of Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s irreverent animated short “The Spirit of Christmas.” It was the one where Jesus got into a fistfight with Jesus Christ, each one repeatedly dropping f-bombs. “Spirit” was sneakily passed around Hollywood and on college campuses — sometimes on VHS, sometimes through floppy disks and downloads — gaining a great deal of underground attention. The short eventually started playing at animation retrospectives, and, in my experience, exploded in popularity thanks to screenings at the annual Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation. By 1997, Stone and Parker were asked to develop “The Spirit of Christmas” into a TV series by Comedy Central. The network wanted something as crass and irreverent as the short, but on a weekly basis.
“South Park” managed to do that, gaining a lot of attention — both positive and negative — for its crude animation style and even cruder sense of humor. The pilot episode was called “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” and it followed the grumpy bully Cartman (Parker) after he had been abducted by aliens and, yes, given the noted proctological procedure. His body would end up housing an alien satellite dish. “South Park” became a defining text of the 1990s, using shock humor to gather millions of fans.
Of course, as one might predict, that tasteless pilot episode didn’t play very well. It’s one thing to watch a foul-mouthed animated short on a bootleg VHS. It’s another thing to screen a short about anal probes to a test audience in a studio setting. According to an extensive oral history in EW, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” tested incredibly poorly, to the point that some viewers broke down in tears.
Read more: 8 The Simpsons Celebrity Guest Stars That Aged Poorly
The pilot episode of South Park tested incredibly poorly
Kenny, dead, with Cartman, Stan, and Kyle looking at him on South Park – Comedy Central
Doug Herzog was the president of Comedy Central at the time, and Brian Graden was a producer, and they both recalled, with the utmost clarity, how badly initial screenings went. The central gag of “South Park” was that its amateurish, deliberately childish animation stood in stark juxtaposition to its awful language, sex references, and extreme violence. Graden noted that it was just too shocking for some people, who felt that “South Park” crossed a line by putting children in such positions. The screenings were so poorly, Graden assumed immediately that “South Park” was doomed to fail. As he said:
“We went to do a focus group. They were asked to rate the pilot on a scale of 1 to 10. There were 1s, and 2s, and 3s everywhere. We made three people cry; they were saying that it’s inappropriate for children to say those kinds of things. Matt and Trey asked how it went. I had been to many focus groups, but they had not. I’ve never seen a worse focus group. And [I] thought, ‘Well, this show isn’t going to be the next year of my life.'”
Graden talked about how he, Parker, and Stone had special t-shirts printed with “check minus” symbols on them, imitating a poor grade that kids used to receive on school papers. The three of them wore those t-shirts to a Comedy Central board meeting, knowing they had just been lambasted by the test audience. Comedy Central said they wanted a major overhaul. However, because “South Park” is animated, a major overhaul would take far too much time. Parker and Stone ended up only making minor improvements.
No one thought South Park would succeed
Cartman with a kewpie face on an episode of South Park – Comedy Central
Of course, even after the improvements, faith in the project remained very low. “South Park” would go on to become a big hit, of course, but there was no guarantee in 1997 that it would. When the series did take off, everyone was surprised. However, because of the nature of Hollywood and the lying human spirit, some execs seem to have claimed that they always had faith in “South Park,” even from the start. Herzog notes that one shouldn’t believe their lies, saying:
“Anybody that tells you they knew it was going to be a hit — and the only people I would believe if they said that would be Matt and Trey — that’s just bulls***. Nobody knows, right? What we did know was it was really funny. We thought it was clever. And for a network that was still struggling to reach 50 million homes, we went, ‘At the very least this will get attention.’ But then I bolted up in bed just nights before we put it on the air, in cold sweat — I swear to God — I was like, ‘Wait, can I get arrested for this? Is this legal?'”
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No one got arrested for making “South Park,” luckily. Herzog recalled that putting adult language, sex, nudity, and violence on cable TV was still somewhat novel at the time, noting that HBO gained a lot of traction with shows like “Dream On,” a sitcom that boasted unclad women on a regular basis. “South Park” had an edge on a lot of its peers, though, because it was actually funny, very strange, and even witty. Well, at the very least, you could tell that it was dumb, gross humor made by smart, thoughtful people.
“South Park” is currently airing its 27th season.
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