Great Old TV Episodes...from South Park

YOU'RE GETTING OLD...from South Park, first aired in June, 2011, is probably going to be the newest episode I feature on this blog for a while: most of the others go way back to twentieth century television.  I'd like to say that South Park is a favorite series of mine, but I honestly can't even though from time to time there is an episode that is spot-on with its message and humor...subtracting the last seven years in which there hasn't been anything on it I liked in the least. South Park, although animated and regrettably (like its predecessor Beavis and Butthead) marketed at minors,  has distinctly adult themes with an often over-the-top viciousness in its depictions of real people as well as being very satirical.  I'd estimate that I'd consider watching again maybe only 5-10% of its catalog of episodes, but then again there are those special ones that I check the TV listings for: You're Getting Old is one of these.  Stan Marsh, one of the four main South Park kid characters who live in a fictional, wacky Colorado town, has just turned ten and for his birthday his best friend Kyle Broflovski gives him a new "tween wave" CD: his mother, who thinks it sounds like shxt, prohibits him from using it, though.  But Stan figures out a way, and while lying in bed at night secretly plays it...and discovers like his mom that it's a lot of "crap".  As the ensuing days pass he increasingly sees everything around him that he used to enjoy in the same critical light, and the story progresses (or maybe I should say "regresses") from there.  It all intrigued me in that it covered two points: (1), the self-realization that hits people at different times in their lives that they're aging and that their lives will eventually wind down and come to an end, and (2) what it means to experience what is commonly referred to as a "sea change", which is a fundamentally altered way of perceiving the very reality to which one has been habitually been accustomed.  I may have been a special sort of kid in that long before I turned ten  I always sensed that I would age and eventually reach an end to it all, but that sea change experience has been a recurring element in my life, each time drastically changing how I felt about people and my own life and its priorities.  If you can manage to get past all the profanity and cartoon turds, this episode just might remind you of a few sea changes in your own life as well.  If I were you, though, I'd probably not try to get too used to watching South Park...