10 Best South Park Episodes That Don’t Focus on a Main Character

South Park, for the most part, is known for focusing on the four main fourth (then fifth) graders: Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny. But as the show has progressed, other characters have moved from the sidelines to the center, with more and more episodes driven by them specifically. Even from the beginning, though, the show was willing to move away from those four boys and focus on another of the town’s residents. Those are the episodes that follow, the ones that don’t focus on the core four or other primary characters. In other words, these episodes don’t focus on Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny, Chef, Mr. Garrison, Timmy, Jimmy, Butters, or Randy (the latter four didn’t start out as main characters but certainly became as such as the series progressed).

Furthermore, while stuff like Season 2’s “Ike’s Wee Wee” have a secondary character in the title and even focus on him a great deal, it is still at its core a Kyle-led episode. Not to mention, one-off characters didn’t count. Apologies, Sexual Harassment Panda. With those parameters set, here are 10 episodes of South Park that don’t focus on a main character.

Wendy in “Tom’s Rhinoplasty” (Season 1, Episode 11)

Season 1’s “Tom’s Rhinoplasty” focuses on, in order, Wendy Testaburger, Mr. Garrison, and Stan Marsh. Garrison has the B-plot, with his desire to up his physical appearance. But the main story is all Wendy’s.

While Garrison is occupied with his vanity, South Park Elementary gets a new third grade teacher in Ms. Ellen (Natasha Henstridge, the series’ first guest actor in a major role). She’s beautiful and attracts the attention of all the boys, including Wendy’s boyfriend, Stan. By episode’s end, Wendy (who would later become the series’ greatest altruist) has Ms. Ellen kidnapped by Iraqis and shot into the sun via rocket.

Terrance and Phillip in “Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Season 2’s opener, “Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus” is the definitive example of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s affinity for defying expectations, especially if it belongs to their ow nfans. Season 1 ended with the promise that, in four weeks, viewers would learn the identity of Eric Cartman’s father.

Then, after those four weeks passed, Season 2 debuted on April Fool’s Day and the loyal viewers…didn’t. Instead, they got an episode that didn’t have a single scene with any of the four boys. They got an episode focused solely on Terrance and Phillip. A brilliant bait-and-switch that aggravated fans to no end.

Officer Barbrady in “Chickenlover” (Season 2, Episode 4)

It’s a rarity that Officer Barbrady (who unfortunately seems to have been retired from the show) gets to take center stage. There are however two examples of when Barbrady has guided much of an episode’s events, and it’s been an A-level episode. And, while his The Silence of the Lambs-inspired B-plot in Season 7’s “Toilet Paper” is hysterical, it’s Season 2’s “Chickenlover” where he was undoubtedly the A-plot protagonist. It’s a great episode, one of the best of Season 2, and while there’s only so far the “dumb cop” schtick can go, here it works quite well.

Tweek and His Parents in “Gnomes” (Season 2, Episode 17)

The narrative momentum in “Gnomes” is driven forward almost exclusively by Tweek and his parents (particularly his father). When Harbucks (South Park‘s version of Starbucks) comes into town, Mr. Tweak’s smaller coffee house is in danger of being shut down.

Meanwhile, the four boys (five including Tweek) are assigned a project to conduct an oral presentation on a current event in South Park. Mr. Tweak sees an opportunity to get public opinion on his and his coffee house’s side. But, to get help on the project, they need not just Mr. Tweak’s speech (which he wrote for the boys), but the assistance of the small underpants gnomes who have been tormenting Tweek, as well.

Jesus in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Jesus” (Season 3, Episode 16)

Jesus was a presence on South Park from the beginning, but it wasn’t until the tail end of Season 3 that he had a substantial role in an episode. The closest he had come was hosting the boys, Jimbo, and Ned on his show Jesus and Pals in Season 2’s “The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka.”

In “Are You There God? It’s Me, Jesus” he gets a full character arc, and it’s an endearing one. He learns that, like Stan in his rushing to mature, he can’t just ask God to facilitate something (specifically, putting on a show for the new millennium), he has to set that in motion.

[RELATED: 3 Underrated South Park Episodes]

Token in “Here Comes the Neighborhood” (Season 5, Episode 12)

Token (or, rather, Tolkien) Black is another character who has been with the show from the beginning, yet he’s rarely been one of the main A-plot players. He was an integral part of Season 4’s “Cartman’s Silly Hate Crime 2000,” but it wasn’t until the following year that he was the true heart of an episode.

“Here Comes the Neighborhood” is a fairly mid-level episode of Season 5, but considering Season 5 is the second-best of the series (after Season 8) that’s more of a complement than it sounds like. The core of the episode is about Token’s desire to be accepted, and by the end of it all he comes to realize that he is, in fact, accepted. It’s a touching episode, and one of the better displays of how, for the most part, the adults in the town of South Park are pretty dumb.

Father Maxi in “Red Hot Catholic Love” (Season 6 Episode 8)

An episode that unsurprisingly aggravated the Catholics, “Red Hot Catholic Love” is a risky episode. The plot follows Father Maxi as he attempts to save his religion from the rampant accusations of child molestation. To do so, he’ll have to go through a Raiders of the Lost Ark-type gauntlet, evade the “Water Lizards,” and try to convince all of his fellow priests they shouldn’t be so dead set on following the words of the great “Queen Spider.”

“Red Hot Catholic Love” works so well because it tackles a dead serious issue with even more silliness than usual. From the Pitfall! reference (the aforementioned Raiders sequence) and the Galgamek Catholics to the B-plot about defecating out of mouths, it’s a classic. At the center of it all is Father Maxi’s earnestness and his abhorrence regarding the charges against his peers (not to mention their free-wheeling admittance that the charges are quite valid).

Bebe in “Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society” (Season 6, Episode 10)

Bebe Stevens was a background character throughout the first few seasons, hardly ever saying so much as a single word. That started to change gradually, but not by very much. For instance, in Season 3’s “Sexual Harassment Panda” she’s one of the many people who enlists Gerald Broflovski for a sexual harassment lawsuit. In Season 4’s “Chef Goes Nanners,” she provides advice to her best friend, Wendy, on how to get over her very temporary crush on Cartman.

However, in Season 6’s “Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society,” she’s the main fuel for the narrative. She begins to develop physically which sends the minds of all the boys around her back to the stone age. By the episode’s end the novelty of her development has worn off, as has all the attention. It’s by far the most integral role Bebe has ever had to an episode’s plot, and outside a major supporting role in Season 9’s “Follow That Egg!” and Season 11’s “The List,” she’s gone back to being either silently in the room or hovering around Wendy.

Towelie in “A Million Little Fibers” (Season 10, Episode 5)

Something of a controversial South Park character if only due to how love him or hate him he is, Towelie may have debuted in his own titular episode, but he didn’t lead that episode. That wouldn’t come until five years later with “A Million Little Fibers,” one of the most poorly regarded episodes to date.

“A Million Little Fibers” really only focuses on three characters: Towelie, Oprah, and two parts of Oprah’s body. The four boys are nowhere to be seen. It’s understandable why fans were let down at first, but let’s be honest, there are worse episodes of South Park. It’s arguable whether Towelie is still a supporting character, given his prominence in the whole Tegridy Farms multi-season plotline with Randy, but for about 15 years there (after his debut in Season 5) he was absolutely a supporting character…except in this episode and Season 14’s “Crippled Summer.” Though, in the latter, he was essentially co-lead alongside Jimmy.

Satan in “Hell on Earth 2006” (Season 10, Episode 11)

Like Jesus, Satan has been with South Park from the beginning (since his debut in Season 1’s “Damien”), and while he certainly was an integral part of Season 4’s two-parter, “Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?” and “Probably,” it wasn’t until Season 10’s “Hell on Earth 2006” that he was the star of the show. In fact, that’s the entire point of the episode.

Satan wants to throw a massive My Super Sweet 16-style Halloween party at the W Hotel. In the process of doing so, he finds that his ego is as capable of getting inflated as a, well, 16-year-old American girl. He gets a full character arc, even if he doesn’t get a Ferrari cake.

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