Even nearly 30 years down the line, the core of what makes South Park work is the interplay between the core four boys: Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny. Of course, no show can survive on just four foul-mouthed kiddos, and as the series has progressed, other characters have made their way to the forefront. Some were there from the beginning and just got more screentime and character expansion as the seasons went on, e.g. Butters and Randy Marsh. Others, like Timmy, Jimmy, and Towelie, were introduced after a few years and stuck around for good. Even though all of those aforementioned characters are important, the show could go on if they were removed from the picture.
Can the same be said for the core four boys? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the show has tried it.
Which of the Four Boys Can the Show Not Live Without?
The best way to see which of the four boys could be removed without killing the show is to analyze which one it needs the most. Let’s start with Cartman. What first endeared the show to its many fans so early on (it really blew up after “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo,” just the ninth episode) wasn’t so much the novel concept of hearing four third graders hurl expletives as much as it was them hurling expletives at each other.
The main source of those expletive-laden insults? Cartman. His soulless, self-serving nature has no bounds, and he’s rarely done or said a single thing or word to help another individual. He’s also often the one who kicks off an episode’s action. And when there’s a scheme, it typically doesn’t originate from Kyle, Kenny, or Stan’s mind, it’s from Cartman’s.
Let’s just look at one season. Specifically, Season 9. For instance, the talent agent scheme in “Wing” came from Cartman, as was the idea to bring on Kyle’s cousin Kyle to tank their baseball team in “The Losing Edge,” the idea to steal the boat in “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow,” and throwing the pig dressed as Butters off the roof in “Marjorine.” Not to mention, “Die Hippie, Die” is almost entirely focused on Cartman, as is “Ginger Kids” and, of course, “The Death of Eric Cartman.”
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The point is, whether his plotting brain is coming up with an almost certainly ineffective scheme or an episode’s narrative is fueled by his ignorance and bigotry, there really is no show without Cartman – whether or not you agree the character has aged well with time.
When it comes to the show’s trademark core of having the boys rip on one another, it’s important to follow the thread that starts with Cartman and see where it ends up. As far as the main characters go, it ends at Kyle and, to a lesser extent, Kenny.
Kyle and Stan can occasionally feel like interchangeable characters. More often than not, they’re just the voices of reason, commenting on the outlandish events tearing apart their hometown that particular week, be it a mechanized Barbara Streisand or the sudden arrival of NAMBLA. So, if it comes down to one of those two, the one that can go is Stan. As Season 10’s “Smug Alert!” pointed out, Cartman needs Kyle. Without Kyle, most of his humorously ignorant bigotry has nowhere to go. Almost three decades later, it’s still an element that works.
For those who argue that too many episodes of the show focus on Stan for him (the true protagonist) to be removable, it’s a fair point. Some particularly great episodes of the show primarily focus on Stan, e.g. Season 6’s “Asspen” and Season 12’s “Over Logging.” But, even in those cases, he’s not the only character integral to the episodes’ success. In “Asspen,” all of the boys (Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Butters) are at the titular location. And, in “Over Logging,” like many of the episodes in Season 9 (or so) and beyond, when an episode is focusing on Stan it’s most often also focusing on his father, Randy.
So, in the end, it comes down to Stan and Kenny. As mentioned, “Asspen” has Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Butters at the forefront. That’s because Kenny died for real (at least temporarily) in the penultimate episode of Season 5. The show went an entire season without Kenny…and it worked just fine. But it would be hard to say he wasn’t missed. And, upon his re-entering the show, he started to get fleshed out quite a bit and, far more often than before, it was he who headlined episodes.
And, unlike many of the later seasons Stan-fronted episodes, Season 9’s “Best Friends Forever,” Season 12’s “Major Boobage,” Season 13’s “The Ring,” and Season 14’s “The Poor Kid,” solely feature Kenny as the catalyst for the narrative’s momentum. In other words, at this point in the show’s run, if asked which of the core four boys the show could live without, it’s Stan. After all, to lose Kenny again would just be repetitive.
South Park is about the air new episodes on Comedy Central. It streams on Max, with feature-length specials streaming on Paramount+.
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