South Park | |
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Season 14 | |
No. of episodes | 14 |
Release | |
Original network | Comedy Central |
Original release | March 17 November 17, 2010 | –
Season chronology | |
The fourteenth season of the American animated television series South Park began airing in the United States on Comedy Central between March 17, 2010, and November 17, 2010. The season was headed by the series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who served as executive producers along with Anne Garefino. The season continued to focus on the exploits of protagonists Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny, and Butters in the fictional Colorado mountain town of South Park.
The season was the second of three new seasons Parker and Stone agreed to produce for the network under a renewal deal. It consisted of fourteen 22-minute episodes, which aired in two groups of seven episodes separated by a six-month gap. Continuing their practice from previous seasons, Parker and Stone wrote and produced each episode within the week before its broadcast date. Parker was the director and writer for all episodes in the fourteenth season.
The season lampooned various topics, including the legalization of medical marijuana and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The season also parodied various cultural touchstones, such as The Catcher in the Rye, Tron, Facebook, Jersey Shore, Hoarders, and Inception. The parody of celebrities, a South Park tradition, continued in the fourteenth season, with depictions of Tiger Woods, Kim, Kourtney and Khloé Kardashian, Sarah Jessica Parker, and the devotion of the entire episodes of "200" and "201" to past celebrities suing the town of South Park for defamation. The original broadcasts of "200" and "201" were altered to censor depictions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, to protect from threats delivered by radical Islamic extremists, which resulted in strong criticism against Comedy Central.
The fourteenth season received mixed to positive reviews, with some reviewers deeming it as an important season in the series' history, and others regarding it as progressively weak and stale. The season maintained the average Nielsen rating viewership for the series, around 3 million viewers per episode, with a slight decline in the latter half of the season. The episodes "200" and "201" were nominated for the 2010 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).