I'll tell you what it's all about: Timmy! Yes, this is the South Park season that introduced the world to the unlikely rockstar Timmy. Wheelchair-bound, given to spastic utterances and jerky movements, and prone to speaking only his name, Timmy is the type of phenomenon that could only spurt from South Park—a show that you might have thought was a flash in the pan when it all began in 1997. But, just as unlikely as Timmy, South Park has endured and has maintained a consistent degree of crazy quality. In this, the show's fourth season, its creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have somehow—despite their admitted procrastination and carelessness—not only kept South Park fresh with new characters and bold decisions, but have produced some of the funniest moments in the show's history.

Perhaps South Park received an injection of energy following the well-received 2000 feature film South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, an aggressively profane and balls-to-the-wall hilarious send-up of Broadway musicals and just about everything else. Satan and Saddam Hussein, major characters in the film, even show up for a two-parter episode this season, hearkening back to that Oscar-nominated success. The general feel of the fourth season is that added boost of deranged creativity, combined with the inevitability of a clunker episode here and there. As Parker and Stone note in the provided commentary, the shows also exhibit more streamlined narratives than in seasons past. Not to mention the fact that there are a few moments in this season that are gut-wrenchingly gross, leading you to wonder, as always, how they got away with it.

You probably aren't new to the show, but let's recap a bit. South Park is set in the tiny mountain town of South Park, Colorado. The stars are four young paper-cutout boys: Eric Cartman, the fat, obscenity-prone angermonger; Stan Marsh, the show's voice of reason; Kyle Broslofski, the Jew with the abrasive mother and the adopted Canadian brother Ike; and poor Kenny, the unintelligible parka-wrapped dude who dies in every episode. At South Park Elementary and around town, the gang learns life lessons and, each week, find themselves engaged in amazing and disgusting adventures. One of the fun things about being this far into the life of the show is that the boys' increasingly strange adventures—taking them, for example, into the town's sewers to conspire with a family of bowel movements—are merely par for the course now. We just accept these situations in the South Park universe.

The fourth season of South Park is presented in order of airdate. The episodes are as follows:

Disc One
The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000 (4-05-00)—After the tooth fairy leaves Cartman some money, he sees the entrepreneurial opportunity therein. How can he collect enough teeth for a Sega DreamCast?
Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000 (4-12-00)—After Eric throws a rock at Token's head, Cartman is branded a racist and sent to jail. Watch for a great Disneyland joke at the end.
Timmy 2000 (4-19-00)—Here's Timmy! Everyone thinks he has ADD, a condition that absolves him of homework duties. Soon the rest of the class wants ADD. I wonder how they got away with that Phil Collins Oscar joke.
Quintuplets 2000 (4-26-00)—The boys flip over 8-year-old contorting Romanian quintuplets and decide to devise their own circus performance. This episode provided a shockingly timely comment on the Elian Gonzalez debacle.
Cartman Joins NAMBLA (6-21-00)—Did you know the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a real organization? Over the Internet, Cartman hooks up with some men who enjoy hanging out with little boys. This is also the episode in which Mr. Garrison is outed.
Cherokee Hair Tampons (6-28-00)—Kyle needs a kidney transplant. Cartman is the ideal donor, but he's charging $10 million. This episode features a terrific live-action commercial parody.

Disc Two
Chef Goes Nanners (7-05-00)—Chef declares that the South Park flag is racist. The elementary school ends up staging the debate that will determine whether to keep it or change it. This one features a particularly inventive Kenny death, and an uncommonly downbeat ending.
Something You Can Do With Your Finger (7-12-00)—The boys start a boy band called Fingerbang, but Stan's dad is dead-set against it.
Do the Handicapped Go to Hell? (7-19-00)—The first of a two-parter finds the boys worried that Timmy won't be allowed in heaven because he can't confess his sins. Welcome back, Saddam and Satan! Great line in this one: "Jesus was made of crackers?"
Probably (7-26-00)—The second part find Cartman trying his hand at faith-healing and starting a church, while Satan consults God for advice about his relationship with Saddam. Wait till you see His true form.
Fourth Grade (11-08-00)—The boys enter 4th grade, but Cartman's not happy and wants to go back to 3rd grade. He decides to build a time machine. Timmy's the guinea pig.
Trapper Keeper (11-15-00)—A very funny episode in which Cartman's new Trapper Keeper hold the potential for taking over the world. He must destroy it! Meanwhile, the kids stage a parody of the Florida election bumble.

Disc Three
Helen Keller! The Musical (11-22-00)—With their Helen Keller stage play, the boys are eager to put on a better show than the kindergartners. Timmy stars as Helen Keller! Watch for a disturbing peek inside Cartman's brain.
Pip (11-29-00)—This bizarre Great Expectations parody presents the story of Pip's origin.
Fat Camp (12-06-00)—Cartman is sent to fat camp and, remarkably, comes back thin, svelte, and better-behaved. Meanwhile, Kenny starts doing crazy stuff for money and does something so intensely gross at episode's end that you'll just stare at the screen, dumbfounded.
The Wacky Molestation Adventure (12-13-00)—After Kyle accuses his parents of molesting him, all the kids follow suit, just to send their parents away. Soon, South Park is a ravaged, Lord of the Flies ghost town.
A Very Crappy Christmas (12-20-00)—We get to meet Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo's wife and family. Mr. Hankey is down on Christmas, so the boys decide to spread cheer by creating an animated Christmas special of their own, patterned on the Parker and Stone short that launched South Park.

HOW'S IT LOOK?

Paramount presents South Park: The Complete Fourth Season in a strong full-frame transfer of the show's original 1.33:1 broadcast presentation. I'm impressed by the levels of detail and sharpness on this effort, and colors seem to be stronger and more stable than in past seasons. As always, viewing on a large monitor presents problems for a TV show such as this, and I noticed the typical aliasing jags and blocking. Again, there seemed to be some improvement in this area, as compared with past seasons. But it still distracts. The bottom line, though, is that Paramount seems to be gradually improving the image quality of its South Park season sets.

HOW'S IT SOUND?

The disc's Dolby Surround 2.0 audio track accurately represents the show's original broadcast presentation and about what you'd expect, considering past sets. This is a front-and-center presentation, with occasional panning across the front. Dialog is clear, with only modest distortion at the high end. You'll hear only ambient effects in the rears. Music fares particularly well, in beefy stereo, such as the fourth season's new theme song, which debuts with Disc 2's Fourth Grade.

WHAT ELSE IS THERE?

Remember the audio-commentary debacle of the first South Park season set? Warner, distributor of the first two seasons, decided at the last minute to drop full-length tracks from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, allegedly because of disparaging remarks made by the famously outspoken duo. A lucky few of us were able to obtain those commentaries in CD format from Comedy Central, but Warner's decision carried some controversy for a while, and indeed, the studio also released the second season without commentary tracks. Disappointed fans cried out in anguish, because Parker and Stone are fantastic commentators, evidenced in part by their drunken remarks over Cannibal: The Musical. Thankfully, for the third season, new distributor Paramount agreed to let Parker and Stone contribute mini-commentaries (lasting about 4 minutes) over each of the episodes. That pretty much equates to the duo's attention span, I gather.

Continuing a trend from that third-season set, the Complete Fourth Season set offers Mini-Commentaries over all 17 episodes. The tracks begin right after the opening theme song and last for between 3 and 5 minutes—mostly leaning toward 3. These are very much worth listening to, even though they sound like something of a rip-off. The truth is, they are hilarious little snippets about the origins and production of each show. Parker tends to provide the lion's share of the comments, but both are infectiously funny as they talk about how Timmy evolved and became huge, how immature they are about their disdain for Phil Collins, how they approach the writing and animation of the show, how they squeaked certain outrageous ideas past Comedy Central, and so on. Even these tracks' running joke—"Well, okay, we've rambled on enough about this episode, sorry about that, on to the next one"—somehow remains funny.

You also get two little ad supplements: Previews contains footage for the Reno 911, Crank Yankers, and Denis Leary Roast DVDs, and Comedy Central Quickies hawks some current shows. Yawn.

WHAT'S LEFT TO SAY?

The fourth season of South Park continues the entertainingly gross tradition of the first three seasons and benefits from the added energy of the feature film, released the same year. If you've purchased the first three seasons, this one's a no-brainer. If not, you're just going to have to buy all four. And the film. Image quality is ramping up, and the commentaries are quite informative and entertaining, despite their brevity.