Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.
TV URBAN LEGEND: “South Park” wasn’t allowed to kill off Sally Struthers in an early episode of the series.
While there are certainly a lot of other differences between “The Simpsons” and “South Park,” a notable one is how each show treats celebrities. “The Simpsons” specifically courts celebrities to do cameos on the show, to the point where they build entire episodes around said guest stars. In fact, as I wrote in an old TV Legends Revealed, when one comedy icon wouldn’t appear on the show if they poked fun at him at all, “The Simpsons” staff just re-wrote his scenes to the point where he would agree to appear.
“South Park,” on the other hand, routinely turns down celebrities when they offer to do voices (or have them do silly voices, like having George Clooney play Stan’s gay dog, with all of his lines simply being “woof” or “bark”). Trey Parker and Matt Stone will often be a lot more vicious towards celebrities than “The Simpsons” writers would ever dare. They have even killed their share of celebrities on their show, with the most famous perhaps being Barbara Streisand, who had transformed herself into an evil giant mechanical dinosaur (luckily, Robert Smith from The Cure showed up to save the day and help kill Streisand after Leonard Maltin and Sidney Poitier were unable to stop her…yes, “South Park” can be really weird at times). However, while the Mecha-Streisand episode appeared in Season 1, it was after the show had already become a bit of a cultural phenomenon and Parker and Stone had gained a bit more leeway from Comedy Central (which airs the show). Early on, they had less freedom, which led to them not being able to kill a celebrity in an early episode. Read on to see how it all went down!
Continue reading “Was South Park Not Allowed to Kill Off Sally Struthers?”