It goes without saying that South Park went through a renaissance with season 18.

Gone were the days of episodes being totally disconnected from one another and revolving around plot ideas that had no room to develop in the future. Instead, fans were gifted, much to everyone’s surprise, with a season long story arc which gave it a totally different feeling from its predecessors.

Although season 18 was clumsily handled at times, it showed potential for where Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the shows developers) intended to take the show, and season 19 continued this shift.

Matt, Trey, and the rest of the crew at South Park Studios had really struggled to add new characters who were capable of holding attention for more than a lone episode; however, PC Principal was very much a headliner and center point of conversation through the course of season 19,  being prominent in nearly every episode, as well as being a central figure within the final plot. Oddly enough, he was more prominent than the shows five main characters (Kyle, Stan, Kenny, Cartman and Butters).

Even PC Principal’s voice and lingo was something totally different and new; this allowed intended prevalence to stick out to fans.

The crew’s success at implementing new characters was made evident in the reality that even Caitlyn Jenner’s character managed to continue to be funny throughout the season, which was quite remarkable considering that it was essentially the same, albeit but hilarious none the less, joke over and over again. What’s interesting about Caitlyn Jenner and PC Principal’s characters is that they’ve both been retained for the next season, and there has been little to no complaining about this because it’s hard to deny that both of them served as good additions within the season.

One thing any and every fan could agree on is that Season 19 was a very strong season. It had a number of good episodes which not only made good points about relevant societal topics, but  were also  genuinely funny. Mr. Garrison’s Donald Trump portrayal episode is obviously a standout, as was Jimmy’s “sponsored content” trilogy that concluded the season, these along with a multitude of other standouts made up the remarkable season.

Even the season’s few lackluster episodes were at worst above average compared to episodes of seasons long gone. There were standout jokes about the PC brigade, advertising, modern day news, fat shaming, the police, Donald Trump, Yelp, and gun control. South Park’s previous seasons had been a case of hit or miss from episode to episode, but this season it was mainly a hit, and more so because of the reality that episodes connected to one another.

The hardest thing to swallow about season 19 is how long fans have to wait for the new season to begin, and I regret to inform that we have a long, long wait—next September, at least.

South Park season 20 is going to follow the formula of the last few seasons—a short season, just ten episodes in span and yet again, not surprisingly, the season will not resume before the beginning of another.  Trey and Matt have abandoned the system they had previously employed in which a season would be split into two intervals, one 7 episode term in the spring and one in the fall. That was always a weird structure in the first place, but now, looking back on it, it was kind of nice. After all, fans got new South Park in the spring and in the fall. Now, it’s just in the fall, and for ten short weeks at that.

Of course, there’s a reason fans get less South Park now. The alternative was getting none of it—Matt and Trey only agreed to keep doing the show with an abbreviated season, airing only in the fall. That’s less work than before, and it gives them the whole spring to work on other projects (like Book of Mormon). And you know what? It’s hard to protest this. As a result, we got the best season of South Park in ages, after several generally lackluster ones. It’s certainly safe to say that it was worth the wait.