'South Park' Season 15, Episode 8 Recap - 'Ass Burgers'

Trey Parker and Matt Stone nearly gave "South Park" fans a heart attack with their mid-season finale "You're Getting Old," which saw Stan turning 10 and starting to see and hear everything he used to love as crap (literally).

Now the show is back to continue the rest of the season, and things are still rough for Stan. Each morning he wakes up to the morning radio show, which sounds like s**t, and he's bored with his friends and annoyed at the dumb banter at school about HPV vaccinations.

Mr. Mackie decides that Stan must have Asperger's Syndrome because of his flu vaccine, and he's sent to a therapy group... but in typical "South Park" style, they've actually just been pretending to have Asperger's and they're actually a group of freedom fighters who see everything as s**t like Stan does, and are trying to liberate the human race from the aliens or futuristic robots or rock people or whatever, f**k you.

"Whatever, f**k you" was a totally fitting catchphrase for this episode, don't you think?

And here's the master stroke that makes this episode incredibly sad: the serum that makes Stan see the world the way he used to and makes him love everything again is Jamison's whiskey.

To make things worse, just as Stan learns his lesson ("Sometimes to move forward you have to make a big left turn") and realizes that he doesn't want everything to go back to the way it was, his parents get back together and everything goes back to the way it was. Sharon's quote is especially heartbreaking: "When you get older, sometimes it's just best to stick with what you know."

So everything goes back to the way it was, and it looks like "South Park" will go back to being hilarious without also being totally depressing... except it won't, because Stan is now an alcoholic.

Another brilliant episode from the guys, though it's still sad to think that they've felt this way about their show and getting older. But I think we've all been there at some point: we feel like the world used to look like it does when Stan is drunk, with flowers everywhere and the sun shining with a smiley face on it. And now it doesn't.

But thank god "South Park" is still funny, and will still be around for two more seasons at the least. It was especially fun to see the usual goings-on of the citizens of SP through Stan's eyes, literally from a distance. That bit with him witnessing the end to Cartman's ass burgers from his window was a weighted shot: not only was he seeing it happen from far away, but he was literally looking down on them, too.

So now the question is whether Trey and Matt will continue with the alcoholism thing. If they do, it could be a rough (but probably equally amazing) rest of the season.

What they're trying to tell us: Try to make a left turn all you want, but chances are pretty good that nothing will change. Also, whiskey is magical happy juice.