'South Park' Season 15 Final Episode- 'The Poor Kid'

Considering how epic the mid-season finale of "South Park" was (remember "You're Getting Old?"), you would expect the season finale to be even bigger. But Trey and Matt took a step back from the serious turn of the middle of this season and chose not to repeat the crazy Cthulu-type spectacle from last season in favor of a more thoughtful episode.

A thoughtful episode full of Penn State jokes.

You'd think it would be "too soon" to be making jokes about the horror stories that came out of the recent Penn State scandal (I dare you to read a detailed account and not throw up), but this is "South Park." It's never too soon.

The jokes come up as Kenny's parents are arrested during a raid put on by the show "White Trash In Trouble" ("Cops," basically), sending Kenny and his siblings to a foster home. Their case worker at Child Protective Services has a penchant for Penn State jokes... in fact, I think he lets out about 20 of them over the course of this episode.

Those are only counterbalanced by Cartman's "your momma's so poor" jokes, which he used to aim at Kenny. Now that Kenny's gone, though, Cartman makes a shocking realization: he is now the poorest kid in school. No choice but to make the jokes about his own mom, then.

Of course, Cartman won't settle for that, so he frames his mom with a meth lab in the backyard and gets sent off to a foster home as well, expecting a better situation than his current one (he requested Hawaii).

That's not what he and Kenny find at their foster home in the neighboring town of Greeley ("pretty much the opposity of Hawaii"). Instead, they find a run-down house lead by a strictly religious set of foster parents. Oh, but they're strictly agnostic... so everyone is forced to not be certain about anything and drink only agnostic drinks, which limits them to Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper (because who knows what flavors are in there? You can't be sure).

Hey, those foster kids have the same liquid diet that I do!

When Kenny's sister has trouble adjusting, though, we do get one visitor who was prominent in last season's epic Cthulu saga: Mysterion! In an uncharacteristically touching display from the show, Kenny as Mysterion visits his sister and reassures her, and stands up to bullies at school for her, leading her to call him her "guardian angel."

The agnostics don't like that title, so they punish the children by spraying them with Dr. Pepper. Eventually the case worker finds out what's going on and laments his mistake, while also fitting in another Penn State joke or two.

The epicness comes at the very end, as everything seems to be okay when suddenly a giant ostrich monster busts through the roof of the school and eats Kenny.

Stan missed out, so I'll say it: oh my god, they killed Kenny! You bastards!

Were the Penn State jokes a bit much? Yeah, probably. But at least all of them were aimed at the coaches and administrators, and not at the victims. As far as I'm concerned, those guys can be ridiculed all day. So thank, "South Park!"