A Toast for the Assholes: Rewatching South Park’s “You’re Getting Old”

A while back I wrote about South Park’s “You’re Getting Old.” I called it one of my favorite episodes, but looking back, I didn’t go nearly deep enough. That first piece caught the surface of it — the fart jokes hiding real pain, the way Stan suddenly sees everything as shit. But rewatching it now, older and more aware of my own cynicism, I realized the episode deserves more.

This isn’t just another clever half-hour of TV. It might be the most honest depiction of depression I’ve ever seen on screen. Maybe only Eeyore ever came close. What makes it hit harder now is that I don’t just watch Stan or Randy anymore. I see myself in both of them. The kid who can’t stop seeing the rot, and the dad who tries to fake joy until it all collapses.

So think of this as a second pass. A deeper cut. If you want the first take, you can read it here. But this time I want to go further. Into Randy’s confession, into Stevie Nicks, into Kanye’s Runaway. Into why I can’t shake the feeling that this episode wasn’t just written for Stan – it was written for people like me.

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The setup is simple. Stan turns ten years old, and almost overnight the whole world turns sour. Every song he hears sounds like literal fart noises. Movies look like garbage. Even his favorite foods taste like crap. At first it’s a gag. Then it keeps spreading. Stan can’t enjoy anything anymore. He goes to the doctor, looking for medicine, but the doctor just shrugs: “You’ve got a condition called being a cynical asshole. There’s no known cure.”

It’s played for laughs, but it’s also devastating. The problem isn’t the world. The problem is him. It might be the most honest look at depression television has ever given us. Maybe only Eeyore ever came close, shuffling under his own gray little rain cloud.

Randy goes the other way. He hears the same noise Stan does, but he won’t accept it. He throws himself into Tween Wave, this hideous kids’ music that sounds like static and vomiting over a beat. “It speaks to my youthful rebellious spirit,” he says, like a teenager trapped in a middle-aged dad. He doesn’t just listen. He gets on stage and performs it, humiliating himself in front of a crowd half his age. It’s funny at first. Then it turns sad. Randy isn’t enjoying himself. He’s desperate. He’s forcing himself to pretend the noise is music, hoping if he dances hard enough maybe he’ll feel something again.

Stan’s friends don’t hang on either. At first they try to include him. But every time, he drags things down. Finally Kyle says what friends eventually say when someone’s drowning in cynicism: “You’re a bummer to be around.” That’s the cost. People don’t want the kid who keeps reminding them the music is garbage and the ice cream tastes like shit. Most people need the illusion. Stan ruins it.

Sharon is exhaustion in human form. She doesn’t rage. She doesn’t fake. She just sighs: “It’s always the same old crap, Randy.” That isn’t hope. It isn’t even anger. It’s resignation. She has stopped looking for joy and settled into survival.

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Then the jokes fall away. Randy finally breaks. No more Tween Wave. No more pretending. He tells Sharon:

“I’m unhappy, okay? And I have been for a long time. I didn’t know it until just recently. I guess I just realized life is hard. You wake up every day and it just seems to get a little more difficult. It’s like this weight I’m carrying, and it just gets heavier and heavier. And you just want to cry. But you can’t, because the tears are all dried up. I can’t do it, Sharon. I can’t fake it anymore. I can’t pretend like everything’s okay. I don’t even know who I am anymore. But I know I can’t keep going on like this.”

That isn’t satire. That isn’t setup for a gag. That’s one of the rawest speeches about depression ever put on television. A cartoon dad admitting the thing most real dads can’t. But it also points to something darker. The real lesson of getting older is that you don’t just realize life is hard. You learn to bury that knowledge. You learn to fake it. You learn to stop pointing out that everything feels like shit, because if you keep saying it out loud you’ll lose your friends, your marriage, maybe your kids too.

That’s the trap adulthood sets for all of us. Pretend so you can keep your comfort. Pretend so you can keep your place at the table. Pretend so you can maintain the facade that you matter. Stan is too young to do it at first, but eventually he learns the same trick most of us do. You swallow the noise. You choke down the taste. You play along, because survival demands it.

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The episode ends in quiet resignation. The Marsh family packs up, the house empties, and Stevie Nicks starts singing:

“Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?”

It’s not background music. It’s a direct question. Stan can’t handle the change. Neither can Randy or Sharon. The song doesn’t offer answers. It just admits what getting older feels like. Fragile. Uncertain. Irreversible.

That’s why Landslide works so perfectly. It isn’t a promise that things will get better. It’s a confession that time moves whether you are ready or not. It admits the ground shifts under you, that seasons don’t stop, and that sometimes all you can do is watch yourself erode. Over that montage — stripped rooms, sold house, quiet goodbyes — it’s devastating. Stan still sees the world as shit, and the song fades out anyway.

Maybe that’s why this episode cuts me so deep. Because I know that filter. I’ve lived with it. I’ve driven people away with it. Lovers who wanted lightness. Friends who wanted fun. Family who couldn’t carry my weight and theirs too. Not because I wanted to. Because cynicism leaks out of me until the room clears.

Now I see it in my daughter’s eyes, and it terrifies me. The same squint at the world, the same suspicion that everything is rotten. Maybe she inherited it from me. Maybe she learned it watching me. Either way, it feels like a curse I passed down without meaning to.

On rewatch, it reminded me of another confession. Kanye’s Runaway. The song opens with that lonely piano key, repeating like a heartbeat that won’t settle. He raises a glass:

“Let’s have a toast for the assholes,

The scumbags,

The jerk-offs.”

At first it feels like a boast, like he’s owning it. But then the mask slips, and you realize he isn’t celebrating at all. He’s warning. Because Runaway isn’t just a toast. It’s an admission.

He knows exactly who he is. Being the asshole isn’t an act he can turn off. It’s woven into him. It’s the part that makes him magnetic, brilliant, creative. It’s also the part that makes him selfish, destructive, impossible to love without scars. He can’t promise to change, because changing would mean erasing himself. All he can do is give the truth straight:

“Run away from me, baby.

Run away as fast as you can.”

That’s the knife twist. It isn’t self-loathing. It’s self-awareness. He knows being the asshole is what makes him him. He knows it means he will hurt people. And he knows the kindest thing he can do is warn them before the damage lands.

So when I see Stan in that empty room while Stevie Nicks asks if we can handle the seasons of our lives, I hear Kanye at the same time, begging the people closest to him to run. Both songs strip away the illusion. No comfort. No redemption. Just the truth about depression, aging, and the way cynicism burns everyone around it.

Here’s to the assholes. The ones who collapse. The ones who fake it. The ones who give up. The friends who left, the ones who stayed, the kids who inherit it whether they wanted to or not. Here’s to survival. Here’s to honesty. Here’s to the assholes.

When I first wrote about this episode, I thought that was enough — pointing out how sharp it was, how South Park could slip heartbreak in between fart jokes. But rewatching it now, older and maybe a little more broken, I see more. I see Randy’s confession as a mirror. I hear Stevie Nicks and Kanye not as background but as truth. And I see myself, in ways I didn’t want to admit the first time around.

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South Park Episode: “You’re Getting Old”