In 1997 when South Park first aired I was 13 years old. I watched it like other kids my age; I had a South Park box-set, scarf, a Kenny key-ring and a copy of the album a friend recorded for me, our favourite song being ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ sung by Isaac Hayes AKA ‘Chef’ on the show.

When you’re a teenager, things come and go. I eventually lost interest in South Park and moved on.

Fast forward to just over 20-years later.

It’s late, around midnight, and I’m at home flicking through channels. I stumble across South Park. I snort and exclaim to myself ‘jeez, this still exists?’ But I don’t change the channel. I keep watching.

However many minutes later I’m in hysterics! I’ve never seen this episode before. It’s called ‘Here comes the Neighbourhood’ and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. The commentary on class, race and fitting in was flawless in the way I have now come to expect from South Park.

But this isn’t a review of the show.

I started watching South Park again – old episodes that I’d never seen alongside the newer ones.

Later seasons focussed less on the children and pretty much exclusively on Randy – Stan’s dad. This is something that  I’ve noticed happens with popular animated shows. It was the same with The Simpsons and Family Guy. When these shows started, they were very much centred around the child characters: Bart, Stewie, and in the case of South Park, Cartman (primarily), Stan, Kyle and Kenny. As the creators of these shows – in this case white men – got older they seemed to identify less with the kids and more with the dads, hence more episodes centred around Homer, Peter, and Randy. There’s a lot to be said about the portrayal of  the family patriarch both on animated shows and sitcoms, and what these portrayals say about how society views men of a certain age and how the men who write these characters view themselves but, that’s for another day.

Instead I want to talk about the unintended consequence I experienced by watching South Park as an adult.

I’ve realised that we can learn a little about achieving our goals from, of all people, Randy Marsh.

Let me explain.

Randy Marsh is a wild character. He lacks the warmth and cuddly nature that exists under Homer Simpson’s bafoonery, but he’s not as annoying and irredeemable as Peter Griffin. Randy is however selfish, impulsive and lacks self-awareness. He can be incredibly childish at times and sometimes just plain weird!

I’ve noticed that Randy has been through several phases in his ‘life’. At first, he was just Stan and Shelly’s dad who worked as a Geologist. He hung out with the other dads in the show, and some of the other characters.

Later, the writers started to let us know that Randy is very weird. For example, in the episode ‘Sons of witches’ we learn that every Halloween Randy and his buddies like to dress up as witches, head into the mountains, drink, and smoke crack. We also learned that Randy had a porn addiction which eventually got the better of him in the episode ‘Over logging’.

Speaking of addictions, in addition to porn, both alcohol and weed are Randy’s poisons of choice (although he also likes to dabble in the aforementioned crack and, more recently, pills)

He entered his ‘woke phase’ where, initially, because of his alcoholism, he finds himself hanging out with and eventually adopting the beliefs and behaviours of ‘PC Principal’ and the social justice community.

Then there are his business ventures.

The episode ‘A nightmare on FaceTime’ saw Randy purchase an old closed-down Blockbuster Video in the age of streaming services. In ‘The Cissy’ he embarked on a music career writing and performing as Lorde, but his biggest and most successful venture was ‘Tegrity Farms’, where he, along with his friend and fellow addict Towelie, (a talking towel with an entire backstory) grow and sell weed.

Randy seems to always be trying to reinvent himself – always trying new things to varying degrees of success in order to reach his goals. Those goals are usually centred around making loads of money and getting high but I think, underneath this is his desperate need to avoid the boredom, stress, responsibilities and predictability of a typical adult existence – something that I think many of us can relate to.

It was never explained why he stopped being a Geologist. My guess is that there were limited opportunities for interesting and funny storylines within this field. Whatever the reason, what the writers have given us is a character who has an array of interests and who isn’t afraid to pursue them, even when he has no idea what he’s doing.

Who the hell buys a Blockbuster Video store in the age of Netflix? It was a terrible idea that failed hysterically but did he let that failure stop him from being brave and following his ultimate goal of being rich and getting high? Nope! For reasons I don’t understand he instead decided to write and perform as Lorde.

Now, we can’t ignore Randy’s impulsiveness. This guy doesn’t really think things all the way through. This along with his drug and alcohol issues is the reason he may have been responsible for the spread of COVID 19 according to one of the ‘Pandemic Special’ episodes. Similarly, it’s why he narrowly escaped a lengthy prison sentence after pissing off China, so I’m not saying this character is any kind of role model but, Tegrity Farms was very successful showing that when  Randy puts his mind to something he can work hard, make smart decisions and commit. As a result, he reached his goal of being rich and getting high all the time.

My point is, regardless of how flawed, thoughtless, or impulsive he is, Randy is also brave and consistent in his commitment to reaching his goals. He doesn’t let setbacks and poor decisions scare him into walking away from his dreams, nor does he beat himself up when he makes mistakes- and boy does this guy make some serious, monumental and ridiculous mistakes!

I think that’s something I have, and we can all take away from this weird, hot mess of a character.

Mistakes, setbacks and fear need not mean the end of the pursuit of our dreams and goals if we are committed, consistent and brave.