Out of all the beloved double acts in the South Park universe — Stan and Kyle, Cartman and Butters, Jimmy and Timmy, etc. — one of the most underappreciated and underutilized is Stan and Cartman. They don’t team up as much as they should.
Kyle is easily riled up by Cartman, which gives them a classic dynamic, but Stan is more ambivalent to Cartman’s evil, making him a great voice-of-reason foil for the iconic character. While Kyle and Cartman are constantly getting into heated debates, Stan’s moral choices subtly highlight Cartman’s flaws purely by contrast. These are the greatest episodes that shed a spotlight on their friendship.
8 Cash For Gold (Season 16, Episode 2)
When Stan’s grandpa starts spending all his inheritance on gifts made of gold in season 16’s “Cash for Gold,” he finds that it’s a perpetual cycle: people give gold to cash-for-gold places, the gold is melted down and turned into jewelry, that jewelry is bought by seniors for their grandkids, and those grandkids take the jewelry to a cash-for-gold place, starting the cycle all over again.
As his investigation goes deeper, Stan finds out that Cartman himself is one of these cash-for-gold charlatans trying to make a quick buck off of unsuspecting elderly people.
7 My Future Self ‘N’ Me (Season 6, Episode 16)
Primarily, season 6’s “My Future Self ‘N’ Me” is a Stan and Butters episode. Stan’s future self shows up and he’s addicted to drugs, prompting Stan to buckle down at school and focus on his studies. When Butters reveals that his future self has also paid him a visit, they learn that their parents have hired actors to play their future selves to manipulate them into doing well at school.
After this revelation, Stan seeks out a company that can help him exact revenge against his parents. He finds such a company being run by Cartman, who smears feces on his customers’ parents’ walls.
6 Breast Cancer Show Ever (Season 12, Episode 9)
After Cartman mocks Wendy’s presentation about the dangers of breast cancer in season 12’s “Breast Cancer Show Ever,” she threatens to kick his butt after school.
Throughout the day, he gets more and more nervous about the fight, because it seems obvious that he’ll lose. He begs Stan to stop his girlfriend from beating him up, but he can’t talk her out of it because she really, really wants to beat him up.
5 Sexual Healing (Season 14, Episode 1)
In the A-plot of the season 14 premiere “Sexual Healing,” Kyle, Kenny, and Butters are taken away to be rehabilitated for their supposed sex addiction in a satire of all the celebrity sex scandals that were rattling Hollywood at the time. But the B-plot with Stan and Cartman is arguably even more memorable.
In the B-plot, Stan and Cartman play the new Tiger Woods video game from EA, a sort of Mortal Kombat with feuding spouses in which golf clubs are used to attack an adulterous husband instead of hit golf balls.
4 Smug Alert! (Season 10, Episode 2)
Stan and Cartman react in different ways when Kyle’s dad moves the family to San Francisco in season 10’s “Smug Alert!” Stan is devastated and does everything he can to keep his best friend around, while Cartman throws a going-away party for Kyle and doesn’t invite him to it.
Cartman ultimately realizes he needs to have Kyle around and misses their constant bickering, so he ventures into San Francisco in a deep-sea diver’s suit to bring him back.
3 Whale Wh*res (Season 13, Episode 11)
When Stan first suggests anti-whaling activism in season 13’s “Whale Wh*res,” Cartman makes it very clear that he doesn’t care about the plight of whales. However, he quickly changes his tune when Stan’s activism lands him Paul Watson’s job on Whale Wars and makes him a revered TV celebrity.
All of a sudden, Cartman can’t wait to save the whales. He shows up on Stan’s boat and pretends to be passionate about his cause, saying that he didn’t say he hates whales; he said he hates Wales, the country. Stan, of course, can see right through it.
2 Woodland Critter Christmas (Season 8, Episode 14)
One of South Park’s darkest episodes (and that’s saying a lot), season 8’s “Woodland Critter Christmas” revolves around Stan helping a bunch of little talking animals in the woods, who turn out to be planning the birth of the Antichrist.
Midway through the episode, it’s revealed that the whole thing was created by Cartman as a homework assignment to write a Christmas-themed story. It’s disturbing, but the whole class is hooked and wants to know how it ends.
1 Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow (Season 9, Episode 8)
In the opening scene of season 9’s “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow,” Stan and Cartman are sitting in a stranger’s boat and accidentally ram it into a nearby dam, flooding the town of Beaverton. Cartman is ecstatic when they get away with it, but Stan struggles to deal with the guilt.
The episode is a broad satire of the media’s response to Hurricane Katrina, which many believe focused more on placing blame than seeking aid for those affected. It uses Cartman’s amorality to highlight Stan’s morality.
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