Boy, the South Park home video releases sure have come a long way. During the first season, single DVDs of four episodes each were released. When they finally did The Complete First Season, the commentary tracks got pulled, but you could order them for free on CD. After that incident, and because it would take forever to talk for over 220 minutes each season, Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to only do mini commentaries for each episode. They always managed to address everything significant about the show’s conception, production and inspiration.

When the show when HD, the home video releases went Blu-ray too. Even though South Park is based on crude, simple animation, don’t take it for granted how beautiful they look on Blu-ray. The colors are so bright, and the subtle shadings give you all sorts of distinct tones.

At this point, there are several deleted scenes per season. The drones episode has a good dig on the celebrity nude leak scandal that was understandably cut for time. In the virtual reality episode, Cartman’s prediction of Kyle’s warning to Butters is great, but it’s Butters’ reaction that really sells it. A long explanation of Wacky Races by the parents in the “Handicar” episode is just unnecessary.

Now we have social commentary, where tweets from the live broadcast are reproduced as a subtitle. The audio commentary confirms many of them, like in fact the entire South Park office went gluten free, and many remained so, for the gluten episode. It’s also interesting to hear Parker and Stone express feeling old and out of touch with the current pop culture. That’s what being on for 18 years will do, but they’re still a premiere voice in topical humor.