Portal:Animation/Selected article/23

The fourteen episodes of the thirteenth season of South Park, an American animated television comedy series, originally aired in 2009. The show focuses on the exploits of protagonists Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny and Butters in the fictional Colorado mountain town of South Park. The 13th season satirized such topics as the ACORN scandal, Japanese whaling, piracy in Somalia and the marketing tactics of the Walt Disney Company. Celebrities were spoofed throughout the season, including the Jonas Brothers, Kanye West, Carlos Mencia, Paul Watson and Glenn Beck. The season received mixed reviews: some critics called it one of South Park's strongest seasons, while others claimed the series was starting to decline in quality. The season maintained the average Nielsen rating viewership for the series, around 3 million viewers per episode. The episode "Margaritaville", which satirized the global recession then affecting much of the industrialized world, won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour). "Fatbeard" was praised by the crew of the USS Bainbridge, which was involved in the 2009 rescue of the MV Maersk Alabama from Somalian pirates.