South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have built a three-decade career on being the fastest guns in the West. They literally animate episodes in six days. It’s a frantic, caffeine-fueled sprint to the finish line every single week to ensure that by Wednesday night, the comedy is as fresh as the morning’s headlines. But in 2016, the breakneck pace finally caught up with them in the most public way possible. For the first time in the show's history, they had to pivot. They had to scrap a finished concept. They had to deal with the fallout of the South Park alternate ending that never was.
The episode was supposed to be titled "The Very First Gentleman."
If you remember the political climate of November 2016, you know exactly why that title existed. Every poll, every pundit, and almost every model predicted a Hillary Clinton victory. Stone and Parker aren't psychics; they're just guys who usually play the odds. They bet on a Clinton win. They wrote the episode, recorded the lines, and began the arduous process of rendering the animation based on that outcome. Then, Tuesday night happened. Donald Trump won.
The South Park offices at South Park Studios didn't just have a late night; they had a total creative meltdown.
The Scrapped Vision for The Very First Gentleman
The lore of the South Park alternate ending isn't just fan fiction or a "what if" scenario. It’s a documented moment of television history where reality broke the fiction. In the original version of the episode (Season 20, Episode 7), Bill Clinton was set to take center stage as the "First Gentleman," visiting South Park Elementary. The narrative was supposed to wrap up several threads involving the Member Berries and the gender war subplots that had been brewing all season.
It wasn't just a different punchline. It was a different show.
Basically, the creators had spent the entire season building a serialized arc that relied on a specific political trajectory. When that trajectory veered off a cliff, they had less than 24 hours to rewrite, re-voice, and re-animate the entire episode. The result was "Oh, Jeez." If you watch that episode now, you can feel the exhaustion. You can see the seams where the old plot was ripped out and the new, bewildered reality was stitched in.
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Why the South Park Alternate Ending Matters for TV History
Most sitcoms tape months in advance. If The Simpsons makes a prediction that turns out wrong, it just looks like a quirky time capsule. South Park is different. Because they pride themselves on being "current," the South Park alternate ending situation exposed the massive risk of their production model.
Think about the technical debt.
When you have a team of animators working 20-hour shifts, and you tell them at 2:00 AM that the last three days of work are going into the digital trash can, morale doesn't just dip—it vanishes. Bill Hader, who has famously spent time in the South Park writers' room, has spoken about the sheer intensity of those "crunch" periods. But 2016 was the ultimate stress test.
The Member Berries and the Lost Narrative
One of the biggest casualties of the South Park alternate ending was the Member Berries storyline. If you go back and re-watch Season 20, the ending feels... off. It feels unfinished. That’s because it was. The original plan involved a much more cohesive explanation for why people were obsessed with nostalgia and how that tied into a Clinton presidency.
- The Bill Clinton/Bill Cosby "Gentleman's Club" bit was truncated.
- The "Skankhunt42" plotline had to be pivoted to reflect a world where the "troll" actually won.
- The tone shifted from satirical victory to genuine, "What do we do now?" confusion.
Matt Stone later told The Ringer that they realized they couldn't just keep making fun of what was happening because the reality was more satricial than anything they could write. They were essentially being out-parodied by the news cycle. This realization changed the show forever. It’s why the seasons following 2016 moved away from heavy serialization and back toward "kids being kids" or standalone social commentary.
What Was Actually on the Cutting Room Floor?
We know fragments of the South Park alternate ending through leaked storyboards and "making of" snippets. The original episode featured a scene where Bill Clinton addressed the school, likely poking fun at his secondary role in the White House. The "Member Berries" were supposed to have a more definitive "villain" moment that aligned with the establishment winning.
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Instead, we got Randy Marsh staring at the TV in horror.
That wasn't just Randy; that was Trey Parker. The dialogue in "Oh, Jeez" feels like a transcript of the writers' room internal monologue. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm at least a little bit excited," says Mr. Garrison (representing Trump). The characters' confusion mirrored the creators' realization that their entire season-long arc had been built on a foundation of sand.
Honestly, the "alternate" version probably would have been a better-structured piece of television. The version we got was raw, messy, and arguably more honest. It captured a specific moment of American shock that a pre-planned script never could have.
How to Find the Remaining Fragments
If you're looking to see the South Park alternate ending for yourself, you won't find a fully rendered 22-minute episode sitting on a shelf. It doesn't exist in a finished state. What does exist are:
- The Original Promo: Comedy Central actually released a brief teaser for "The Very First Gentleman" before the election results were in. It’s a 15-second relic of a timeline that doesn't exist.
- Audio Stems: Some voice work for the original script was recorded but never used.
- Production Notes: In the "6 Days to Air" style of documentation, the transition from "First Gentleman" to "Oh, Jeez" is cited as the most stressful turnaround in the show's 300+ episode run.
Critics often point to Season 20 as the "weakest" because of its messy ending. But from a technical and historical perspective, it’s the most fascinating. It proves that even the most seasoned satirists can be blindsided. It shows the limits of "real-time" content creation.
Practical Insights for Content Creators and Fans
What can we actually learn from the South Park alternate ending debacle? It’s not just a trivia point for people who like crude cartoons. It’s a lesson in "Agile" production and the dangers of counting your chickens before they hatch.
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First, if you are a creator, always have a "Plan B" for time-sensitive content. Parker and Stone have admitted they didn't really have one. They had to invent Plan B on a Wednesday morning before a Wednesday night airing. That is a recipe for a heart attack.
Second, acknowledge when the reality is more interesting than your script. The reason "Oh, Jeez" works—despite being a bit of a mess—is because it leans into the failure. They didn't try to pretend they knew it was coming. They admitted they were wrong.
Next Steps for the South Park Obsessed
If you want to dig deeper into how the show's production works and why this specific failure happened, watch the documentary 6 Days to Air. While it was filmed before the 2016 election, it provides the necessary context to understand why a 24-hour rewrite is such a monumental task.
Search for the Season 20 DVD/Blu-ray commentary tracks. Parker and Stone are famously candid in these 15-minute "mini-commentaries." They discuss the 2016 pivot with a mix of regret and hilarity. It’s the closest you’ll get to an official post-mortem on the script that died so "Oh, Jeez" could live.
Finally, compare "The Very First Gentleman" promo (still floating around YouTube archives) with the final aired scenes of Mr. Garrison. You can see the specific character movements that were repurposed. It’s a masterclass in "asset recycling" under extreme pressure.
The South Park alternate ending remains the great "lost" episode of the modern era—a reminder that even in a world of scripted comedy, reality still gets the last laugh.
Actionable Insights:
- Watch the 6 Days to Air documentary to understand the production pressure.
- Locate the original 15-second Comedy Central promo for "The Very First Gentleman" on archival sites to see the lost footage.
- Listen to the Season 20 creator commentaries for the specific technical hurdles of the 2016 rewrite.
- Use this as a case study in why "Live-Satire" is a high-risk, high-reward production model.