YMMV / South Park S15 E14 "The Poor Kid"

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mr. Adams. This may be his only appearance (aside from some cameos and the games), but he's well-liked for being a rare subversion of Adults Are Useless (even if he's still rather dim-witted) and being genuinely caring to the children he meets up with.
  • Karen also gets this for being both cute and sympathetic. It helps that she becomes Kenny's Morality Pet.
• Fridge Brilliance: Cartman's family is poorer than the other kids because most of the other kids have two parents, and thus have the chance to bring in twice as much income.
• Fridge Horror: While we don't know what sort of homes the other kids came from, there's a pretty good chance that Mr. Adams might have put a good number of them back into much worse homes.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Weatherheads practically starve the kids, force them to do chores until the house is almost spotless, and severely punish them for trivial reasons by taking them to the basement (AKA "the punishment room") and hosing them with Dr. Pepper. The episode mirrors a 2018 headline involving Louise and David Turpin, who subjected twelve of their children (all biological) to routine abuse. And then later, five of those children were even further abused by a foster family.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this episode, Cartman becomes fixated on the idea that his mother needs a better job to improve their financial status; later on, in "City People", his mother does get a better job, only to lose it due to Cartman's own manipulations because he'd prefer to have her full-time attention rather than deal with her doing something else. This essentially reflects Cartman's fundamental flaw as a person, as he would rather be the center of attention above all else but fails to think of the possible consequences of his actions.
  • Cartman's obsession over his concerns he's the poor kid in school become this when he ends up worse than Kenny ever was.
• The Woobie: Kenny's younger sister, Karen. It's clear the McCormick's horrible family situation is tolling on its children; while Kenny is rather lax about it and Kevin has developed a drinking problem and fights with his dad, Karen is often seen being afraid or outright crying. Living with the Weatherheads does not help her out either. It's no wonder Kenny cares so much for her.
  • Not just Karen, but her siblings and other foster children end up going through abuse from the Weatherheads.
  • Jacob Hallery and his mother.