‘South Park’ Creators Miss Deadline For Season 17, Episode 4 'Goth Kids 3' After Power Outage At Studio

The creators of "South Park" take an unorthodox approach to meeting deadlines for their show: as the documentary "6 Hours to Air" memorably depicted, Matt Stone and Trey Parker usually do their work in a fit of last-minute panic, completing and handing in each week's new episode just hours before it's set to air. This week, that strategy finally backfired on them when a power outage hit their South Park Studios, causing all of their computers to go dark. "It sucks to miss an air date but after all these years of tempting fate by delivering the show last minute, I guess it was bound to happen," said Parker. The creators also posted on their website a series of night-vision photos of themselves and their team in visible distress amid the blackout.

"On Tuesday night, South Park Studios lost power," read a press release issued on the South Park Studios website. "From animation to rendering to editing and sound, all of our computers were down for hours and we were unable to finish episode 1704 'Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers' in time for air tonight." That episode, it informed, will air next Wednesday, Oct. 23. Last night, viewers who tuned in expecting to catch a new episode got an old one instead - "Scott Tenorman Must Die". The event marks the first time in the 16-season history of the animated series that the creators missed their deadline. When "Goth Kids" airs, it'll be the 240th episode in the series' history.

The 2011 documentary "6 Hours to Air", produced by Comedy Central, was filmed over the course of a week in April 2011 as the duo worked on season 15 episode "Humancentipad". The two lead their team in putting together the entire 20-some minute episode in only six days - a process which usually lasts about 3-10 months in most animated TV shows. Trey Parker explains in it that he prefers to work that way to avoid overthinking each decision. "I always feel like, 'Wow I wish I had another day with this show.' That's the reason that there's so many episodes of 'South Park' we're able to get done because there just is a deadline and you can't keep going. Because there'd be so many shows that I'm like, 'No no it's not ready yet, not ready,' and I would have spent four weeks on one show. All you do is start second guessing yourself and rewriting stuff and it gets overthought and it would have been 5 percent better."