Cartman - FUBAR?

So, time for my first "column" or whatever you want to call it. I'm going to talk about Cartman and more exactly about his personality. We all know that Cartman is a sociopath that has no regard for other people's emotions or in fact even their lives. He's extreme selfish and insensitive and all in all pretty fucked up kid. But was it always like this? Well, not exactly, but Cartman has always been a dick. During the first seasons he was just this annoying little egoistic and spoiled brat, but he never did anything that serious. But as the series has progressed, he has just gotten worse and worse - the prime example being the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die". Everybody who reads this knows what happened in that episode and lot has been said about that, so I'm not going to get into anymore detail about that. That episode, however, was the point where Cartman turned from that little brat in the fucked up monster - pretty much at least. That deveploment seems to be heading still more and more extreme in the newer episodes - albeit he hasn't killed anyone anymore, but he's just more of a prick.

"..Maybe that alone doesn't make us friends, but it makes us something."
Remember that line from "Casa Bonita"? Cartman has always been a master of manipulation and he's good faking emotions. That is, if it does something good for him. We saw similar behaviour in numerous episodes, but first that comes into my mind is "Cartoon Wars", since I watched it recently. But he has pretty much been busted everytime and nobody is supposed to believe him anymore. In other areas too Cartman has had to push the boundaries to more extreme behaviour all the time and we're about to reach the limits.

"Shut your God-damned Jew mouth!"
How has Cartman's deveploment affected his relationship with Kyle? Well it's obvious that is going worse direction. Their dialogue and constant hate for each other has become redundant. It's stale and boring at this point. Cartman has saved Kyle on couple of occasions of course so you can argue that there's something there, but even that Cartman has done for his personal reasons - Butters makes for a lousy Jew and he needs Kyle to have someone to rip on. When you compare early season's and later season's you'll notice that Kyle hates Cartman now much more and they can barely get along anymore. That kind o stuff affects the perception of Kyle too, since he spends so much of his time nowadays just hating Cartman. But this writing is not about Kyle, this is about Cartman. Only way for things to change would be if Cartman would really change. But can he change and do we really even want him to change?

"Alright, maybe I tried to have Timmy's turkey crushed by a stage light, but I didn't do anything else. I'm not an asshole."
Is there any hope for Cartman to ever turn more humane character? Has he ever shown any signs of remorse, pity or feeling bad for someone other? There's not much evidence for that, but there's few episodes that I can refer to - "How To Eat With Your Butt". There Cartman allegedly "blew a funny fuse" after seeing the Thompsons. But Kyle thought that Cartman couldn't laugh because he felt bad for them. If Kyle was right, there is some humanity after all in Cartman. Other instance I can recall is the "Tsst" episode, where he turned ok by proper upbringing methods and realised that the world doesn't revolve around him. Unfortunately for him his mom ruins it all in the end. That episode still showed that he has the better side also. Finally there's also the "Major Boobage", where he had pity for the outlawed cats and hid them in his attic.

So could Cartman change and more importantly should he? Like I said, some interactions inside the series has become stale, but if we get rid of them completely will Cartman and the series lose some of their charm? Probably it would, so the Cartman shouldn't change that much, especially since we've seen the unexpected side of Cartman still shows up every now and then.

We're pretty much in the end of my first "column" and I gotta say that it ended up much like my school writings used to go. I start it off with a clear opinion, but while thinking from another perspective and finding counter-arguments to myself I soon find myself undecided (and it leads to bad grade since I'm indecisive on the matter). It has happened again and I'm pretty much undecided should Cartman change as character. It's really hard question because we've seen that he is a very multidimensional character character. This also ended up a little bit of a mess, but I guess with some feedback I can only get better. I hope the Stan & Kyle one will be better, though I think it's going to be a bit shorter. Discuss and give feedback, see ya!

Edit: Weird how this is dated October 12th. I guess I made the draft them, but still it's kind of weird.