Oops, they did it again. And again. And yet again.

The expletives really flew on Wednesday's season five premiere of South Park --162 times, to be exact. The Comedy Central staple, infamous for its alien anal probes, Jesus vs. Satan pay-per-view bouts and poultry-raping villains, managed to make the standards and practices people cry once again .

In the episode titled "It Hits the Fan," Stan, Cartman, Kyle, Kenny and company dropped the S-bomb 162 times during the half-hour 'toon with nary a bleep.

Comedy Central wouldn't confirm the amount (the cable network is holding a contest for fans who dutifully count the number of times the S-word is uttered), but a network executive explained the boundary-pushing show, and its creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker , just wanted to make a point.

"What the show is saying is that 'shit' is a common word," Comedy Central executive vice president Bill Hilary tells the New York Post . "What does it mean? It means poo."

So what caused the sudden dump of swearing? While watching the nighttime network show Cop Drama , the kids hear a character use the forbidden word, which triggers their expletive diarrhea of the mouths. The fictional network, HBC, seeing the jump in ratings, decides to keep the cusses coming. The burst of profane language somehow awakens the mysterious "Knights of Standards and Practices." It's then up to the four friends and their mentor/school cook, Chef, to save the world from the overzealous censors.

While the show is famous for its countless scatological references and shocking bits, Comedy Central regularly bleeps out any swear words. In their big-screen feature, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut , the characters made liberal use of curse words and other taboo references and images, but this is the first time the TV show permitted such language on television.

Though a very cable-healthy 3 million viewers loved the numerous invoking of feces, the show's creators may be disappointed if they were courting controversy. The New York Daily News reports Comedy Central only received four emails on the episode, all giving a big thumbs up on the crap references.

It's difficult to imagine shocking South Park diehards. Even 162 references to dung hardly tops previous stunts, like the introduction of a magical and very cheerful stool named Mr. Hanky, the Christmas Poo. But that's not going to stop Stone and Parker from stopping. Among the episodes in the, um, pipeline: Cartman grows his first pubic hair and Big Gay Al becomes leader of the South Park Scout Troop.

To get the straight poop, Comedy Central reairs the episode Saturday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 a.m. and 11 p.m. (all times ET/PT).

[ source: E! ]