Review of Rick and Morty (2013)

– previously

Seen in 2020.

This review refers to the first seven seasons.

A nihilistic SF adventure. The unholy bastard child of animated sitcoms like The Simpsons (1989) and Family Guy (1999) with the zany action of Buckaroo Banzai (1984) and the dysteleological horror of H. P. Lovecraft and the mechanistic thought experiments of Ted Chiang. In its first seasons, Rick and Morty is uncommonly well written, both in its plotting and in its uncanny callbacks, often turning the thumbscrews on some minor character for metafictional purposes, driving home additional pain.

The motto of the writers seems to be, as Rick says in season 3, episode 9 (“The ABC’s of Beth”): “When you know nothing matters, the universe is yours.” This is their main conclusion from what Morty says to his sister in season 1 when he reveals he’s buried in their yard: “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die.” It’s an edgelord reaction to the bleakness of Red Dwarf (1988) with the queasily comic cartoon mortality of the egg and the doughboy in “The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon” (1933). Indeed, the creative vision could never have been realized without the medium of animation and the execution is often joyously rich and fluid. The highs are amazing, like everything about season 1, episode 10 (“Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind”) and its first follow-up, where a brilliant game with the trope represented by the Allwhen Council from The End of Eternity (1955) is just background. My favourite episode is season 2, episode 2 (“Mortynight Run”), the one with Jerry daycare, the ultra-immersive video game Roy, and a counterintuitive, psychedelic experiment in utilitarian ethics. The episode after that, “Auto Erotic Assimilation”, pulls out the corollary: When you know nothing matters, you know you don’t matter.

If Rick and Morty had been planned from start to finish, to run for about two seasons, it would have been a masterpiece. Alas, the plan became to run it forever, even beyond the point of firing co-creator Justin Roiland who voiced both of the titular characters until 2023’s season 6. This means that, as in the aforementioned sitcoms, characters are not allowed to age and the family situation is not allowed to evolve. Beth and Jerry, Morty’s parents, are traditional for the genre in that Beth is relatively intelligent and attractive while Jerry is more feeble-minded and grotesque. They get divorced at the opening of season 3 and get back together again before the season is over. The unlikely latter development was ostensibly made to soothe Beth’s existential dread that she might have replaced herself with an exact duplicate, a reason which does not make sense even if she was. Compare the swift resolution of season 2, episode 7, also about their marriage.

The real reason for Beth’s decision is status quo ante, the curse of American TV. Paradoxically, an audience that is on board for vertiginous, disorienting and evolving vistas of grand science fiction is assumed to be put off by any change to a fictional family’s situation. I would rather have seen Dan Harmon move on to another project than keep this one going by such dirty tricks. Instead, all the writers really do is to hang a lampshade on their problem, as in season 4, episode 6, and again in season 6, episode 7. A second Beth is added for a while, but for lack of straight-faced new material, the writing is increasingly focused on parodies. For example, the first half of season 4 is, in order:

1. Akira (1988) with Edge of Tomorrow (2014).
2. The A plot is not parody-focused; the B plot satirizes dating apps, like “Hang the DJ” (2017).
3. Heist movies like Ocean’s Eleven (2001).
4. Western dragon fan culture of, for example, Eragon (2006) or How to Train Your Dragon (2010), extending to e.g. Pete’s Dragon (1977).
5. The Mote in God’s Eye (1974) with The Terminator (1984) and A Christmas Carol (1843).

Each of these comes with fun twists and good detail work. I would gladly have watched a cel-style Robot Chicken (2005) about Doc Brown and Marty McFly if it was done this well, but I don’t like the fact that Rick and Morty self-consciously becomes that show when it could have been so much better by staying focused. To the extent that the show has a plotline, it ends in season 7, episode 5, with a metafictional comment denying the value of the closure that it would have brought if it was played straight. In that one episode, instead of turning the usual thumbscrews, the after-credits sequence shows minor characters whose family situation is allowed to change under similar circumstances. That’s another metafictional comment by the writers, on their being well aware of what they eschew in the run of the mill of their industry.

References here: BoJack Horseman (2014), Mob Psycho 100 (2016), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), Final Space (2018), SSSS Gridman (2018), “Zima Blue” (2019), “Swarm” (2022).

animation fiction moving picture series