Blog Post: A Review of Rick and Morty
This is a blog post that I wrote for my personal blog.
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“Nothing you think matters, matters.”
-Rick Sanchez
NOTE: This covers the entire third season; spoilers to follow.
Fan theories. Fan backlash. Creator backlash. All these things surround a 20-minute cartoon show that goes for 10 episodes about every two years. What makes this phenomenon so interesting is that the Rick and Morty multiverse, which in a way includes our own reality, has perhaps the most outspoken fans and most dedicated, despite the fact that the show itself is rather aloof. Not even family can permeate the depths of its own psyche. Jerry and Beth are divorced and Beth may be a clone. By the way, she’s totally a clone.
It’s the top-rated cartoon show; it’s easy to see why. What is hard to see is the light at the end of the tunnel. If there is a light at all. There probably isn’t a light. The end of the tunnel is blocked by a pile of identical corpses.
At the end of the first episode of season three, Rick tells Morty that this is going to be the darkest season yet. And it definitely was, both in the context of the show and outside of it. From a failed Szechuan Sauce marketing scheme that totally missed the mark by McDonald’s to an arc that largely related to the divorce of not just Jerry and Beth, but the family as a whole, we became obsessed (again) with a cartoon. And that obsession was a perfectly perpendicular line to the show’s general conceit: Everything is meaningless and you don’t matter.
The show is popular on the internet (specifically Reddit) for its subtle plot hints and hidden meanings, and this season it’s “smartest” fans caused a backlash. From criticizing the creators and doxxing female writers to a ridiculous meme-infested tantrum over limited Szechuan Sauce supplies, they proved that they don’t understand the show at all.
That’s because Rick and Morty isn’t a show that’s ever going to pay lip service to its fans. Not really. See that box of time travel stuff on the shelf? The show is as absent and nihilistic as its hero-villain Rick. We may like to think that we’re the Morty or the Summer to the show’s Rick, but we’re not even Jerry. We haven’t been abandoned or mistreated. Because we never had the kind of love and support we wanted in the first place.
Sure, the show needs fans to stay on the air. But there are most likely enough fans out there who understand the show and it’s co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland to keep it going.
I originally wanted to do a summary of the season but quickly got sidetracked by the number of outside forces that have permeated my experience of the show. My thesis for this article has gotten away from me. But I think I’ve formulated a new one which is this (several paragraphs in, lead dutifully buried): Season three of Rick and Morty wasn’t the sounding board many fans wanted it to be.
While I have no empirical proof, other than Reddit posters it would seem that the majority of fans of the show are liberal minded-those who harassed female writers not included. And in our current political and ecological state, a show such as this would seem to be a safe haven. A place in which to put all our fears and righteous anger while getting something in return. But that’s never been the case with this show. The show is Rick. Too smart for its own good and unloving. It doesn’t care about your problems. It doesn’t care about this article. It would rather turn itself into a pickle than sit and listen to us whine about the mundaneness of life.
And that’s what it essentially does in the season finale. It rebukes the country, it blows off America. We are the sex tunnel creatures and it’s tired of cleaning us up.
Toward the end of the finale, we see Rick with a machine gun ready to shoot Jerry as Beth gives a speech about being a clone. No amount of genius can stop Jerry’s “dumb, mediocre, vacuous roots from digging into everything and everyone around you and draining them of any ability to fend you off.” And if that’s not enough, “Nothing you think matters, matters. This isn’t special.”
While it may be hard to find more apt words for how much of a nation feel under our current president, the meaning is a tough one to swallow. I’m a firm believer that TV, and by extension, all forms of entertainment is a necessity. We need escapism from our true lives. It’s why reality TV works. You get to leave your life behind while you mock silly contestants vie for love. You get to watch American Ninja Warriors fail on the first obstacle after so much training. It’s therapeutic to see someone else fail and forget your own failings for a moment. Just as it’s thrilling to watch someone you root for thrive. Because if they do, if they catch the bad guy maybe so can you.
From a strictly television-based point of view, the third season of Rick and Morty was a huge success. It raised the stakes over the previous two seasons all the while bringing witty one-liners and off-color, sometimes too-close-to-home jokes. It even found the plot and moved it forward. Each and every episode relating to the last and setting up the next.
From a therapeutic point of view, which a lot of people seemed to turn to it for, it didn’t fail. It was never there for that. Rick and Morty has never been South Park. It never set out to criticize and satirize our current world. And somewhere along the way, a lot of us forgot that. Take the president for example. The president in their universe isn’t Trump, by any stretch. Sure, he has an ego but he’s not the orange megalomaniac that a show like South Park would create.
Sometimes, a TV show is just a TV show. Another way to tell a story. Something to take from it what you will and apply it how you will to your life. But it doesn’t owe you anything. Because at the end of the day, what you think matters doesn’t matter.