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Only The Real Rick and Morty Can Save Us.
I’ll start by saying that my intention here is not to get anybody on the site to become a regular viewer of a raunchy SciFi cartoon, but I recommend reading the post below – and if you have time, watch the clips I carefully picked (in total, they shouldn’t take up more than 8 minutes). Rick and Morty is a show about God’s dislike for the blindly religious; meaning, of course, bureaucrats.
If the Right has a demographic to play “get out and vote!” with, it’s young, unmarried, mostly white men (but definitely not all), aged 18 to 40. Perhaps it’s an issue that 22 years could span a single political demographic, but mine is an iPad generation; it is what it is. Anyway, those are our votes to lose. Of the group I’ve described, the easiest way to identify them is to point out that the majority of them play video games; they probably discovered internet porn before even having a girlfriend; and their choices of popular entertainment are likely disconcerting to the rest of polite society. I’d guess most of these have seen a fair share, if not all, of the series South Park, Game of Thrones, The Wire, Archer, Workaholics, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, and Rick and Morty. Each has some merit, most are liked for the wrong reasons. Bob’s Burgers might be the best, but Rick and Morty is the most important. It’s a show about a genius and his grandson. The title is a play on “Doc” and “Marty” from Back to the Future.
Rick is the smartest man in the universe. He is practically all-knowing and all-powerful, perhaps lacking only in clairvoyance. He’s considered a terrorist by the Intergalactic Federation (a government made up of mildly intelligent mosquitos), who, according to the often duplicitous Rick, hope to take over the Universe. The burden of his obsessive mind fuels raging alcoholism and often leads him to the conclusion that nothing matters. His partner is his grandson, Morty. The former is constantly dragging Morty into life-threatening adventures, and while Rick is often irritated with his grandson’s foibles, it becomes clear to the viewers that Morty is a genuine necessity. I’ll add two clips below to get us started: The first is the opening scene of the series, which fittingly encapsulates the show’s arc, particularly Morty’s development of confidence in order to hone in his grandfather’s seasonal insanity.
Note the jokey Christian overtones in the clip above. I doubt the creators are religious, but they aren’t dummies. I assume, if nothing else, they know secular stories don’t cut it. This second clip (from much later in the series) will give you a taste of the terrors that Morty is exposed to by spending time with his grandpa:
The thing about Morty is that his brushes with a seemingly cold and uncaring universe never completely diminish his decency, only his naiveté. Though the youngest member of the Smith family, a stultified nuclear unit, he becomes its leader. His father is the weak, often pathetic, Jerry – the greatest object of Rick’s ire; Morty’s mother is an alcoholic herself. She’s clearly intelligent, but embittered by her loss of options that came after marrying Jerry and carrying her eldest child instead of following her father’s seeming-tendency to put inconveniences out of the head and move on; then there’s Summer, Jerry and Beth’s firstborn. Her arc began later in the series. Initially, she was a typical self-obsessed teenage girl, but as she began to be included in Rick’s adventures, she’s developed into a character of equal importance. (It was Summer who was first to be told about one of Morty’s most disturbing revelations.)
The show really gets going in the last episode of the final season, wherein Rick is framed for murdering other Rick’s from other dimensions. This crime is “naturally” under the jurisdiction of The Council of Ricks, another government formed by the Ricks who lack our Rick’s independence. It becomes clear to us that they are no less of a problem to our world than is the first government we encountered.
Our culprit surprises us though… it’s the Anti-Morty. (By the way, in this episode, our Morty is deemed the “One True Morty” by his fellow sidekick captives.)
Alright, now that we’ve got the gist, I can bring us to the show’s most frighteningly eerie episode. The show’s third season opens up with Rick escaping from the Intergalactic Federation, but on his way out, he discovers that the Council (of Ricks) have kidnapped the real-Rick’s Morty and Summer. Rick’s wrath leads him to destroy both the Citadel of Ricks and the Bug Government. To what extent the latter survives, we aren’t exactly sure – and I haven’t seen the latest season of the show, but I believe the bugs make a return – but the Citadel, being made up of surviving geniuses and their submissive sidekicks, was bound to return. We discover their fate later in Season 3.
The episode continues to show dissatisfied Rick’s, working menial jobs despite their equal capabilities to their superiors, and all of the Rick-less Mortys, living in squalor and turning to crime. In the center is a an honest Rick-cop, who hopes to make a difference, and a highly competent Morty in a highly unlikely Presidential run. At the debate, candidate-Morty makes a convincing case for the fact that the Ricks and Mortys who dislike the system outnumber the few who do. (The entire campaign and speech is cleverly done, it allows the show’s bipartisan audience to see the candidate of their admiration in this 2017 episode… before ripping the rug from under our feet.) After candidate-Morty wins the debate, his just-fired Campaign Manager discovers some unsettling truth. Then he sets out to assassinate the potential frontrunner.
It’s no mere sitcom. It is situational, and it’s funny, but this show takes us way out of the house. The irrationality of love and family is pointed out, but redeemed; its multiverse is used to suck in the nerds, but mostly done to expose us to the nearly unlimited, yet daunting, opportunities that come from freedom; and the reality, and complicated nature, of Good and Evil are laid bare. For any of you who know smart young men that are finding a hard time living up to their potential, I recommend asking if they know Rick and Morty. You may find that this minor knowledge of something that interests them will foster some confidence in you from them. And I’ve found that guys like that really could use some adults to talk to.
I’ll hope to see you guys in the comments. But until then, as they say in Canada… “Peace Oot!”
Published in Culture
So I take it you’re not a South Park fan, either?
Would you include Aqua Teen Hunger Force on that list?
My (23-year-old) son loves this, and plays me clips. We laugh uproariously. He beseeches me to give it a try – after your post I guess I should watch them all. I’ll see if he will read your presentation here. Thanks for the fun!
(And I think the animation is just fine. I was a big Ren and Stimpy fan, so this seems pretty tame.)
I know that was a hit with some of my friends, but I never got the sense it ever attracted the same kind of mainstream appeal as the others I mentioned.
Admittedly, this could be entirely because I never really caught it. I also failed to give note to The Office and Parks and Recreation, which are probably even bigger hits than the ones I mentioned, but probably because they’ve got a lot of appeal outside of the lonely Millennial-bro milieu that I’m concentrating on.
Not a bad song. He says today you could be a kiss, and tomorrow you could be a stone.
Undoubtedly a complete coincidence, but in the (great) book “The Order of Time”, physicist Carlo Rovelli argues that the world (reality) is not made out of objects, but out of occurances, events. He uses the same analogy: “Therefore the world is not made out of stones, but out of kisses”.
Ah!
That’ll be a tough sell on any wife… I hope. Let me just say that all episodes are not equal. As ‘hant pointed out, it can be extraordinarily bleak, and though I do believe it is really going somewhere, they’ve got to throw a few bones to the woe-is-me crowd in order to keep them in and satisfy their sense of intellectual superiority.
I might recommend it as something to watch during those times you’re looking for entertainment while the wife is busy or sleeping. Also, I agree with Kirkian, I’d recommend against binge watching it.
Still, it’s good to get a sense of what one is up against.
Hey…. I didn’t mention Camus! I pride myself on finding Camus totally and utterly forgettable.
Right.
Even so, he’s a damned fine sport!
Mice, Saint Augustine, mice.
Must have been @sisyphus. ;-)
I’ve watched 2 seasons, and some of it was terribly bleak. But it had some really great moments too.
but then I really liked South Park (until the centipede)
and Ren and Stimpy (I want to yell the loud funny words!)
although my wife will watch SP and R&S with me, I wouldn’t even attempt to get her to watch Rick and Morty.
Probably a wise move. It’s mostly a dude show.
That’s a different legendarium.
You’re not wrong (women make up less than half of the viewership on streaming), but I think it really depends on your wife. I’m female and I like the show, but I think any new viewer has to be comfortable with the sci-fi-ness and how bleak/inappropriate the humor can be. In some ways, it’s like a raunchy iteration of Futurama, but lacking a lot of the romance and more open sentimentality of that show.
As the Scriptures (don’t actually) say, he who finds a wife who watches sci-fi with him finds what is good, and receives favor from the Lord.
My little Bluebonnet likes MCU and three Star Treks. I am blessed. Why she doesn’t like the original Star Trek is a bit of a mystery to me. At least she knows what tribbles are.
That’s adorable. I’m a TOS fan and will watch most of the others if someone else wants to (no Discovery), but otherwise Rick and Morty, Futurama, and Firefly are about the extent of my sci-fi preferred viewing.
Let me recommend Buckaroo Banzai.
Breaking Cat News had a series on that from June 29th to July 4th.
It was filmed at Hampstead Heath, so there were plenty of Londoners walking by who were probably just so used to seeing people filming that they didn’t pay it much mind. Our uni town attracts a good number of tourists, and I remember one night I was running (with my headphones in) around a particular monument, and realized when I was halfway around on my way to turn back in the direction of my dorm a few miles out, that an older guy standing in a cluster of trees had been snapping pictures of it (and me) the whole time. If I had seen someone doing that in my small town, I probably would have been frightened, but you get used to some stuff in cities. At worst, some guy’s holiday snaps contain a frankly strange amount of candids of a girl he doesn’t know in running shorts and a Russian boxing tee.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. The writer-musician is a former anthropology/philosophy major who includes a lot of references to specific authors and ideas in his songs, so I wouldn’t be shocked if it were a reference to that, although you’re probably right. My favorite thing about listening to Mumford & Sons is trying to see how many literary references I can pick out, so I went gaga for a whole song about Camus by an indie artist I already liked.
We do watch some blue stuff together (Archer, Bad Education, and Bob’s Burgers, but that’s really a pretty family show), but I think Rick and Morty might be a little beyond the pale. Our basic agreement is just not to watch when my mom is home, less because she cares about the inappropriateness of the content and more because she never finds any of it funny. He also hates sci-fi (the groans are audible in our house when someone is flicking through the channels and finds a re-run of TOS before they can hide it from me), so I don’t think he would derive that much pleasure from it.
😏 Their Obama episode was good too.
I’ll watch it later. I’m about to start work now.
I am a fan of Dan Harmon’s work on Community, I liked the humour of it and the premise ( bunch of very different people becoming friends while attending a terrible community college). While some of his comments on Twitter have dismayed me ( think there was one sneery remark about the ‘ghosts’ of children killed by abortion ) I do try to remind myself to separate the artist from the work. Community allowed a Christian character to be friends with a woke anarchist character and treated them both equally in terms of pointing out their hypocrisies but letting us love them anyway. It often succumbed to received progressive opinion but sometimes it gave the punchline to the Christian character Shirley too.
Eleven minutes, eight seconds. I’ll count it as under 11 if you cut out the ending credits on the last one. Yeah, I’m that jerk.
As far as the show goes, I dunno. It’s a satire on all the old science fiction storylines. That’s fine and all, but I have my doubts about a society that only does satire and deconstruction anymore.
IT’S NOT COOL!
:: walks away grumbling about ‘kids these days’ ::
Wait . . . since when?
According to modern progressive piety, the question is nonsensical. She was always at war with Eastasia.
Birth?