After finishing the last half of the show’s fourth season, Rick and Morty has become something that I always expected it to be but not in the way I necessarily wanted; Rick and Morty is an enigma. It is a show that has transitioned from a dark comedy with dramatic elements to what I would argue is just a dark drama with such high brow comedy that what the show considers “jokes” cycles back into themselves, creating “anti-jokes”. If you can bear with my heavy handed analogy for a minute, allow me to explain.
You see, dear reader, there was a time when Rick and Morty didn’t take itself too seriously. The “interdimensional cable” episodes were a perfect example of how a sci-fi dramady could be crafted with an almost improvised humor that parodied reality enough that anyone could get the humor without getting too deep into the layers of the joke at hand. Futurama did this perfectly by never truly taking itself too seriously but sculpting the world around these absurd premises. It had layered humor, but the world around it was always fundamentally understandable. The comedy of Futurama allowed you to go as deep as you felt like while still being funny on all levels. Seeing the last five episodes of Rick and Morty shows me a shift that the staff might not want to admit; Rick and Morty doesn’t want to be funny anymore, it wants to be clever.
Ever since the bewildering and complex “Story Train” became a part of the show, the show itself has become an experiment on craft and character. Every single joke is a riff on the greater themes of the show itself. The show has gained such acclaim for its “intelligence” that it has amped up the metanarrative to the point where the outside world doesn’t seem to matter at all beyond the main family. In fact, the entire universe of the show seems to exist solely to make statements about the Smith family and how terrible they truly are. While this works well enough, it fails to make the same impact as the earlier, more whimsical entries did.
Rick and Morty has become like one of those many art films that makes a huge splash in awards season, but no one feels the need to watch over and over again beyond the fact that it is academically pleasing to analyze every last nuance to a point that it becomes a chore rather than a treat. Rest assured, I enjoyed watching it and I still recommend it, but like a parent watching their children grow up into mature adults, a part of me longs for the whimsical comedy of yesteryear. My wonderfully witty, black hearted comedy has reached its breaking point where the genius has finally consumed the comedy and the darkness has came to light. I honestly don’t know what they do from here. No spoilers, but the writers have themselves in a corner that is going to be hard to realistically escape from. It was an inevitable moment. We thought we had seen it before, but I’m afraid that this might be the time it actually gets real. So much hinges on what happens next that it is hard to focus on the humor from a show that totes the idea that nothing matters. Turns out, something does. The universe and multiverse will never be the same.
Calm and Cultured 