Chris Barker

Rick and Morty has begun to feel middle-of-the-road, which is odd for such a nihilistic program. The season is filled with recurring characters like Tammy, the Time Police, and Mr Poopybutthole, and callbacks to earlier episodes which show its absorption into the comedy mainstream.

Part of the reason Rick and Morty is nonthreatening is that the stakes never feel particularly high. The show has never depended on characters or serialized plots because Rick’s scientific abilities tend to trivialize most problems and make any genuine conflict difficult. For example, several planets, 19 billion intelligent snakes, and the god Zeus are destroyed as throwaway jokes in the new series.

The characters also remain undeveloped. Rick is a sort of dimension-hopping Übermensch, but any insight into his character comes at long intervals, and the creators seem determined to preserve the mystery behind his background for the foreseeable future.

Without much substance, the show lives and dies on its high concepts and comedy writing, which are luckily still good. Some highlights are an episode involving infinite Nazi parallel dimensions, a time-travel story centered on a snake civilization, and an episode involving body-snatching facehuggers. The season finale is also strong and is the episode most tied in with the myth-arc of the show, although it avoids answering some significant questions.

Some of the set pieces within episodes are also excellent. In particular, there is a 5 minute sequence with no dialogue set on the snake planet which is some of the most ambitious storytelling in the show. A knock-em-down, drag-em-out fight between Rick and a returning character in the season finale is also a highlight; it makes use of the unlimited budget of cartoon battles.

In the age of plot-heavy shows like Bojack Horseman, which explore the tortured psyches of their protagonists, R&M goes out it’s way to mock story structure. One episode is set on a train symbolizing Dan Harmon’s story circle approach to writing. There’s an entire not-terribly-funny episode based entirely around shy pooping and Rick fighting an alien over the right to use his intergalactic toilet. In the finale Morty comes out with this gem; ‘we work together, that’s our arc now!’

Rick and Morty feels like a throwback to the American Dad/Family Guy/South Park era of animation in its combination of nihilism, irreverence and self-contained stories. It is still consistently entertaining due to creativity and the high quality of its writing. It feels like a very sustainable program, which might be funny for many years to come even if it doesn’t reach the heights of some contemporaries.