Rick and Morty: The Hypothesis of Contradiction

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I second Linkara's take. The therapy scene is brilliant and the therapist lays out why Rick sucks. Sadly, you can never be explicit enough to get through to some fans, chief among them the people who needed to take that to heart.

[RobbyB1982]

Rick and Morty is basically Bojack Horseman for pseudo-intellectuals, except funnier.

The difference is Bojack knows the main character is a flawed and terrible person, and it stops trying to pretend he isn't after the first season. Bojack tries to get better an improve himself, but he just hurts everyone and gets people killed, and everyone calls him out for his awfulness. He sort of reaches a good place by the end of the series, but only after forever alienating some of those closest to him forever and losing all his family.

Rick, has a sad depression moment on his own every now and again, but he basically always wins and is treated like he should be worshipped and seen as the pinnacle, what should be aspired to, and not just as the monster he is.

R&M has sooort of tried to course correct a little in the more recent seasons, they have more scenes of Rick being sad, but he's still the uber-god ultimate winner most of the time so it's not really fixed yet.

[Link8909]

I second Linkara's take. The therapy scene is brilliant and the therapist lays out why Rick sucks. Sadly, you can never be explicit enough to get through to some fans, chief among them the people who needed to take that to heart.

Definitely, I do think Rick and Morty is a well made and well written series, just not one that I personally enjoy, and my major problem comes from the impressionable people that take the wrong lessons and blindly quote the series, RobbyB1982 early posts does a better job at explaining this than me.

[Link8909]

Personally, I think the writers felt, especially by season 3, that they had created a bit of a monster - that these characters ARE unlikeable and they needed to do some turn-around or at least acknowledge their toxic traits and either correct them to a degree... or go the Archer route. In Archer, all the characters are also horrible... but the writers know that, so while development does occur, more often than not their horribleness ends up screwing them over - they have negative consequences for their actions while still being funny about it.

Indeed, my personal annoyance with Rick and Morty is that Rick keeps doing these cruel and terrible things or that terrible things happen, but either Rick gets away with doing terrible things, or the terrible thing is framed as the right thing, thus Rick is right to be terrible.

And what you said about Archer is why I love that series, Sterling Archer may be the hero, but his actions aren't framed as right, and usually come back to bite him, and he even does the actual right thing.

[Beastro]

And thus the same for Rick and Morty - making genuine effort to really put forth "No, no - Rick is not someone to emulate. He is not the true hero of this story and his nihilism is bullshit." I see that especially in seasons 3 and 4, with 3 being stronger than 4 but 4 still being fun.

If that's true it's far too late. The damage is done and the shows reputation now is that of cool nihilism being the only sensible position to take.

Rick, has a sad depression moment on his own every now and again, but he basically always wins and is treated like he should be worshipped and seen as the pinnacle, what should be aspired to, and not just as the monster he is.

There's more. It seems to convey the idea that the only type of person who can be truly right in the grand scheme of things isn't just a scientifically minded rationalist but a grating, in your face, arrogantly nihilistic scientifically minded rationalist. The former isn't an issue, but the latter doesn't win anyone over and just alienates people.

Someone else mentioned South Park and its similar, though there the message they end up with is "everything is shit, always be a snarky outsider" and they almost never take a firm stand on anything outside of maybe "censorship is dumb." and that the creators haven't grown or changed in 20 years is... something.

It's worse than "everything is shit", it's that they seem to refuse to actual want to take a solid position too often. The effect is them simply being fence sitters who sneer and quip at people who dare to take a stand on positions, even if they're wrong. Worse, they do so from the position of eye rolling and pleading "why can't we all just get along?" while refusing to look at the details of topics to see if some people might actually be in the right even if not 100% so.

I don't know why I'm putting this all in present terms, I haven't watched it since at least 2010. Anyway, moving on:

I saw the effect that has on many I knew in our teens and 20s. The old military maxim of "He who defends everything defends nothing" was tuned on its head into "He who defends nothing can attack everyone". To have conviction and actual hold positions openly became seen only as signs of weakness. I'd be leapt on all the time for actually doing that while everyone else would always play it cool and distant dismissing my arguments and only taking positions when it was clear the majority prejudice was assured to not make them be singled out (which was effectively a marijuana obsessed, apathetic Libertarianism).

It was sad to see and I wonder how much SPs popularity in the 2000s has impacted so many now.

[Nevix]

I don't like Rick and Morty, because I hate shows that are "Asshole Simulator" shows.

An "Asshole Simulator" show is a show where the main character is a brilliant, well, posterior orifice, who is nigh unstoppable, and who completely bulldozes anyone who dares attempt to stand in their way.

Said character would be completely unsympathetic, except there's occasional moments where the audience gets to go "Awww, he really does care" or "Oh, he's not really THAT bad because he does this occasionally", before going right back to being an arrogant effluvial exit.

That being said... The timing on the "Rick reaches back through the portal and kills the rapist" joke is impeccably hilarious. It's still a foul murder joke whose harshness is only alleviated because the victim is a literal rapist, but the timing is quite funny.

Also... Chuck's Twitter joke with the Meeseeks is both accurate and hilarious.

EDIT: Also also: The out of order episode coverage and subsequent jokes are even funnier.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

You know, if one were to choose an ending for the show, one fictional character I think could actually take on Rick Sanchez and win is Grunkle Stan. He's one of the few people who can rival Rick both in raw intellectual power (he's a SELF TAUGHT quantum physicist) and street smarts/brutal violence (the man took on a hoard of zombies with brass knuckles.)

[Thebestoftherest]

You know, if one were to choose an ending for the show, one fictional character I think could actually take on Rick Sanchez and win is Grunkle Stan. He's one of the few people who can rival Rick both in raw intellectual power (he's a SELF TAUGHT quantum physicist) and street smarts/brutal violence (the man took on a hoard of zombies with brass knuckles.)

Someone that can see through Rick lies.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Right. He can deal with Rick just like he could deal with Bill, because he's a professional con man and recognizes the same.

[G-Man]

My problem with Channel Awesome was that I did not care for the character drama. I liked to listen to reviews, and have people's personalities effect their reviews, but I did not care for any of the storylines or skits.

My big problem with the RLM style reviews is the "let's analyze everything that is wrong with this disappointing movie" shtick. Most of the time, when a movie disappoints, there are a few reasons that explain it. Finding every single flaw tends to negate that.

For example, the big problems with The Phantom Menace is that it takes place before the major events that people really cared to find out about in the prequel, the major conflict is not particularly interesting and gets resolved essentially by accident, and the big cool villain does not really have much in the way of motivation or do much to advance the bad guys' plots (basically, he is there to have a lightsaber fight). Nitpicking every little thing that is wrong obscures that.