Every Friday Chris hand-selects a streaming recommendation for your weekend.
This Week’s Featured Flick
Rick and Morty on Hulu
THE DETAILS
CREATORS: Dan Harmon, Justin Roiland
CAST: Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammer, Sarah Chalke, Kari Wahlgren, Dan Harmon
GENRE: TV / Animation / Comdey / Sci-Fi
RUNTIME: 30 min episodes
YEAR: 2013
THE PLOT
Rick and Morty is a show about a sociopathic scientist who drags his unintelligent grandson on insanely dangerous adventures across the universe. Created and executive produced by Dan Harmon (Community, Channel 101) and Justin Roiland (House of Cosbys).
THE REASON
The second season of Rick and Morty premiered last Sunday on Adult Swim, so there’s no better time to catch up on this show that you probably didn’t even know you were supposed to be watching. I haven’t actively watched Adult Swim in quite some time. I feel most of their shows are driven by nonsensical plots and bizarre humor that seems to work well for millennials in an altered state of mind, but little else. With the exception of Aqua Teen Hunger Force that brand of comedy never really worked for me.
I found the idea of Dan Harmon collaborating on an animated show with the creator of House of Cosby really intriguing. So I set my DVR to record the series, watched the pilot episode, and quickly wrote it off as another Adult Swim show that was weird for the sake of being weird. Apart from some of Rick’s dialogue sounding like a Dan Harmon rant, cadence and all, I didn’t feel much Harmon in the show.
Episodes continued to pile up on the DVR and I continued to neglect them. Until one night, long after the season had ended, I couldn’t sleep. Not wanting to fall asleep in the middle of something I really wanted to watch I put on the third episode of Rick and Morty, “Anatomy Park”, in which we learn that Rick, the grandfather/genius scientist, has created an entire amusement part inside the body of a homeless man dressed up as the saddest Santa Claus you’ve ever seen. I was hooked and watched another couple episodes in succession. That’s when I discovered Hamon’s hidden fingerprints. While Rick and Morty is absolutely an absurd episodic show about an alcoholic scientist and his idiot grandson going on interdimensional adventures involving fart planets and sex robots, it also has an emotional core that you never get in shows like this. Over the course of the first season the characters are developed beyond their initially perceived “types”. There is even a very sweet and sincere subplot involving Morty’s parents’ marriage that has all the poignancy and complexity of a relationship in Community.
Watch the first two or three episodes. I think you’ll be hooked.
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