By Matt Kyle | Assistant News Editor
Despite missteps, the latest season of Adult Swim’s “Rick and Morty” brings the series back to a level of quality not seen in recent seasons. While back to the status quo, that standard is still below what the show was in its first seasons, though “Rick and Morty” still makes for entertaining television.
Season five of “Rick and Morty” was easily the show’s worst season. Every episode was a gamble, and when they missed, they missed badly. “Mortyplicity” and “Rickdependence Spray” were two especially egregious examples of how far the series had fallen. The season only really had a couple of standout episodes, and the rest were just mid.
While “Rick and Morty” has always prided itself on making toilet humor secretly genius, “Rickdependence Spray” was writing I’d expect from a thirteen-year-old trying too hard to be edgy. An episode about an army of sperm monsters that ended with the creation of an incest baby (which for some reason, comes back later in the season), was just yuck.
On premiere night for season six, I was nervous. I’ve been a fan of “Rick and Morty” since the second season, and the quality level has been a rollercoaster since then. Season three was okay, four was pretty good and as I said, five was just kind of bad.
The premiere, “Solaricks” was a good start. Story-heavy episodes are usually good, and this one was no exception. “Rick: A Mort Well Lived,” followed the premiere, and was a good return to “classic Rick and Morty adventures” with an absurdly dumb premise that actually has some interesting social commentary about religion.
“Night Family,” “Final DeSmithation” and “Juricksic Mort” continue the trend of creating scenarios that are equally dumb and hilarious. This returned emphasis on creating incredibly absurd situations for Rick to solve is perhaps the best part of the new season. For me, this is when Rick and Morty is at its best; when I get five minutes into an episode and can’t stop laughing, asking myself ‘This is the episode’s concept?’
Season six sees episodes where Morty’s consciousness gets split into seven billion NPCs of a VR game during a “Die Hard” style heist of the arcade the game is in, and Rick must infiltrate the game and create an in-game religion to free Morty’s mind. Another sees the family compete with the “Night Family” Rick created to do their chores while they sleep, and in another Rick infiltrates a fortune cookie factory to fight a fate-altering alien that is causing all the (really ridiculous) fortunes from the cookies to come true.
The newest season does have some drawbacks. For whatever reason, the writers have doubled down on the incest jokes; while they are much tamer and less gross than last season, they are still there, and it is honestly weird how dedicated the writers are to making these jokes. “Bethic Twinstinct” gives an interesting study of Beth’s character, who is underutilized in the show, but is bogged down by the overused jokes as she hooks up with her clone. In “Final DeSmithation,” the incest joke only serves as a stepping off point for Rick and Jerry to end up at the fortune cookie factory, but the joke just keeps coming back.
The incest jokes just simply aren’t funny. There is a line to how gross a joke can be without being gratuitous, and that line has been crossed over and over this season and last. The horse is a skeleton now; stop beating it.
The voice acting is superb as always, but I can’t help but notice the slight decline in animation quality as the show has progressed. The latest season comes only a year after the season five finale; earlier seasons took much longer to produce, and thus had more time and care put into the animations. While the animation isn’t bad, I feel they are cutting corners to save on production costs and time. I keep noticing continuously repeated movements and facial expressions; maybe I’m nitpicking, but something just feels slightly off.
“Rick and Morty” season six is over halfway done, and the show is now taking a mid-season break until November 20. So far, the season has been solid, but not exceptional. While I will continue to watch, the show just isn’t the same as it was in seasons one and two.
The early seasons had tons of care put into them, and was a rare kind of comedy. Creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland managed to make potty humor have depth and actually make a point about something. Now, it just seems like the gross jokes are simply there for absurdities sake.
While “Rick and Morty” still has great voice acting and interesting sci-fi plotlines, the humor is quickly becoming stale as the show dominates the mainstream more and more. Soon, I fear “Rick and Morty” may become oversaturated, if it hasn’t already. Currently, the show is set to run until an eleventh season. While “Rick and Morty” retains some of its charm from the early years, it will likely be stuck at the same level of quality it has been for the past three seasons—or worse—as the show progresses.
While “Rick and Morty” used to be a standout among adult animation, it has now just become another face in the crowd.
