by Samuel Nichols, Contributing Writer
“It’s our NINTH season, Morty!!” Rick reminded his grandson with a belch. “We get to do more multiverse nonsense, Morty!! We’ll make some new friends, and I’ll question the purpose of my existence again.”
“Oh boy, Rick,” Morty replied. “Maybe I can worry some more about my family and if you actually like me. Maybe I’ll grow and surprise you with how intuitive I can be.”
Is there anything new about this season of Rick and Morty to tell you about? Yes, absolutely. During this season our favorite grandpa (Ian Cardoni) and grandson (Harry Belden) get trapped in a rainforest of reincarnation, try to put Rick’s head and body back together, and visit an estate sale. But is there anything new happening in terms of themes, story structure, or overarching narrative of the show? Not necessarily. But it has been that way for a while, and frankly the show has not suffered for it yet. But in a multiverse, nothing happens for the first time, but anything can happen.
I don’t know if this is considered a hot take, but I think Rick and Morty outlived its edginess and it’s shock value half-life. 10 years ago, the show was about an irreverent, yet genius drunk who dragged his grandson around while he planet hopped looking for drugs to do and enemies to smoke. But along the way Rick tried to be more respectful of Morty, and his family became more jaded on their own. Summer (Spencer Grammer), a 17-year-old girl with the same face as her dad, wanted to party and be liked by her peers. In this season she grew tired of a summer camp for rich alien kids and used her grandpa’s decapitated, animate corpse as a scooter. Beth (Sarah Chalke) has some of her dad’s intelligence but all of his propensity for liquor consumption. Not once this season does she do something meaningful or kind for her kids, but while high with her husband she does ask her galactic adventurer twin/clone why they never have sex anymore. Speaking of Jerry (Chris Parnell), he might be the character closest to who he was when we met, still needy and insecure. But at least now he’s not afraid to try a breakfast drug that eats your anxiety like a tapeworm.
To me, it feels like I have been critiquing the show too much in the review. Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon still has an incredible comic sense and a fairly creative brain for sci-fi mumbo jumbo. Morty and Rick’s banter is sharp as usual, and there are moments of love and kindness between them too. Honestly, the main family, despite their eccentricities, still has great timing and quips. Stories like Bud, where Jerry gets the aforementioned anxiety-eating tape worm are hilarious because of how the whole family comes together to help get it out of him. Their rapport is still more than enough to get a chuckle out of me. Plus, the show has enough cache to get big names like Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Andy Serkis and many others to show up for an episode.
Where I am still impressed is the creative juices the show has by way of bizarre worlds and crazy adversaries to fight. Collective consciousness being, bugs that eat your ability to empathize, a whole planet who distills vodka for Rick, and that rainforest of reincarnation and evolution which ended up being a metaphor for breaking cycles of violence with democratic socialism. Harmon has a wild imagination, and I’m always happy to be on the business end of it. He even finds a way to bring back old ideas from the show and make them fresh. “Jer Bud” brings back the old family dog Snowball (Rob Paulsen) in his powered mech suit, but now he’s the leader of his dog planet and doing insane experiment on a subhuman species.
The inventiveness isn’t gone, far from it. But what seems to keep coming back around is Rick’s depression. We have one episode of Rick trying to escape from his depression by wiping his mind and going to another world for a “vacation” in the episode “Rick Days, Seven Nights.” And in “Field of Dreams” we get a different version of Rick who fails in his marriage after Morty selfishly convinces him to obsess over inventing portal travel, to send Morty home. I don’t mind a heavy moment in the show, and I think some of the shows deeper moments add to what makes it great: imperfect people struggling and surviving and sometimes succeeding. Juxtaposing that against how wacky and vast the Smith family’s adventures are, is a pairing for success. But we have far too much of it this season. Being honest about mental struggles is one thing, but focusing on them heavily without showing growth is another. Season nine felt so heavy with its themes of depression and nihilism that the show felt imbalanced.
One season of this would be palatable, maybe even respectable, but it seems like we’ve been lingering here for a few seasons. Rick and Morty is not a linear show in the strictest sense, but it has been a few seasons since **SPOILER ALERT** Rick killed the alternate version of himself that killed his original wife and child. He has felt rudderless in a lot of ways, drifting through realities just doing whatever with no purpose. People get stuck in life, but I don’t turn Rick and Morty on for the realistic depiction of grief and melancholy. I want the zany sci-fi adventures, but I also want to like the characters. Rick and Morty don’t need to become altruistic heroes, but it becomes less interesting to find out what they do next when they keep bringing me down. There will always be a seat open at the bar for these two, but maybe it’s time to close out the tab.
Rating: Liked It
Rick and Morty Season Nine is streaming on HBOMAX, Hulu, and Disney+
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