The Adult Swim adult animation sensation will be returning as the first trailer for season 4 of Rick and Morty arrived last night.
“It’s been too long.”
Indeed. Yet, things are pretty much the same: a lot of gross horror, magic, cameos, and, of course, Morty being in a lot of pain because of something Rick did. Typical Rick and Morty hijinks. The trailer gives us a lot of cool hints at something, but knowing the people behind the show, it could easily be them just making a cool trailer that has nothing to do with each other.
As someone who does enjoy the off-color humor of Rick and Morty, I’ve been trying to ask myself why I don’t have as many problems with this product existing as I do with something like Joker, which has a lot of superficial thematic similarities and is even more nihilistic. What it comes down to for me has nothing to do with “wokeness” or any of that kind of thing, but more with the fact that I find Rick and Morty interesting, smart, and pretty funny.
The bar has been raised so high with show like this and BoJack Horseman, playing with tormented white cishet males that something like Joker which is so small in it’s thinking just can’t grab me. “Pickle Rick” manages to do more for me in less than 30 minutes than an entire 2 hour film like Joker.
Now, I am aware that people dislike Rick and Morty, and I’m not going to say it is smarter than it is, but for me, it just hits on something really compelling. The people behind the scenes, at least from interviews, seem to be aware of their place in the pop culture nihilistic zeitgeist and at least they are aware. It’s better than just doing a bunch of interviews being confused about “why are people so concerned about our protagonist embodies everything the alt-right has been saying about mass shooters for years to deflect from gun laws and actual health care.” But I digress.
Rick and Morty may be nihilistic, but it also breaks those sensibilities down elegantly. On the surface, Rick may seem “cool” but it takes very little to see he is a man who is constantly full of sh*t and has really pissed away a lot of the great relationships in his life. Using the color palette of a domestic animated comedy to dissect the genius aloof father figure has always been one of my favorite aspects of the show and I’m excited to see it come back despite its issues. Maybe that’s just me hoping for more episodes about Summer and looking forward to seeing how the evil Morty is continuing his master plan.
Oh, it’s a bunch of Mr. Meekseeks look at them! Wonder if Jerry needs help with his put-put game. Ugh, Jerry.
Five all-new episodes starts Sunday, November 10th and 11:30 PM!
(image: Screenshot)
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