I caught up on the latest batch of "Rick and Morty" episodes recently, which were a noticeable step down from previous seasons. I figured that this was a good time to put down some thoughts on how the series has been doing. I haven't written anything directly about the show in a few years, since the episodes have been released in small batches and the show doesn't really have any longer storylines or much character progression. Sure, Beth and Jerry separated for a bit, and there's a Beth clone running around in space, and Morty's love life isn't quite as dead as it used to be, and a ton of backstory has been revealed, but the most nihilistically snarky show on television has found a status quo and is sticking to it. And as a result, "Ricky and Morty" has plateaued hard.
Part of the issue is clearly the show's own success. In 2018, Adult Swim ordered a whopping 70 episodes of the series, and at its current pace of ten episodes a year, this thing is going to run until 2026 at least. You can't burn through material at the rate that the first few seasons did when you have 70 episodes to fill. So now, the series feels like it's pacing itself. While the Smith family is having insane adventures every week, the family unit is staying more or less intact. The show is also doggedly trying to improve Rick and Morty's mental health, while only very superficially dealing with their endless emotional baggage. While the show does confront Rick's megalomaniacal self-destructive tendencies and existential malaise, it also tends to find handy shortcuts for processing them. It doesn't help that there are so many formulaic episodes this year, where Rick is essentially a wacky grandpa being chased around by old enemies or getting into hijinks - very disturbing hijinks, but nothing we haven't seen before.
And that's another problem. The shock value of Rick's behavior has steadily declined over time, because we've been exposed to it so often. After fifty episodes, watching Morty accidentally destroy a civilization, or seeing the Smiths murder endless variations of themselves isn't novel anymore. The show isn't treating these events as particularly weighty either, the way that it used to in the earliest episodes. Instead, the Smiths maintain this remarkably blase attitude toward the worst of their depravities. Morty and Summer accidentally create a giant incest baby? Well, that's annoying, but nothing to get upset about. With no real consequences in play anymore, there are no stakes to any of the adventures, and episodes rarely leave much of an impact. The absurdity is still fun to watch, and I frequently find myself appreciating the writers' ingenuity and sick sense of humor, but it's just not the same.
This is not to say that I don't think "Rick and Morty" still has a lot of mileage left in it, or that the creators can't get themselves out of this rut. What was so fascinating about this series from the start was the psychological complexity of the major characters, and even though the Smiths are currently in a comfortable holding pattern, they don't have to stay there. In fact, I'm surprised we haven't seen bigger changes already. The show potentially has a decent roster of recurring characters who are only very slowly being sketched in - Jessica, the President, Birdperson and Tammy, and of course the barely glimpsed ex-Mrs. Sanchez, Diane. There's also a lot of perilous emotional terrain left to explore. If the show simply let the kids get older and start forming real relationships outside of the family, it would open up so many more avenues for insanity - and provide Rick with more victims.
The fandom has long wanted more of the slowly percolating Evil Morty storyline, and while I'm glad that the writers finally gave in and pursued this in the finale, I'm also not sure where we go from here. Part of me hopes that since Evil Morty sort of won and got what he wanted, this will be the last we see of him, and the show can move on to other things.
Oh, and the Christopher Lloyd and Jaeden Martell teaser was adorbs.
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