The Dialectics of Rick & Morty

you've been age restricted somewhere in your hourong video upload a new version of the video and see if this one doesn't get Auto flag Mike wizowski Charles Bowski it's all connected I did Kill the misses I did leave a witness I didn't do my taxes and I haven't done my dishes I want to go to McDonald's buy a burger ostentatiously put it directly in the garbage in front of them go back buy another burger and just keep doing that until they tell me to leave you don't need a high IQ to understand Rick and Morty

but you do need to be a little Annoying to actively dislike it this is just sloppy craftsmanship it's a really good show in compact nonetheless 20 minutes of unhinged curiosity chasing its own tail until it creates a mobious strip of endlessly rewatchable intricately stupid science fiction there are two creative forces that had to collaborate in order for Rick and Morty to Spring forth into its punk rock choke hold on popular culture I'm Justin royland and I'm Dan Harmon and together we created Rick and [Music] Morty part one intuition and Analysis Justin royland is a brutally

bipolar creature that thrives off of innov devoid of judgment I hear a bunch of screaming demons can you try to read this one on script man [ __ ] you perfectionism perfectionism is not something to aspire to it's a disease that kills creativity when you're afraid of starting something for fear of its potential theoretical inadequacy the concern isn't for bad art existing the concern is what you're making means about you you want to be the person that's good at Art you want to be a genius cuz you're so [ __ ] special you're like a

firstborn fourleaf unicorn next in line for the throne essentially you care more about your pride than you care about the art that's not going to prime a productive creative process that's going to Prime you bending over backwards to satiate your insecurities which you will never succeed in doing don't try to satisfy your insecurities by trying to be perfect that's like trying to cure an infection by crying don't negotiate with terrorists your ego is a terrorist when your fear of creating something stupid or bad prevents you from creating at all you are not serving anyone but

your own feelings because everyone makes stupid and bad things that's how you make good things everybody who's blocked they are committing the cardinal sin of assuming their job is to make something good you end up making good stuff by making a bunch of bad stuff that's literally the creative process you get out all of your ideas Kill Your Darlings mangle your best ideas beyond recognition and then drop it even though you still think it sucks imagine the feeling of it coming out of you it being distracting you know where you're going that feels weird what

we want is the handkerchiefs what you want is to demystify the process of pulling and getting it out prove you can actually execute an idea to its completion instead of telling your friends about how cool it's going to be prove that you're a bad writer you're trying to prove that you're a good writer That's What's blocking you you have to stop thinking about the thing that you're eventually going to be able to do and you have to start thinking about the thing that you're terrified you will do because that will go by very quickly then

you can see you're not special you're not a genius you're like everyone else you have good ideas you have bad ideas and until you start letting your ideas flow you're protecting yourself from your bad ideas while depriving the universe of your good ideas this [ __ ] is lukewarm the only difference between someone who does something and someone who doesn't do that thing is whether or not they do it so if you want to be an artist be an artist if you really want to kneel at the altar start doing it as one of many

inadequate worshippers of a God that will never thank you it's like cheating it's like putting [ __ ] in your gas tank it's like it's like it's like putting exhaust in your gas tank it's like the thing your car makes that you can't use you can fuel your car on it Ira Glass explains perfectionism anxiety as a matter of beginner skill in conflict with good taste for the first couple years that you're making stuff what you're making isn't so good okay it's not that great it's trying to be good it has ambition to good but

it's not quite that good but your taste the thing that got you into the game you're your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you you get into creating art because you have good taste and appreciate great art but because you have good taste you will be painfully aware that you are not outputting great art when you start to make it immediately it's crushing how beneath your taste you're operating but the only thing that will carry you towards cre

what you love is suffering through your inadequacy so instead of whining about how bad you are compared to the things you adore create out of love for the process and medium you're in service of the Eternal you don't have to feel like a genius you are simply the conduit through which genius passes be honored for every scrap of it immutable resistance to perfectionism is the magic of Justin ryland's process what the hell are these crazy googas right that's what we're going to call them yes the idea on the table might be Mr Poopy butthole hello

there I'm poopy butthole poers and Rick and Morty I designed uh Mr Poopy butthole oh we whatever you want Rick we're here to help thanks Mr Poopy butthole I remember Justin Drew him on the Whiteboard said no he he'll look like this and then we were just cracking up and going yes okay got it and uh but then I remember Lazo from Adult Swim asking on the speaker phone after reading the script it's like so what what is Mr Poopy butthole going to look like yeah cuz you read that name and you're like well that's

not going to be like you know he's just going to look kind of special I personally wouldn't willingly enjoy having my name associated with that in perpetuity but that day royland developed Mr Poopy butthole he did succeed in developing an original character while I sat alone drinking worrying about my legacy he did something I didn't do anything and that's the oil that the royland mechanism runs on don't think create turn off brain start Dan Harmon has been unlearning the disease of perfectionism for a long time now today he would readily regurgitate the jus royalin philosophy

of creating without judgment or ego allowing the process to enact itself and letting go of the precious profundity of your ideas but that doesn't mean that's what comes naturally to him clearly what Harmon is really good at is thinking too much about the particulars to the point of it not even being useful anymore Dan the way your mind works you you subdivide your brain Cleaves you take one thing you cut it into two you go because it's a and b you take B and you go because it's B uh with one and two and italics

underneath you you build it's kind of increasingly what's the mathematical uh theorem where you just keep cutting the distance between here and the wall and you never get to the wall so roin's tendency is to be uncontrollable and chaotic and impulsive to the point of non-productivity and lazy vulgarity and Dan's illness is taking things way too seriously to the point of non-productive self-indulgence in this context the two neuroses act like saps to each other's specializations he just retains his uh innocence about stuff like he just likes what he likes and he just has these thoughts

that are crazy and childish and treating that as if it's as important as uh a nuclear power plant is like my favorite activity their process in the writer room at the onset was Justin Roy and spewing chaotic nonsense and then Harmon leading the room in reverse engineering all the stupid ideas and Goofy voices into a deeply fleshed out manifestation get to his brain and and we'll we'll go from there okay so at that point what is Rick's what is Rick's Bill plan taking structure extremely seriously as Harmon is damned to always do while retaining the

looseness and freedom of ryland's fluming Mind Justin comes in and and and goes like I'm Mr jiggle nuts and we all start laughing and then we sit around and go like okay what what would Mr jiggle nuts do royland and Harmon met in 2004 through the Los Angeles media Collective called Channel 101 which was a Grassroots monthly Film Festival created by Harmon and his longtime collaborator Rob shr the idea was to give the power of a studio executive to fans and creators of weird [ __ ] anybody in the world that's listening to us right

now is allowed to submit a 5 minute first episode of any kind of tele show that they want our group was The Lonely Island but we got involved with Channel 101 which is this thing created by our friends Dan Harman and Rob shra monthly people can make homemade like Pilots of TV shows five minutes or less and then the audience votes in the top five are prime time and you keep making more right um which is pretty sweet for people that you know need an outlet Justin royland would contribute monthly to this Justin figured out

a way to make cartoons super fast within a month we were like this cartoon making factory like Justin would always submit these cartoons that the panel would love but the audience would hate his greatest success at Channel 101 was House of Cosby's an animated sitcom about a super fan that obtains one of Bill Cosby's hairs spends 10 years constructing a cloning machine then clones Cosby's so that he can fulfill his fantasy of populating his home with Cosby's the Clones do deteriorate in quality as he proceeds but every 10th Cosby does have superpowers see this would

be a good example of royland having an idea and never stopping to wonder is this a good idea should I make this he was a Cosby fan at heart it's clear he search and found a Cosby hair he spent 10 long years and built the cloning machine I like to explore the house you know I will go around the house I'm curiosity Cosby you see with no disrespect to Dr Cosby I I really hope he sees it and uh and loves it and and adopts me as his new son Bill Cosby didn't see the humor

and asked Channel 101 and royland to please stop using his lightess in this bizarre and offensive manner you know to protect his Public Image and dignity so Justin had to stop but the momentum carried him into Studio interest the house of Cosby he went on to maintain a career of pitching shows to Fox taking a lot of Studio notes and earning pitch fees but never getting anything off the ground unsurprisingly during ryland's tenure at Fox he was often creatively frustrated he reacted by therapeutically making something [ __ ] up no one asked for sometimes I

will eat a single piece of deli meat just to get my stomach to stop screaming at me I don't have an eating disorder I just wasn't meant to have a body the real animated adventures of Doc and Marty is the amoeba that divided and evolved into the multi cellular being we know today in crude and arbitrary parody of Back to the Future royland illustrates in voes Doc Smith convincing mty McDonald's to suck his balls repeatedly which always inexplicably results in scientific breakthrough doesn't exactly follow Camp Bill's monomyth I wanted to just do those voices and

kind of screw around but I also wanted to make something really shocking and disgusting on purpose the audience definitely freaked the out you can immediately feel tone-wise how this coercive abusive and ridiculous relationship resembles the Rick and Morty that we know you think if if if if you saw some guy licking some balls You' just walk by happily I don't think so Marty that ain't how it works here Marty that way you can you know you're going to help me with my science Morty all the time jeez Rick these were two voices that Justin royland

had been messing around with for some time there was something about the stammering Rhythm between a rough assertive authority figure and a shrill apologetic child that intuitively stuck I had fallen in love throughout the course of making that cartoon with the voices of the two characters you know what she said to me oh reie what she say man tell her what she said Mitchell I'm trying to do science in the basement so when Adult Swim offered Dan Harmon a cart blanch opportunity to run an animated sitcom on their Network he phoned up the fresh animation

idea machine and Justin royland suggested his comfortable familiar two voiced improv tick he knew the characters cuz I had been doing them in Channel 101 for years he was like yes okay I love those characters they fleshed out a reliable sitcom setup to house these two voices allaha Harmon's formic love of Television it's one thing we've learned from real television it's that ideas are not important the popular shows are not about anything at all people hanging out they just have to be well executed and then they started and they didn't stop and they might not

ever from the very first episode the tone is unmistakable a fusion of classic sitcom a andb narrative storytelling science fiction [ __ ] and this bizarre stuttery line delivery between the main characters making it strangely loose and fug like there are plenty of well-written jokes but a good 30% of the comedy is to be found within the wasted time of these two voices improvising clumsily as the series progresses there is less of an emphasis on and Royal in blathering and burping in circles but it is always a threat looming on the horizon the first Anthology

episode in the series interdimensional cable TV is based almost entirely on Justin royland improvising esoteric alien Dimension commercials and shows and then the team animating those seems like TV from other dimensions has a somewhat looser feel to it yeah it's got an almost improvisational tone but even in that episode the show can't help but insert a meaty story arc for the characters that incorporates the science fiction gimmick this is because of the counterweight to the writhing inexplicable birth of ideas into a cold unforgiving void the idea there is truth there is a God and the

universe follows a structure by the time Harmon was creating Rick and Morty the divots of his Infamous Story Circle were well trodden at some point in Harmon's 20s he became obsessed with Joseph Campo who was a philosopher and Anthropologist that went hard in the godamn pain at first a student of indigenous religions and myths his research spiraled like a CJ thex video essay until he was linking every story ever told into one Eternal search for meaning in a chaotic World myths are stories of of the search by men and women Through the Ages for meaning

for significance to make life signify to touch the Eternal to understand the mysterious to find out who we are myths are Clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life there are commonalities between our classic Tales spontaneously organically recurring story beats that Humanity feels a need to tell itself we recognize being called away from order into chaos fighting through obstacles sacrificing pieces of yourself in order to gain something changing learning something through the process that you will now take with you into the future this is coming of age this is discovering meaning and if you

examine your own life you can discover patterns of this story within yourself because stories are the very compact way that the human mind has evolved to store complex information and turning our lives into a sensical satisfying story is what our sentience yearns to do Campell spends his time spinning together different fables and philosophies from different cultures illustrating how we are deeply inherently spiritual creatures in need of me meaning and purpose and throughout history have gravitated towards a reliable structure of that meaning via myths the reality of our need to grow and let go of our

own egos take responsibility for the world we live in and become adults incorporating chaos into our identities through various different LS we've constantly reasserted a cycle of Life Death and rebirth as well as a god that is inside of every human being constantly available to connect to making us part of one long story so Dan Harmon looked at all this and thought I think this can help me write monsterous literally that's actually what happened he describes it as an act of laziness apparent ly it is possible to water down God into a well- constructed episode

of Television my work is simply a kind of hacky attempt to distill his very cultural um spiritual uh work down to almost a kind of very asbery matter of math you need to go search for something find it take it and then return changed your creativity is the voice of the Eternal passing through a U-shaped hole it's soul is the same you are just adding another brick to the tower to Heaven part two sincerity and irony irony is not something you have unless you had sincerity and it was devastated by reality there is an empowering

component to irony it can allow us to approach the otherwise unapproachable in some respects humor and and irony are are political responses and they Redemptive but it can also be a cowardly opting out of responsibility for your unbearable reality and in in another sense particularly in popular entertainment irony and a kind of dark humor can become a way of it's a it it it's pretending to protest when it really isn't at this particular moment in culture we are in a long-term committed moved in together fuse bank accounts relationship with irony in the past people ascribed

generally to organize religion as the dominant way to engage with the unknowable nature of reality which you know didn't historically go in a nonviolent way saying Jesus [ __ ] Christ isn't taking the lord's name in vain arrogantly oppressing the downtrod and enforcing your personal values upon them and the name of God is taking the lord's name in vain but organizing societal Consciousness around religion does actually provide a shared sense of meaning and morality the farther we've moved from a communial responsibility to a higher power the deeper we have drenched ourselves in ironic Detachment from

all meaning if you don't believe me look around you look at the internet the pocket dimensions and ever shifting Sands of increasingly Niche cultures everyone gives a [ __ ] about everything no one gives a [ __ ] about anything Society is fractured so many different value systems the only universal law is that someone will think you're evil for whatever it is you do believe so why not start just telling ironic jokes in the face of overwhelming Cosmic horror the alternative is subscribe to whatever the dominant value system may be and discover the Eternal emptiness

within its promise why the [ __ ] would you care about something why bother having empathy for people that are always going to try to [ __ ] you why Try when you're an H2O molecule in a wave that's crashing whether or not you feel like hitting the shore the very least we can do in a cold unforgiving universe is Wink it each other at how [ __ ] we all are because God forgot about us so we spend our whole lives fighting to make the world better then we don't succeed then we die and

eventually the sun explode so why do we try it all so dive into the uncomfortable areas lean into the terrifying expanse and tell a [ __ ] joke no one can hear you scream in space but no one can hear you laugh either and laughing is more fun darkhammer is kind of like a sad song it takes your worst feelings traumas and anxieties and twists them into a source of pleasure we are ironic about the darkness to relieve our pain from the darkness but but just because sincerity is more painful doesn't make it less valuable

some things are hard but worth it including on occasion not making a joke in taking something seriously dialectics are when in order to understand the truth you attempt the paradoxical feat of accepting two opposing extreme contradictory realities this is reality it's not black and white existence is biracial and non-binary like me when there's a contradiction between the reality we're clinging to and another there might be a Shard of Eternal knowledge in the opposing reality that we can't have access to unless we adopt a beginner's mind and presuming at least for a moment that everything we

think is right is wrong and we still have much to learn as a problematic addictive personality BPD icon with a trail of Destruction behind them dialectics are the only reason I'm still alive dialectical behavioral therapy is a series of bicep curls of accepting that two extremely contradictory realities can be simultaneously true maybe I'm a remorseful wraith that can never change their past and maybe I'm a human being trying their best working off the information that they're privy to and improving every day with just as much right to imperfection as anyone so long as I do

something about it maybe I'm going to die and nothing matters and maybe I'm alive right now in this moment which is holy and beautiful harman's commitment to the structure of story and meaning hold sincerity and very high esteem the monomyth says there is meaning to life that myths and stories tell us what it is that there's a reality higher than our own personal subjective experience and value system so when Cosmic horror and a psychopathic intuition towards chaos is channeled through the Beats of Humanity's Eternal story you get a sloshing fluid of contrasting irony and sincerity

a dialectic that generates endless great stories that laugh in the face of nothingness through the structure of meaning itself although the concepts are ironic the humor is ironic the characters are ironic the universe is ironic and a significant portion of their creative process is ironic it is executed with sincerity they allow the fun to flow but never allow themselves to tell a story without some sort of codified meaning this mostly manifest in one punch Manny fashion with Rick being unchangeable in his godhood and Chaos while the characters around him have found experiences contending with what

they're exposed to Morty first confronts his tiny mortality in the Multiverse after Rick drags him from his original Universe into a new one and they bury their own dead bodies so that they can escape the apocalyptic Damage they' Done to their previous Universe summer discovers via perspective into alternate Dimensions that her birth was an accident and she ruined her parents' dreams her father and I achieved our dreams there's a chance you weren't even born that came out wrong that came out very wrong Morty talks summer down from this Cliff by explaining his previous reality nobody

exists on purpose nobody belongs anywhere everybody's going to die come watch TV Jerry and Beth struggle with the very relatable issues of marriage and Parenthood oh here we go right to the victim rule am I a victim Beth or am I married to a mean unfair monster that always hurts me but Rick never engages with their sincere battles he cloths himself in irony insisting to them again and again that their battles don't matter nothing means anything the only thing to do is have fun nobody gets it nothing you think matters matters this isn't special this

this is happening infinite times across infinite realities he takes it to the point of treating their lives like a TV show nine more seasons B you ruin the season 4 premere you might think but they are in a TV show no [ __ ] the characters are in a TV show to us not to them that cartoon house is their reality it's only Rick who's making these meta jokes treating their lives like a game looking into a proverbial imagined camera degrading the sincerity of their Universe considering himself above participation in his family's life that's the

end of season one give a [ __ ] is my new catch phas but he's broken inside he's an unnecessarily cruel alcoholic you're the reason this species is a failure and it makes me angry you're drunk he's a horrible father grandfather and friend I always wondered who would win if we ever fought then you were always a bad friend he's transformed this regular flawed household into a horror show of cosmic horror violence and death they'll go back to their families attend school regularly play video games date girls poor little rickless bastards in season 2 episode

3 after Rick drags his ex into a bender she cuts him off for being toxic I know how it goes with us I lose who I am and become part of you after that he shamefully sulks back to his home lies to his family about not remembering her name like a [ __ ] boy what happened with unity who oh Unity then he whimpers off to his garage and tries to kill himself he first creates a creature that didn't ask to be born with some strange fluid pets it as it cries then kills it unceremoniously

then he drinks the strange fluid even though it is booze because whatever [ __ ] you up is fine he sits down in solidarity with that crying blob created by a cruel God for no reason and the only reason he doesn't die is because he's too drunk to stay awake while he sits there in his filth Jerry the boring stupid sincere idiot he abhor so much for being so sincerely human enjoys the weed whacker he's been trying to get throughout the episode not as interesting as The Intergalactic debaucherous affair with an assimilated Planet but look

who's committing suicide and who's enjoying the simple Miracle of Life Rick also invents his own catchphrases just to further his sitcom Persona and a hot bed of ironing and that's the way the news goes grass tastes bad AIDS one of his catchphrases was famously revealed in the finale of season 1 to be bird language for I am in great pain please help [Music] me yeah that's my new thing you know what I'm talking about Morty wubble dub Morty that's my catchphrase remember that's just Rick's stupid nonsense catchphrase it's not nonsense in my people's tongue it

means I am in great pain please please help me as superficially surface level plot twisty yeah Rick is cool but sad deep down this may seem it's also a nod towards the fact that all of Rick's fourth wall breaking affectations are an expression of suffering and disconnection from the confines of his reality someone once called irony the song of a bird that has come to love its cage and even though it sings about not liking the cage it really likes it in there the immediate magnetic ISM of Rick and Morty is most of the time

for most people an indulgent Glee in identifying with Rick feel many times a day like we're the smartest person in the room and then everybody else doesn't get it we also know that that's a that's an ugly quality that be an ugly thing to say even think and feel in your heart but because Rick is like more powerful than nine Doctor Who's if he says none of this matters it's like it's he's right and so you get to indulge in the fantasy what if I was what if I got to say it so when Rick

breaks the fourth wall it once again just feels like he's the smartest person in the room to such a ridiculous extent that he knows he's in a TV show when no one else does UPS right see you next week everybody don't get it but just like wubble dubdub every time he tries to frame his life as Rick and Morty Adventures or sitcom exploits it's just to Shield himself from the boring work of relationships and being a good person it's not proof he's the smartest man in the room it's cowardice from a man afraid of sincerity

the show knows this dipping its fingers into irony and sincerity both flying as close to Terror as irony allows as while tying themselves to the bungee Court of sincerity that never truly allows things to be without meaning part three God IM mortality in season 3 episode 1 Rick is affirmed explicitly by the show as what he has been implicitly this whole time some kind of evil God well he's not a villain summer but he shouldn't be your hero he's more like a demon or a supered up God yet despite the fact that Rick functions with

the Limitless unknowable power of a God he is not a capital G God he is Mortal he is humbled before the unknowability of the universe and his refusal to accept this results in constant unnecessary Strife I think that Rick is very averse to uh having a normal spiritual connection with the unknown season 3 as an individual entity emanates the most thematic cohesion in the franchise of all the other other Seasons the whole thing is a followup to the most serialized and sincere episode to date the finale of season 2 The Wedding squanchers this sees Rick

reluctantly opening up to the idea of attending his Best Friend's Wedding concrete back story and permanent twists involving recurring characters are revealed as well as what appears to be authentic character development for Rick he has a brief moment of sincerity towards his friends and family bird person is my best friend and if he loves Tammy well then I love Tammy too to friendship to love and to My Greatest Adventure yet opening myself up to others until he is brutally punished for a sincerity just like he always professes is inevitable everyone here is under arrest for

crimes against the Federation Tammy third person no his sincere expression of common vulnerability is immediately betrayed and he snaps Ms right back to his ironic Detachment and Casual cruelty smugly feeling proven correct it might even seem like the show agrees with him surely his heartbreaking universe and tragic circumstance does but loving and losing is exactly what sincerity is being brave enough to love someone means allowing them the power to break your heart the honest and meaningful reaction in this scenario would be to mourn but he doesn't he lashes out at his family and acts above

it oh oh should I have been more open and trusting and loving like oh I don't know my now dead best friend you Summer and the government and me for letting my guard down which I will never do again once again Rick's presence in the family has ruined their lives making them a target for the authoritarian Galactic Federation that Rick is a known rebel against causing Earth to be colonized by bureaucratic bullan insects that's right I won't always refer to Communism positively don't tell me what to do don't tell me what to do he evacuates

the family to a new planet once more basking in the novelty of the whole bit while the family genuinely Mourns what they've lost Jerry the most boring and least respected member of the family suggests rationally that Rick is a piece of [ __ ] that has annihilated their lies repeatedly but the hereditary worship of intelligence abhor for weakness and fear for Rick's disapproval has the rest of the family completely whipped so let me get this straight for the rest of your lives no matter how much it hurts you no matter how much it destroys our

children's Futures we're going to do whatever Rick wants whenever he wants Yes Rick overhears this and evidently has his second sincere moment of the episode he turns himself in on the condition that the government pardons his family if we come back to earth can my family have a normal life we only want Sanchez sir your family will be fine nice thank you I'm Jerry Smith and I love sucking big sweaty on a cliffhanger ending he's locked away the family is returned to a permanently transformed Earth under an alien regime and it seems that Rick has

finally accessed his remorse and limitations what are you in for everything for 2 years we are left wondering how things will proceed forever changed then season 3 episode 1 he effortlessly escapes and collapses the government within 10 minutes guess who dismantled the government that settles that we break out of this sincere serialization with Rick once more thwarting all expectation of vulnerability destroying all of his enemies with incomparable genius and making everyone else in the Galaxy feel like a [ __ ] idiot don't [ __ ] with God you will be humbled did you like that

I got like closer to you I don't do that normally the sincerity built up in the season 2 Cliffhanger is pummeled back into irony Rick attests that he turned himself in literally just to obtain government secrets and collapse the authoritarian Reign for his own convenience why would Rick Sanchez turn himself in it's possible Rick knew he'd be interrogated at this facility anyone here with level 9 access could I don't know collapse the government an authoritarian Reign Minds you that canonically he and his friends bird person squane gear dude all the other war criminals in the

Galaxy fought against in a prolonged Conflict for years so Rick could have just ended all of that at any point he felt like it why didn't because he didn't fight in the Rebellion to make a better world he did it for fun cuz he's God and he doesn't care and he does what he wants his moment of remorse turning himself into the government is reframed as a purely spiteful Act of Vengeance against those that pissed him off including Jerry jelly including Jerry who he subtly compels his daughter to divorce leveraging her abandonment issues against their

marriage this sets up the season to double down on Rick terrorizing Morty's life upping the Ane of his cruelty and delving deeper into the darkness of his all powerful demon Hood take it easy Rick that's dark oh it gets darker Morty welcome to the darkest year of our adventures and this season is darker it does insist on Rick's godhood but it concurrently pokes holes in that supposed godhood until by the end Rick is reduced to the lowest status member of his family there's your stupid hat tip [ __ ] dead you can't talk to Jerry

that way anymore how did this happen although Rick is to some degree all powerful and all knowing he is not always right the series overall Rick is right I think about half the time and wrong about half the time explain things that you don't understand all day but he can't humble himself enough to have a fulfilling relationship he can defeat anyone in competition but he can't build trust season 3 leans into his Unstoppable power while emphasizing his fundamental fall ability season 3 episode 2 in episode 2 Rick becomes annoyed with his grandkids because they're emotionally

struggling with their parents divorce and he eventually abandons them following through on his frequent threat that he has infinite grandkids and doesn't need these particular ones you're both pieces of [ __ ] I can prove it mathematically actually let me grab my whiteboard this has been a long time coming but he discovered people are not so easily replaceable since he decided to settle in with this family in this particular Universe since he tried to alter their emotional lives for his personal gain he must now suffer the consequences and accountability for their needs perhaps in the

past it was easier to slide around between universes without regard for anyone else but his relationship with this specific Universe has progressed to the point that he can't easily interchange it with other versions so he comes crawling back to help his grandkids process their feelings I guess the people around you aren't as disposable as you're always insisting are they he also discovers vexingly he can't remove his daughter's irrational attachment and commitment to her ex-husband despite his constant efforts to exploit her vulnerabilities to Rick to Rick to Rick season 3 episode 3 in episode three Rick

is so repulsed by the idea of therapy he performs a ridiculous experiment and gets himself into a ridiculously dangerous situation completely unnecessarily the therapy appointment was made to help Morty and summer process their parents divorce and to address their behavioral issues they've developed in reaction to it but because the therapist is good at her job she notices in about a millisecond that Beth is way more [ __ ] up than the kids and Rick's toxicity has been bled down the generational line while the Smith family is dragged over coals in the form of communicating helpfully

Rick stumbles through an epic quest to save his own pickle life destroying a corrupt organization and releasing an anti-hero from prison he does all of his impossibly cool [ __ ] then comes crawling back to therapy to get the anti- pickle serum from his daughter and belittles the therapist but for once his intelligence and wit isn't rewarded it's finally confronted by someone with enough confidence sincerity and emotional health to hold him accountable for a spiritual cowardice the only connection between your unquestionable intelligence and the sickness destroying your family is that everyone in your family use

intelligence to justify sickness there there are things we know are right and good and would be better for us to do but constantly it's like yeah but you know it's so much funnier and nicer to go do something else and who cares and it's all [ __ ] anyway on the way home Rick and Beth talk each other back into willful ignorance of what they've just been confronted with while the poor [ __ ] Offspring in the back are utterly shellshocked by the revelatory concept that Rick might not be right about everything his philosophy might

be as poisonous as they already knew it to be in their hearts there might be a different way to engage with the universe that doesn't demand blind nihilism and cruelty there could be a way to treat the people around you that actually invites and rewards vulnerability and Grace o season 3 episode 4 episode 4 shows three different vital weaknesses within Rick's genius namely his General dislike ability his emotional vulner ability to Morty and the simple sad insurmountable dysfunction of alcoholism akin to anyone else's Rick and Morty are called to an Avengers team up to fight

a big bad guy in a very very literal call to action we're being called to assemble by the vindicators I refuse to answer a literal Call to Adventure Morty theore seated here is that apparently they already did one of these superhero team ups and this is the sequel supposedly but they quickly discovered that this is actually the third Avengers team up and they did the second one without Rick and Morty explicitly because Rick is such a [ __ ] [ __ ] they just didn't want to be around him despite the fact he's so useful

Rick naturally Revels and how entertaining this is I think the personality conflict might have been you Jesus how awesome is that but Morty is genuinely bummed out and really takes Rick to task for it not by outsmarting him or being more powerful than him but just by asserting his feelings that Rick makes him feel embarrassed Rick this really bums me out it it's embarrassing to find out these guys don't like us although Rick never outright admits that this bothers him it clearly does because he storms off to get drunker than we've ever seen him get

oh God the Avengers episode is a clean Viva section between Rick's godhood and his frail mortality while he's blackout drunk he casually and savagely kills the big bad preemptively out of raw spite then he builds a series of Saw traps designed to shame The Avengers out of their hero status demonstrating pettily to Morty that they aren't Paragons of justice but are simply more flawed people that have done plenty of good and evil although Rick is a genius for being able to accomplish all this while so drunk he can barely function he embarrasses himself repeatedly with

pathetic remarkable sloppy drunk Behavior aloha means has nothing to do with this room I'm drunk I want to rest my eyes for a little bit I'm not going to sleep I just just need to rest my eyes on top of this Morty's veteran familiarity with Rick's blackout Behavior demonstrates a form of superiority over him in the simple fact that alcoholics are a burden to the people around them often requiring being taken care of by the people they live with well disarm the drunkenly improvised nutrino bomb there's a 40% chance it's a dud but you should

still stay back Mory how many of these too many Rick the fundamental reality that Rick isn't fully in control of his faculties and can't remember his most feeble moments while Morty has to witness all of them and solve the issues behind him is a blow to Rick's ego his mortality is shining through his godhood season 3 episode five episode 5 once again reinforces Rick's contempt for Jerry and inability to escape him my son asked you to take me on some kind of pity Adventure wait what did you think it was an execution season 3 episode

6 episode 6 sees Rick and Morty go through an experiment new detoxifier of the Soul where it slices them in half between what they consider to be their toxic traits and what they consider to be their best traits we're the toxins we're what got removed this plot device clarifies Rick's irrational affection for Morty in that he considers this a negative quality as well as Morty's understanding that he is too attach to Rick which he also abandons in the machine when Rick reunites with his toxins but Morty refuses and runs away Rick endearingly repeatedly gets drunk

and calls Morty's Crush at school crying asking for help to get him back she coming to our house Morty and asking me did did you get a new Morty yet because you kept drunk dialing me and crying about it I wasn't crying very cute that's cute season 3 episode 7 episode 7 he and Morty just [ __ ] off to Atlantis and art scene for a whole episode while a separate and elaborate Saga takes place on the Citadel of Ricks nothing important happens in it it's not even worth watching season 3 episode 8 episode 8

is Morty's mindblowers the Anthology episode of the season in Le of interdimensional cable Morty mind blowers and we'll be doing this instead of interdimensional cable we get the disquieting education that 25% of what Morty experienced is so horrifying and destructive that he has to have it removed from his memory in order to continue to function I wish you could just erase the memory from your mind how did you know I was going to say that this Morty is my Archive of all the experiences you've begged me to remove from your life but the satisfying twist

is Rick has also systemically removed memories from Morty just because they make Rick insecure we should never take things for granted what I'm just saying life's short we shouldn't take things for granite are you saying Granite yeah it's granted did did you actually think it was things escalate and they destroy each other's minds entirely then ReDiscover their [ __ ] up relationship via their extracted worst memories of each other rapidly devolving into a suicide Packa suicide Packa suicide Packa suicide Packa intervention intervention intervention then summer walks in on them revealing that this is something that

just happens sometimes and there's a contingency plan crazy episode I mean like every episode is that insane I just haven't been explaining the plot of anything in order to emphasize the Thematic development of this particular season 3 episode 9 and 10 look I did it again in episode 9 Beth reveals herself to be about as smart and dangerous as her father just nurtured differently to arrive at a subdued state of being with this realization Rick offers to clone her so she can go off and pursue an independent ambitious life of zero commitment like her father

while simultaneously taking care of her family I know what I want to do whether or not she's cloned is left ambiguous until one episode later when Beth unravels into an existential paranoid panic attack about whether or not she's a clone and how Rick would have to kill the Clone if it became self-aware you tell my mom she might be a clone no I I told her she wasn't well isn't that what you tell a clone oh for Christ's sake this coincides with Rick getting into a god tier pissing contest with the president of the United

States supposedly for Morty's sake when it's actually obviously just him stroking his own ego once Morty gets weary and bored of the ordeal I feel like he's earned a selfie honestly I could take it or leave it at this point uh I don't need a selfie told you I didn't want the damn selfie 800 times whatever the hell is going on between you and the president it's got nothing to do with me this total lack of regard for Beth and Morty inadvertently drives the family back together with their father United in the knowledge that regardless

of their existential horror and Rick's interdimensional power him being a really big piece of [ __ ] is one of the only things they can really rely on they might as well rely on each other instead like they they were fine before he got there Rick in this episode broker's peace between Israel and Palestine breaks into the White House and kills a man without doing anything I guarantee you're going to die if you touch me and there's no afterlife everything just goes black don't do it rick what was that death what kind instant he declares

himself a god he's not a God you don't know what I am but all that godhood can't stop everyone's respect for him plummeting or Jerry's re-entering the family through raw sincerity and familiarity and reliability Rick is made uncomfortably aware that he is quite mortal he runs on fickle intuition without any principles or sincerity as consistently right about the facts as he may be he's not useful his lack of sincerity might make him cool might make him strong but time reveals him to be spineless and selfish and less valuable than simple commitment to the community you've

been blessed with this season long section into Rick's assumed godhood ends with him small and impotent his family straight up laughing in his face about how much of an untrustworthy [ __ ] he is maybe you are a clone it's not like Rick would tell us sometimes if you're smart you need to shut the [ __ ] up and learn how to be a good person flexing your intelligence and asserting your authority over the whole universe is a kind of stupidity part four stupidity and intelligence it's a new day it's a this is tomorrow now

and why would I why would I lie to you what would be the utility in dressing the same and simulating one day Jerry is not as smart as the rest of the family and everyone torches him for it he's a reliable archetype of an impotent father particularly in season one in season 3 is a sad divorce doing sad divorce e stuff but then seasons four and five find him back in the family no smarter but with a little more dignity in many ways things will be like season 1 but more streamlined starting any season 1

with a well- defined and reliable archetype is not something to look down on there are archetypes for a reason and if you want a healthy sitcom that you're going to be able to write a whole lot of entries for it's good to start with the Firm Foundation the archetype and single sentence character description are the analytical form and your intuitive creativity will carry you through that mechanism flavoring the Eternal with your personal voice and manifestation the deeper you move into participating the Eternal the more you find that there is great individuality within it we are

all one but we are all unique representations of the same one all characters and people are made of the same components all stories are made of the same beats but we keep creating them because there are endless ways to articulate that which cannot be spoken so stop worrying about whether or not your creativity is special just start participating you'll find the individuality in Rapture you're looking for on the other side so Jerry starts as an embarrassing insecure dad and that's the whole bit and it works fine but what it becomes in the larger philosophical framework

of this universe is the ultimate counterweight to the ironic detached intelligence of Rick Sanchez you win Jerry no amount of Genius can stop your dumb mediocre vacuous roots from digging into everything and everyone around you and draining them of any ability to fend you off Rick is interesting he can comment on anything he can do anything he's above everything he's addictive to watch as a perverted protagonist not because he's empath pathetic but because he's a spectacle his power is a Marvel to witness his wit boundless he is always surprising always cool always entertaining my editor

left a note here that just says you're describing yourself Jerry is boring he's not smart he's not cool he's not original he is to be laughed at not with where Rick's pride is based on his own staggering intelligence and capability Jerry's pride is a limp tantrum based on nothing but his insecurities but a punching bag is not an enduringly compelling character and an impotent father is a tried archetype so one of the grand tasks of the show is developing Jerry into an inescapable Force to rival Rick genetically Rick's genius has passed down to Beth and

then that genius maybe kind of passed on to Summer but is definitely watered down by Jerry and then Morty seems to have gotten a lot of the Jerry is everyone in your family an idiot for sure me and my dad are but although Morty is hereditarily inferior in intelligence to Beth and Rick he familiarizes himself with this insane Multiverse that he's constantly shoved into and then by the end of season 5 he's just performing Stone Cold badass acts of intelligence and bravery okay Narnia let's go let's go given Morty's initial archetype of the weak willed

vulnerable kid it's satisfaction in a can to watch him be in charge of any situation are you dying of demential how are you talking to me like this when did you get so cocky tonight the writers lean into the inevitability of badassery that would result of being Rick's companion for this long but sometimes you got to be an [ __ ] my grandpa taught me that but such Evolution would be antithetical to Jerry's character model Jerry is defined by his incompatibility with the rest of the family no Jerry is the only one completely untainted by

the Sanchez bloodline he is biologically the only Outsider he's the epitome of everything mundane that Rick regards with disdain this smudge of insignificance intruding upon his life of Adventures and Innovation pretty cool huh Morty oh uh I thought it was cool I don't give a [ __ ] what you think Jerry he wears his insecurities on his sleeve he's easily outwitted he tends to have no Backbone in Conflict but he is understandable he is reliable he loves what he loves he may lack Nuance but he's sincere to the Bone he's not trying to outsmart the

unknowable cosmic forces of the universe he's just an ant in a line of Ants Marching unremarkably towards a predetermined destination now here's Human music the state of certainty and security being an unquestioning Cog and a giant machine is not a luxury that Rick Sanchez has and so buried within his ignorance and ineptitude Jerry has something that Rick does not he knows that he can't control the universe and he's fine with it and what's wrong with being average what's wrong with being a low stakes regular person when did that become a sin how about you Jerry

you got anything to add to the family Dynamic I've been getting into beekeeping lately there's something wrong with that what's wrong with that don't I have the right to be happy to exist what's wrong with being a Jerry trusting and Earnest to the point of being easily deceived aspiring to domestic in Career Success in the most mundane way the answer is literally nothing that's fine you know when you're a teenager and you low-key think that you're one of the only people that really get it one of the people that only get what really matters then

in your 20s you progressively start to only care about how clean your apartment is to some degree there is something slightly childish about the novel and beautiful about the boring when Rick is confronted by the therapist that they end of pickle Rick his genius is not contested what is challenged directly is his willingness to participate in the General monotonous task of mental health I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy the same way I'm bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass garage family therapy mode cuz Rick is cool

he's smart no one's contesting those premises but he's also unlikable he's mean he makes everyone's lives worse I'm talking about myself again all that intelligence does not help them at all in participating in life simple beautiful little ID idiosyncrasies when intelligence and coolness lands you in a pit of irony and suffering is that even intelligence isn't that kind of just a new kind of stupidity isn't Rick's supposed godhood somewhat inferior to the repeating present consciousness of a billion Jerry's Jerry oh come on this is ridiculous I love you Jerry isn't the small and inescapable mortality

that Jerry represents a more sincere expression of God than this detached cruel selfishness for how embarrassing his family might find his feeble attempts at gaining agency or something to to be proud of in his life he's one of the only people that's sincerely engaging with the honest to God present not trapped in the past and future trying to impress everyone around him all the time I love this recurring bit in season 1 where whenever he's on his iPad and he's mindlessly playing a game the game he's playing looks like he's basically just popping balloons there

aren't even visible points or rules at all Dad this is enough for him even with his worst qualities and behaviors as Myriad insecurities and his inferiority complex a lot of it is easily traceable to the brain disease of irony that's been infecting his family seeping out of the poisonous heart of Rick in season 1 episode 6 Jerry asks his wife if she still loves him and she goes on a monologue about how loving is work and no one wants to do work but she's doing the work so he should stop asking stupid questions and please

be less insecure so maybe I can love you more Beth do you still love me uh what kind of question is that the yes or no kind loving you is work Jerry do you see me working here does this conversation seem tedious to me sort of then I I obviously sort of love you don't I it's funny it's badass it's relatable in terms of how tiring it can be to maintain a long-term relationship and un ideal circumstances but also really Beth your husband asked you if you love him you don't have a hug and a

kiss in you [ __ ] grow up oh you're right loving someone is work and most of that work is hugs and words of affirmation would would that have been that taxing for you is being smart ever going to give you real power over the Universe I keep doing that don't try to get smart with the universe the universe will always outsmart you she divorced is this [ __ ] that comes crawling back in an existential Panic what are you an idiot I'm sorry I'm sorry that was so rude I came to you for help

and now I'm insulting your intelligence and look where intelligence gets you Jerry beat her to the punch of her own insecurity he admitted his Frailty and fears to his wife's face and gave her his heart allowing her the ability to hurt him running that risk bravely and what are you doing just being a [ __ ] to your husband who loves you reality does not reward the Arrogant the unknowable thwarts Mortal plans evades contr and punishes hubris Pride cometh before the fall Icarus pays the price for his altitude the more spiritually attuned way to reckon

with the unknowable and uncontrollable is by humbling yourself before it God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference by this spiritual metric Rick is comparatively puny and weak but Jerry in his Frailty is Holy while the incomprehensible rage is all around him he's just a little guy that wants to hang out and he deserves to worship of intelligence and resentment of vulnerability is ripping through the Smith Sanchez family like a genetic disease Jerry's supposed pathetic emasculated inferiority

complex would likely not even exist if he was a shown an iota of normal empathetic love he only feels the need to go way out of his Lane to prove his value and fight petty little fights because he's surrounded by obnoxious know-it-alls that are constantly shaming him for being normal many times throughout the Show members of the Smith family will make a little Lurch towards earnestness just to be slacked down hey who wants to go run in a stream what the no the most egregious occurrence of this is when the children asked to go back

to therapy on the way from home from their from home on the from on on the home on driving home therapy this is where we Spotlight the cowardice of the allegedly two smartest members of the family they take the kids to therapy for their misbehavior and then when the kids respond positively and ask politely to go back to therapy they ignore them out of fear I mean that shrink what a monologuist are we going to go back we should get a drink really like go somewhere yeah let's drop the kids off and go Tie One

On I lik her so what do you thinking like Smokey's Tavern together they mock the one person that ever challenged their intelligence with kindness then they Sher the well-being of those they're meant to care for and they run off to get drunk and laugh about how stupid it is that other people care about stuff that's not useful that's not intelligence you're just an [ __ ] real intelligence knows Beyond just being right you also need to construct and participate in a life worth living actual strong people are brave enough to admit that they're afraid of

loneliness or heartbreak or the nothingness at the end of all existence and are grateful for their piece of Life at the middle of a terrifying expanse of death death is real part five serialization and the episodic serialization is when you develop the individual episodes of your story into one large overarching narrative we as special little snowflake pronoun loving gen Z golden age of TV streaming service [ __ ] are very used to this we tend to expect linear narratives progressing towards climactic conclusions incorporating every piece of the cannon generating some higher meaning it is the

nature of normalizing consuming an entire season of a show in one night rather than tuning in weekly for something self-contained bingeable TV literally means you need to know what happens next now if if if there wasn't some grandio tapestry being woven together by all the episodes then you wouldn't have an addictive itch to watch the next so the normalization of serialized television is a fairly recent invention enabled by the internet Dan Haron traverses this un comfortable no man's land between Old Guard Network TV and the modern internet era although he's now partnered with Adult Swim

a network that's notoriously in touch with the punk rock pulse of modern media although his show feels Reckless and Relentless in a way that the internet tends to be oh shoot now look it's like a where's Waldo page can you find me although the dialogue can feel like a good avanguard Tumblr text post Rick and Morty is a classic sitcom it is born of sitcom sensibility it abides by sitcom law Rick and Morty is not Game of Thrones it's not breaking bad it's not even community in which they acknowledge the passing of years and aging

of characters it's a cartoon show with avatars who never age or meaningfully change endlessly fighting eldrich monsters of the weak there is meaning to this television can be a beautiful thing when we turn it on we're seeking something dependably entertaining mixing the uncomfortable with the comfortable injecting ourselves with familiar characters and reliable laughter to distract ourselves from our rotting bodies transforming into corpses in real time most sitcoms do have ongoing arcs but they are truly measured by their reusability their utility the reli ability a good sitcom premise is a structure that should allow for infinite

entertainment the conceit in characters should be fueled for Endless debuck this sort of show is called Evergreen content video essays are evergreen content if You' watched one of my video essays you haven't watched it once you'll be back for your rewatch of this video very very soon Breaking Bad was not Evergreen content it was highly serialized it was always changing and it had to end when it had to end because if you don't allow highly serialized content to end when it has to end then it starts to suffer in quality and beg for death like

a Mr me seeks that wasn't allowed to accomplish its task and poof out of existence me seeks don't usually have to exist this long it's getting weird so when the creators of Rick and Morty are transparently passionate about maintaining their show as an evergreen property it means that generally serialized elements are to be avoided or at the very least approached with a hesitant apprehension we took very careful uh steps to make him a a kind of non shark jumpable uh character that we we we we we want him to be kind of Evergreen if you

have a carefully constructed conceit from which you could Branch off infinitely in a million directions forever it is wise to reset the equilibrium at the end of every episode why would you [ __ ] with your premise that specifically allows you to do anything you want SpongeBob wasn't heavy on the character development but the fans [ __ ] love continuity and any group of passionate writers are constantly going to be tempted towards making what they're doing means something the Rick and Morty creative team is blatantly ceaselessly struggling between the urge to maintain their episodic perfect

fun box and transm morgy their show into a serialized epic but indulging that impulse can make you take what you're doing way too seriously to allow the show to continue to thrive oh man we've created the perfect fun machine and then you go it's just you can't you can't tell when you're slipping into like taking your fun machine too seriously the whole point of Rick and Morty is a loosely improvisatory style and childish imagination being channeled through a tightly structured methodology of Storytelling intuition systemically shoved through analysis irony systemically shoved through sincerity stupidity shoved through

intelligence so why [ __ ] with that by overintellectualizing the serialized Cannon of Morty Smith who is basically a circle a top a yellow rectangle these characters were never useful because they were worthy of myth and lore they were useful because their bottled potential functional entertaining rhythms within which to insert substance but any fan of anything is naturally inclined to obsess over that particular property you emotionally invest in the dots you are provided your myth loving brain drawing lines between vectors we want to make sense of things there's nothing wrong with that but the more

you serialize your story The more you lock yourself away from endless possibility and potentially the reason you like the show in the first place oh no we really painted ourselves in a corner with that serialized story of the one armed man is this island of Rubik's Cube or the dream of a turtle like we we kind of implied it was a turtle dream now we're [ __ ] uh we we more just have schinger uh possibilities if you ask your parents if you're going to the zoo and they say we're not sure yet um they're

bad parents if you ask your showrunner that's that's good showrunning because they're what they're actually doing is keeping the show healthy and ever green and and and only making that decision Canon the very moment it has to be serialization is commitment it's accountability it's less fun but more meaningful and sincere and no no one complains more about serialization than Rick Sanchez he does not like serialized drama the overarching serialized plot of Rick and Morty is about the intergalactic government a rebellion against it and the Citadel of Ricks which is a neutral evil multiversal Sweden spoilers

for everything in case in case you watch my this isn't a review Channel [ __ ] off of course there's spoilers why did you come here the Galaxy at large is governed by an Intergalactic government mostly run by space bugs Rick evidently in his past participated in a rebellion against this Intergalactic government alongside his best friends bird person squanchy gear dude at Al they have engaged in Epic Battles against the government in the name of freedom and are all deemed war criminals the road your father and I walk together is soaked deeply with the blood

of both friends and enemies the galactic government considers us terrorists we have committed numerous atrocities in the name of Freedom Rick participated in this battle however the stakes of his personal reality are much higher and multifaceted because Rick is the only man in any Universe to invent interdimensional travel via his portal gun once one has access to all alternative Dimensions your own dimension ceases to retain the significance it once had you become an unattached God constantly at arms length with reality knowing this is one of an endless series of cannons and once you Rick the

smartest man of the universe become the only one to invent interdimensional travel you join ranks with countless Ricks from other universes in the same boat these Ricks naturally run into each other and get in [Music] cahoots The Citadel of Ricks is the secret headquarters for the Council of Ricks in mimicry of Marvel's Council of reads the Citadel of Ricks is a conglomeration across the Multiverse of Ricks ensuring there is multiversal peace within their own ranks of interdimensional troublemakers as well as protecting themselves from each interst government I've got a lot of enemies in the universe

that consider my genius a threat of course our point of view Rick reportedly the rickest Rick of them all hates being told what to do by anyone be it the galactic government within his own universe or the Council of Rick's throughout all universes and yet the canonical forces of his past follow him ceaselessly Rick a deeply influential force in the Multiverse obviously has an integral role to play in the history of that Multiverse but he avoids a in any responsibility for reality his goal is not to be a notable historical figure but to do what

he wants and receive no consequence shortly before season 1 episode one Rick resigns himself to a life of episodic fun no longer trying to create meaning out of chaos except for self-contained Adventures that are exciting and distracting he commits to living in a regular Suburban home with his family to provide himself some sort of security and structure then Lords himself as the key to Brilliance and variety within that context let me say that again for his entire life up until the moment the show Rick and Morty begins Rick is heavily serialized suffering through complicated struggles

and interpersonal conflicts then once the show begins Rick is committed entirely to episodic Limitless Adventures The Meta idea of Rick and Morty being a perfect fun machine is expressed in the in Universe concept of Adventures I get to be in charge of every third Adventure every 10th deal I Morty Smith invoke my right to choose one in every 10 Rick and Morty Adventures read them and weep damn it from a character design standpoint alone you're walking talking endless sandbox of Godlike knowledge and opportunity cannot have a concrete higher purpose or that kind of ruins the

bit is Rick up to something uh does he have a larger goal that he hasn't shared yet or is what you see what you get I'm going to say as a writer if he's working on something then I guess that would yeah that would ruin the show if their ultimate goal or the question of if they have an ultimate goal remains a mystery then you retain a sense of wonder and Chaos one of Dan Harmon's aphorisms carried over from old TV is the phrase Jumping the Shark I think one of the few big giant shark

jumpers of Rick and Morty we took very careful uh steps to make him a a kind of non shark jumpable uh character what exactly is in risk's flas liquor whiskey rum or something that he's brewed himself that's a shark jumper man you want to jump the shark you want to know my stupid crybaby backstory Jumping the Shark is a reference to when the classic sitcom Happy Days ran out of ideas and to the point of making The Fawns water ski over a shark the point is it's not good writing it's not good use of the

premise it's spectacle a show getting away from its own usefulness in Hope of stirring a moment of superficial Intrigue in Rick's opinion learning his backstory would be Jumping the Shark of Rick and Morty he even resents recurring Anthology episodes I just upgraded our cable package with programming from every conceivable reality what are you doing a sequel I don't understand yeah me neither we pretty much nailed it the first time more mind blowers and we'll be doing this instead of interdimensional cable in season 3 when he offers his daughter to clone her so she can explore

who she is uninhibited while taking care of her family simultaneously she asks him why he would do something like that what what are his motivations and he answers as honestly and vaguely as he's capable of given the show's unwillingness to reveal his inner truth and personal distaste for serialization if nothing matters why would you do that for me maybe I love you maybe something about your mother don't jump a gift shark in the mouth even in this inescapably serious moment with his daughter he's not willing to sacrifice his freedom of unlimited mystery and Adventure Beth's

decision on this front and whether or not she is the Clone is left ambiguous until season 4 when it's revealed that her decision was to ask her father to decide for her I want you to decide what do you want me to stay here and be part of your life or do you want me to leave his reaction to this was to clone his daughter and then wipe his own memory of which one was the real one death turned around and locked eyes with him and said tell me what kind of daughter you would like

me to be Rick's response was to ruy her and avoid the entire conversation an ancient Greek level of bad fatherhood and then he can't bear to even know which one is which he made a a non-choice and committed to it really hard he proceeds to lie to both of them just constantly saying the other one's real don't don't worry about it Beth you mean Beth's clone right what did I say you're not a clone and who is that uh uh a clone this direct challenge to his heart is met with such Frailty of spirit that

it puts a line in the sand in regards to Rick's sense of superiority over the rest of his family you don't want to know the truth the truth is we have more important [ __ ] to do like raise our kids and Stamp Out the Federation he's been trying to convince everyone that nothing matters time after time but space Beth and real Beth experiencing solidarity over Rick's abuse allows them to realize what what what definitely doesn't matter is this [ __ ] dude because we're alive and and we actually care about what we do it

doesn't matter which clone is the original they're both alive and they actually are committed to [ __ ] that they care about Rick's objective truth will gain them nothing I don't care what's in that vial yeah me neither you're a piece of [ __ ] either way so instead of waiting around to figure out his truth they are comfortable in their own knowledge and walk away from him laughing at him so Rick sits alone and finds out himself and he discovers in a real moment of shame that his daughter surrendered herself to him and he

actively shut himself away from that truth so that he wouldn't have any profound secrets that he could know in the back of his head and he could completely opt out of his part in the serialization taking place around him within his family desperately trying to avoid establishing any further Cannon pathetic sad but he can't undo the cannon he's already established as An Enemy of the State and a founder of the Citadel of Ricks and most crippling of all having a friend and a family what is Rick Sanchez's backstory let's say it just like he'd hate

it being told you want to know my stupid crybaby backstory knock yourself out not not now origin story he faked in the season 3 opener was based on truth he used that origin story to trap uh his tormentors and trick them draw them in if you were going to use a fake origin story to trap somebody would it be faster to construct one from scratch or would you maybe do some cutting and pasting from reality our Rick is the most dangerous and passionately philosophically episodic Rick because he was the only Rick strong and autonomous enough

to consciously choose intimate mortality over godhood I just took a long look at myself and I don't think this science thing is going to pay off why don't I get Beth and we'll go out for ice cream that is the last great idea that will ever be had in this garage the idea that Rick is the most nihilistic most lethal most intelligent most fasile Rick uh being rooted in the fact that he was the one and only Rick on the central finite curve to turn his back on his wickness and want to just not be

Rick and spend it with his wife who was then taken from him by all the other Ricks would that be genius in his original reality once he encroached upon inventing interdimensional travel an other-dimensional Rick approached him to make first Contact on behalf of the Multiverse he offered him the alleged godhood of Rick Sanchez Via multiversal Travel nothing matters there are infinite Dimensions we're all going to die there is no point committing to anything live your life moment to moment doing the dopest possible [ __ ] sacrificing nothing because sacrif is only vulnerability and vulnerability only

exists to be exploited imagine doing anything you want then hopping to a timeline where you never did it imagine going anywhere anytime with nobody able to stop you you think it's cool being the smartest man on earth but once we give you this technology you become the smartest thing in every conceivable Universe every Rick is confronted with this knowledge our Rick is one of the very few if not the only who refuse the call to apathy infinite Rick a god ah pass excuse me then in a spiteful and familiar urge to destroy that which disagrees

with with his godhood the propositional Rick kills the family of this disgustingly sincere version of himself no this inspires our Rick to create his interdimensional portal gun after all as all Ricks are compelled to do one way or another he embarks Across the Universe bolstering his genius learning all there is to learn the underlying bitter need for closure pushes him to try to find that one Petty vengeful Rick to kill the man who killed his wife and child he fails to find this one particular piece of [ __ ] needle across the Hast stack of

the universe so he gradually adopts the impending philosophy of fickle self DET termination imposed by his interdimensional self across the Multiverse his singular internal motivation for Revenge Burns bright but in the meantime he seeks the scientific and spontaneously exciting Across the Universe this path of thrill seeking leads him first to the party circuit where he meets squanchy bird person and gear dude at a festival at some point Squan has a bad standup phase and then eventually they all become embroiled in the Rebellion Star Wars Rebel Alliance sci-fi cool [ __ ] is cool until it's

cliche come on kids we have to go do a [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] Star Wars he did a Blade Runner he did a Star Wars he did Trope fi the archetypical serialization all the way to the Battle of Blood rdge Bird person's big day Morty was at blood Ridge this is alluded to in the wedding episode then finally seen in glorious canonical certainty within bird person's fractured memory in season 5 episode 9 the Battle of blood Ridge was the resistance's final stand against The Intergalactic government that supposedly crippled the government significantly

enough that the rebels were then free to live their lives in relative peace Rick's best friend bird person joined the fight for the Rebellion because his whole planet was genocided and conquered Rick joined the Rebellion because it was cool he also joined the Rebellion to stack up favors that he could cash in in the form of bird person assisting him on his revenge Crusade against the interdimensional Ricks in a futile attempt to kill so many alternate versions of himself that he'd slay the one responsible for his tragic backstory you omitted key details regarding tonight's Mission

listen you help me do my stuff I'll help you do your stuff the Battle of blood Ridge goes perfect it's climactic it's legendary it's canonical Rick and bird person fight for bloody Justice against corrupt Authority in the momentous Glee of their victory in the Rapture of everything being so cool and perfect Rick has a vulnerable moment and shares the most intimate thing he has with his best friend endless meaningless truth it was extremely badass the Battle of blood Ridge is over come with me to somewhere nearby anywhere everywhere I share this with almost nobody but

I could take you right now to this same Battlefield in a universe where we lost or another where the war never even happened all equally real all equally unreal none of it matters notably the same proposition that the Rick that ruined his life gave to him fall away with me into arbitary Freedom release vulnerability and sink into the non-stop fun machine perhaps for Rick there would be far more meaning within this devastating lack of closure and purpose with a friend you love at your side with which to enjoy your adventures but in Rick's second of

three lapses in his whole lifetime of emotionally committing to something he's rejected this time not by the cold meaningless Cosmos but by his best friend who simply has higher principles than Rick's worship of frivolity the relationship that we have I never used that word is not worth my Integrity God Rick's self-determination and gravitation towards cool [ __ ] coincides with bird person's genuine desire for a better universe so they fight on the same side and bond all the way to the point that Rick finally confesses his true feelings then why did you help because I

respect you and I wanted you to know you could respect me even though nothing matters okay you matter to me Rick is bisexual and he has feelings for bird person I'll say that right now it's canonical he's had relations with men before and he treats bird person's rejection as a genuine heartbreak he's by that's Canon why the are you risking your life for that [ __ ] because you love him uh the relationship that we have I never used that word you can see Rick's emotional investment in the idea of blood Ridge or anything in

the existence of bird person's memory of Rick sorry the show is really twisty this younger more naive version of Rick stored in bird person memory is very upfront about the fact that he just likes cool [ __ ] he's excited by the idea that blood Ridge even ends in tragedy just because it'd be so cinematic you're saying blood Ridge goes bad we have a Vietnam that's [ __ ] cool why am I saving a friend that remembers me as this insufferable but the tragedy of blood Ridge wasn't material failure it was the moment that Rick

finally stopped lying to bird person about why he was helping him save the universe bird person did it because it meant something to him Rick did it because it was fun and because bird person meant something to him that's it though no commitment to a higher purpose no sense of responsibility to any community no principal except for his own fleeting want Kant would be so disappointed when bird person rejects him it cuts really [ __ ] deep because it highlights perhaps for the first time how hollow Rick's new hyperconsciousness and omniscience really is irony is

not something you have unless you had sincerity and it was devastated by reality after his second heartbreak Rick devotes his life to murdering as many other Ricks as physically possible if he just genocides his own multiversal self maybe eventually he'll find that piece of [ __ ] needle his despairing murderous Rampage escalates until he's just drinking and killing all the versions of him that are trying to eliminate the ultimate threat to their own existence all the way until he lazily Slaughters the colony of Ricks that has built up against them they beg for their lives

that is Fe and pieces brokered resulting in the creation of the Citadel of Ricks although Rick doesn't have respect for this structure and political organization it was specifically formed as a peace treaty between himself and all other Ricks to ensure interdimensional Warfare of that magnitude didn't rear its head again and Ricks could live in peace shortly after establishing the Citadel of Ricks our Rick tumbles into a random reality where Beth isn't dead she's grown into an adult and married a Jerry and had two kids this is the reality where Rick started going on adventures with

Morty this is the reality of season 1 episode 1 until season 1 episode 6 when Rick destroys that reality and abandons it with more Morty to another where they stay for the rest of the series to date that's Rick's boring tragic jump the shark backstory dead wife in a traumatic relationship with canonized meaning whoa dead wife yes now everyone can shut up about it he learned from his thwarted attempts at sincerity that genuine efforts to find purpose are worthless the only principle to follow is have fun and have fun without relying on anyone around you

but space Beth is stronger than him I ran out of this one so I had to I have a little bit left in this one when Rick clones his daughter and sends one of the versions off to space she launches into the hero phase that her father once embodied without the interdimensional apathy she's authentically stimulated by actually fighting for a better Galaxy despite Rick's degradations my daughter having Space Adventures they are sking a tad star warsy though don't forget to have fun the Galactic Federation is making a comeback in the wake of Rick's destruction of

it in the previous season labeling space Beth now the Most Wanted Rebel in the Galaxy it's not a competition of course not curious though if it were would Most Wanted be first place cuz on a galactic level Rick might be the most powerful person in the Galaxy but he doesn't give a [ __ ] about anything so he's only an issue if you bother him so the ultimate disrespect there is to do to him is [ __ ] stop caring about him give him exactly what he's asking for with his life philosophy I'm the one

you really want you're left alone you're a non-threat oh [ __ ] you want nothing to do with anything congrats no one wants anything to do with you is this what you wanted ins significance to matter as little to the world as it means to you what else would your lack of sincerity be get or is not caring only cool when everyone else cared that fear of sincerity was born out of the brutal intimate punishment it earned him in his early family life it was punched in deeper when he proposed to his best friend and

was rejected then he reveled in the power his irony granted him for three full seasons until it was punished by his family unit it's further punished by his daughter and his daughter's clone resulting in the first sequence of pure insecurity from aick too ashamed and embarrassed to face his family genius or not nothing meaningful to offer but his bond with Morty is a different matter the the show is called Rick and Morty they are destined to adventure together it is meant to be or is it in season 1 episode 10 an evil Rick is going

across the universe with an evil Morty killing Ricks and kidnapping mortis they're scanning the brains of Ricks for unknown purposes and torturing mortis as an experimental method of cloaking their Bas see mortis are canonically generally so weak willed and anxious and stupid that their brain waves act as a camouflage for Rick's bravado confidence and genius Morty stupid brain make Rick big brain undetectable sure but there's an illusion at the end of episode 10 to a different kind of Morty one that survives long enough and progresses to the point of their own confidence and agency a

cocky Morty can lead to some big problems can be a real bad thing for everybody oh yeah how's that I'll explain when you're older we are teased with what fans coined as evil Morty some looming inevitability the inverse of the premise a Morty that outwits Rick tantalizing a piece of the Past come back to haunt Rick's ever ever present then it's dropped until season 3 episode 7 the ricklantis mixup which is commonly heralded as one of the best if not the best episode of the entire show an epic visceral exploration through a classist unjust vicious

cycle of society on the reconstructed Citadel of Rick's recovering and reimagining itself in the wake of Rick C 137s casual annihilation of everything a nightmarishly realistic expression of a broken Society get the off the car you rickless animal The Twist is am Morty becomes the new president and apparently he has a dark past a mortifying one even my editor added here kill yourself so whoever this Morty is he has apparently kidnapped and tortured alternate versions of himself and even Ricks on mass with ice cold blood and precision apparently inching towards some mysterious goal then we

drop it for 22 Episodes [ __ ] it the only mention of him before the finale of season 5 is a fake sequence where Rick and Morty's potential canonical Adventures are literally extracted out of them by a villain don't you want to see how your story ends they literally use this inconsequential bottle episod bit to exercise themselves of recurring characters and climactic conclusions that could potentially happen deliberately killing the possibility of doing something conventionally satisfying is any of this cannon it could have been I don't smoke weed because I have a psychotic reaction to it

which is what this episode feels like my brain's a little Brokey okey I don't know what's real uh-oh I need medical attention I need someone to accept me Flaws and All I Need a weapon that can kill people that aren't real I need headphones to drown out the voices from my past telling me I don't deserve to be happy I need a brain scan for science that I need to be shot in the head for the greater good I will die in my 50s like my father before me I have limited time to realize my

dreams and my heart's been broken before so I'm as determined and confident as I must be to achieve my ends before death swipes me away forever oh part 5B day three the finale death coming quickly ain't no time to dilly dally my man's Named Sam and my girl's named Sally I met my polyle at an antia rally I shaved clean for the first one you actually see that my stubble has grown in over the past 2 days of filming the first day the energy was really there the second day I had to kind of push

through it third day it's [ __ ] back baby I'm back evil Mor was a compelling promise that needed to be delivered upon he was created open-ended without a grand plan in mind so as to not interrupt the natural creative process we don't decide anything that becomes Canon until until we have to then he was elaborated upon in an iconically exciting way but again what was the [ __ ] it's not sure in the finale of season 5 it was Tiny fine to follow through and they went hard and they went hard in the most

Rick and Morty way possible you know what the central finite curve is they built a wall around Infinity what are you doing about it Jack I'm leaving evil Morty's Grandmaster plan is to leave the show Rick and Morty the central finite curve is a phrase that was introduced back in season 1 as an aside during the introduction of the Citadel of Ricks B the Ricks in the central finite curve you're the malc content presumably as some unchangeable tenant of reality Beyond which Life as we understand it cannot exist some Rick and Morty Comics somewhere ventured

to Define it as universes wherein life can exist but finally in the finale they revealed the central finite curve is a rope of reality selected carefully from the ceaseless variety of the Multiverse tying together every reality where Rick is the ultimate life form picking out every particular reality wherein he invents the interdimensional portal gun and thus achieves a consequence-free godhood with the everpresent ability to change universes within the central finite curve or get a new family member or experience endless variety with the only contingency that he must always be completely unparalleled in power level after

Rick's Revenge genocide Quest against himself and the subsequent truce the central finite curve was designed so that the Ricks could insulate themselves against any further existential threats that might annihilate all Ricks again he's not actually transcendently genius he's just rigged the game so that he's always genius within every Universe he steps through this internal institutionalized Insurance of constant cost-free adventures and utter control of their universe is further doubled down on when the Citadel of Ricks began farming mores for constant use and dis The Citadel became its own Morty Market this is why we're with them

this is why we're alive you'll recognize this fundamental dehumanization of Morty at the hands of Ricks from the real animated adventures of Doc and Marty wait a second [ __ ] I think the real animated adventures of Doc and Marty actually does follow the monomyth oh man my kite's in the tree doc I can't I hate this stupid tree we'll go back in time and we'll make sure that your kite doesn't get stuck in the tree Marty we have a problem the time travel car won't start oh no you want me to yes Marty it's

the only way to fix our time travel car I don't I don't I'm confused I don't Marty trust me here goes nothing it's working here we are in your front lawn 30 years ago it doesn't matter who planted the tree Marty the only way to stop them again trust me Marty all right duck say no more oh oh ouch I'm disappearing it hurts now why don't we go back and fly your kite Marty oh doc this is the most fun cuz now that there's no tree I can fly the kite off all in the yard

I sometimes often wonder who that 1950s man was oh my God Marty you're disappearing oh God doc why he must have been your great great great great great grandfather I don't know what to do Marty wait doc I've got an idea by joke you're right Marty it's working you saved my life no Marty we saved your life follow your intuition and start creating the Eternal story always reveals itself he's an infinite smear of one shitty old man and he's attached to us in initely through his weakness and our forgiveness this is the conceit of the

show Rick killed himself so much that he made a contract with himself that ensured he would always be in an authoritative position everywhere he stepped then they started creating Morty in conditioning them to be his weak willed counterpart the central finite curve is the episodic show Rick and Morty they created it the reason Rick is so resentful of serialization is because it's us peeking behind the contrived Veil that is the episodic nature of his Universe the ultimate villain of the show is not just a Morty that's so battle hardened and sick of Rick's [ __

] that he's advance to the capability of being able to defeat and kill Ricks but he seeks to destroy the show itself he hates the conceit of the little weak guy in the big strong genius guy he doesn't like the pitch of the show he understands that every time you participate in this episodic fun little self-contained Adventure [ __ ] you're just playing into the design of the universe that that was built against your will he becomes a killer and manipulator and loses all empathy for all Ricks and all mores and ceases to give a

[ __ ] about ethical particulars because all particulars are reflections of the universe Ricks created all empathy is playing into the game Ricks created where empathy is systemically punished having sentiments within the central finite curve simply reinforces the reality of the central finite curve which is just a shadow of reality an actual reality your sentiments can outrank Rick but if you live your life within the diarama you will always be a miniature a burst of sincerity in a reality that is destined towards ironic detach M by design a feeble attempt at serialization in an inherently

episodic Universe a mortal trapped by a lowercase G God who is just as human and prone to error as you are but has rigged the game in his favor I'm not responsible for every fued up Rick out there they literally all say that it's part of their system the evil plot is to break the central finite curve evil Morty is this product of a [ __ ] up system he realizes this whole thing is bad it has to burn down he has to break the central finite curve he has to break the toxic relationship between

Rick and Morty that Mor have been manufactured into in order to do this he Blends the bodies of a million Ricks and Morty and mixes the blood with Vats of portal fluid shooting a laser that shatters the fabric of reality prompting from our Morty this apt reaction oh my [ __ ] God yeah holy [ __ ] this is what Rick's afraid of this is the result of someone serializing in the Rick and Morty Universe Morty the idea was to get back to simple Adventures the Citadel runs on Canon our Morty starts like any Morty

pretty dumb pretty weak a camouflage for Rick's brain and a completely disposable partner meant to be used and abused but since our Rick happens to stand by him for Five Seasons arm Morty becomes a [ __ ] badass he travels back to the universe's Rick his ravage to fix the Havoc ridden aftermath as a common chore he disarms neutrino bombs and fly spaceship solo he [ __ ] slices his hand and gets the most creative kill of the series I already got a partner and there's no room for promotions what the did you just do

cut you out of my life our Morty is becoming a strong Earnest powerful force in the Galaxy more similar at this point to evil Morty then that fresh-faced anxious weak willed little apologetic child we met back in season 1 episode 1 as evil Morty reveals Rick's backstory challenges the system rather than any individual stabs a hole through the central finite curve and melts the Citadel into nothingness killing a significant chunk of all Morty and all Ricks our Rick is left genuinely relying on his Morty a massive portion of his godhood destroyed he's been humbled so

many times he appears unable to continue pretending he doesn't need or care about Morty in the episode prior to the finale Rick just to be a dick to Morty because Morty pissed him off tells him he's fired and then teams up with two crows as a way to demean him and show him how replaceable and meaningless he is you're just trying to make me feel worthless I never said you're worthless in fact I've given you a very clear metric of your worth two crows however while he's on this Petty Power Trip he inexplicably learns suddenly

the actual meaning of collaboration and Trust I'm a bad partner because I never made you a true partner the crows made me see that but just because he experien that authentically in one particular capacity it doesn't mean he's actually matured to the point of being able to repair and maintain his relationships instead he uses this new found wholesomeness as a version of escapism from responsibility yet again he gives Morty that [ __ ] from an abuser where they're like I'm sorry I have to abandon you for your good so we're like back back right Rick

and Morty no Morty I think we're done what we had was abusive so I need to leave with the crows and see what more they can teach me I'll always be your grandpa Morty just kind of obsessed with crows now you know as opposed to oh I realized how I was treating you shittily I'm going to treat do not shitty now if you hurt someone's feelings that's how you get accountable you don't remove yourself from the situation you fix yourself be better speaking from experience everyone's capable of mistreating the people they love in their life

everyone's capable of accountability for that and doing the other thing instead as well when Rick's two crows cheat on him adventuring with somebody else he comes crawling back to Morty abandons this new kick of accountability and is like let's just do Rick and Morty again duub I'm back pal that lesson of vulnerability and collaboration with a partner doesn't sink into his relationship with Morty until Morty takes him to task for it Reveals His backstory jumps the shark takes away his mystery and then the apparatus of his manufactured godhood is literally crumbling around him Rick did

you really leave the crows for me or did you come back because they dumped you there you go kid now you're evil Morty too the rers have really rung themselves out on Rick's ironic not giving a [ __ ] it's a little less interesting than it was five seasons ago and our Morty has progressed to the point he's a genuine powerful force to be reckoned with in the Galaxy a real partner the showrunners have advanced their non-stop fun box beyond the original formula the metaanalysis and subsequent destruction of that formula being written as the literal

plot of the first five seasons cuz sometimes fun is episodic but sometimes it's way more fun to tell a compelling story so I don't know what the [ __ ] they're going to do in the future if if evil Morty is the only person to have escaped the central finite curve or if he's collapsed it across the Multiverse but as far as I'm concerned seasons 1 through 5 tell the story of Rick and Morty the show and then that show being destroyed I kind of got into a passionate ad lib tangent at the end there

so I don't know how to transition in the next part but I don't know if I'm known for my clean transitions part six follow your bliss I talk a lot of [ __ ] about objectivity and art and uh I will continue to do so I prefer critical analysis to Common opinion the caveat I would readily add being that if objective analysis with reliable methods and reference points fails you then subjectivity will give you more creative reach something doesn't necessarily have to live up to anyone's individual codified standards of quality in order to be valuable

I just think it's much more valuable to talk about why something works and how it affects us rather than being like I like it it makes me happy intuition analysis subjectivity objectivity how do I how what do I believe let me just say something I [ __ ] believe I take art very seriously and it feels dismissive and reductive to declare it's all subjective no one's in control of quality or excellence and everyone just likes what they like and any value only exists in the eye of the beholder there is craft there are explanations as

to how profound effects are achieved and you as a fan deserve to understand why why you love what you love appreciate its goodness beyond your inarticulable feely wheelies yes the way you receive these Eternal reliable communicable forces will be colored by your individual perspective and experience and it's beautiful everyone's the center of their own Universe blah blah [ __ ] blah but there's more you can dig deeper you should dig deeper art is a reflection of our desire for meaning in this universe maybe you like a review channel to have someone remind you of what

you already know and think or maybe you like being exposed to other people's just subjective experiences it's fine relying exclusively on objective tools of analysis is not a good way to invent something that's never been done before it's not a good way to access your imagination it can make you Cy and elitist wait I can't say that on YouTube ah [ __ ] what am I talking about you don't want your analysis to stifle your intuition you don't want your mortal insecurity to interfere with your participation in godhood you don't want your intelligence to Blind

you to wisdom you don't want your impulse to serialize everything into a string of calculated Beauty to harm your ability to simply enjoy something as Evergreen and intuitive as art your objective tools of analysis are for understanding how your intuition operates at its best there's something to fall back on when you're lost in the woods and you don't know where to go next our job is to walk through the woods I use a compass when I do it so that we don't walk in pointless circles and and end up only exploring part of the woods

I do not want anyone in this room being like we have to adhere to this thing because I do think it's a little oppressive as soon as it becomes Thou shalt it's like it is pointless they're a method to effectively communicate something and purposefully induce any particular sensation or idea in the mind of the audience subjectivity and objectivity are another dialectic to try to accept both extremes of simultaneously taking the Transcendence from each and allowing them to shine in contradiction as an artist and as a person you cannot commit wholeheartedly to an extreme forever you

have to be prepared to accept multiple contradictory truths if you want the most out of life Rick and Morty is a fascinating live study of a creative team navigating these hardcore extremities drifting from one to the other in whatever Direction begets the most Joy sometimes the joy is wildly uncomfortable sometimes sometimes it's a little moment of sincerely impactful writing sometimes it's an orgasmically fanservicey Sci-Fi Action scene sometimes it's a stupid ending to a meaningless episode sometimes it's an incest baby okay listen in season 5 episode 4 unfortunately titled Rick pendant spray Morty [ __ ]

a horse Flesh Light Rick goes to the place that he did it to harvest horse sperm to make a thing and the result is Monster Morty sperm stalking the globe trying to fertilize the largest thing possible I I didn't write it the sperm traveled to the Grand Canyon because I didn't write it why would the sperm go to the Grand Canyon you can't be serious are we in Middle School Morty's sister not knowing that it's Morty's sperm offers one of her eggs to be enlarged to bait the sperm to a location for a final stand

when Morty can't hide from his shame anymore and must confess his fatherhood to these Monsters the stakes immediately Skyrocket to do not let this incest baby happen my sperm it's all mine don't let them reach my sister's egg you'll be making a giant incest baby except for Jerry whose steaks are he just got really good at filling up cups of water for the president and is feeling great fulfillment out of it is this water for everyone yes and I'd love a glass coming up at least do something useful like Jerry right to the top we're

about to make a giant incest baby a well now we're all in our darkest to good for Our Heroes appear to Prevail with the assistance of one particularly loyal sperm that that seems to have save the day until the one ring it it it it beats him no [Applause] sticky [ __ ] the incest baby is created and is promptly launched into space and now he's just up there dear God no you can't be real listen I hate it everyone hates it but I suspect with admiration on principle that the writers hated it too too

in fact I'm basically 100% sure they had this idea and then as soon as it was spoken they knew they they had no choice I will now apply Joseph campell's philosophy of bliss to the incest baby watch me do it with shock and awe and a measure of disappointment Campell was a very spiritual person his investment in Native American mythology then Eastern religion and then universally binding spiritual narratives was not made for story structure or television the Campbell monomyth thing was never a guide for how to write movies or TV shows Campbell didn't like movies

it was a Catholic Boy Scout who thought it was cool that Native American stories had a lot of similarity to the gospel it was more concerned with the meaning of life in the fabric of reality itself if Rick has the prototypical unhealthy relationship with the Eternal then Campell has the best possible relationship with the Eternal uh make that a dialectic or I don't know keep it on theme doesn't matter if it makes sense one of his very faith-based principles that of course you can back up with ancient Sanskrit because he's a [ __ ] [

__ ] is following your bliss follow your bliss follow follow your bliss Bliss where the Deep sense of being in form and then and going where your body and soul want to go uh when you have that feeling then stay with it and don't let anyone throw you off your bliss can be your North Star via your objectivity or your subjectivity your subjectivity and intuition are always available to you all they required to thrive is for you to take the Yoke of perfectionism off your back turn your brain completely off and start creating make something

awful be inspired by ryland's house of cosb and just begin without fear or expectation that is transcendent then if you have no idea what to do if your intuition is not speaking to you if you are dissatisfied with your flimsy forays into inventing the hitherto unimagined turn to the massive Cannon of artistic excellence and craft that lays behind you this is also Transcendent and at all times when trying to pick the best parts of each of these dialectics while leaving the worst of them at Bay use your bliss as your guide these are roads to

travel these are tools to use patterns to imitate when you realize your created in God's image and God created us so you are also destined to create something out of the nothing go where you are needed use what you must to manifest the otherworldly Beauty into our physical reality carefully construct your arrows ah carefully construct your arrow that points at something unspeakable you've always got extremes and a spectrum between how you navigate between them follow that [ __ ] Bliss always follow your bliss find your voice shout it from the rooftops and keep doing it

until the people that are looking for you find you stay put this is what the Rick and Morty writers transparently texturally struggle with between serialization and the episodic they're sitting in a room chasing comedy and meaning and Bliss and they go where they need to go when they have the idea of the incest baby and they can't let go of the discomfort and the incredibly visceral Stakes of the potential of an incest baby this sucks all of the in Universe characters all of the creators of the show and the audience are deeply invested in hating

this concept it's compelling this is creativity that makes you feel something and so they do it they do it passionately then for the next few episodes the characters will not stop bringing it up your kids and their grandpa are asking you to do an activity when did that stop being a parent sest dream I guess around the time our family created a giant incest baby oh my God we made a giant incest baby you might be a clone I exist because you guys failed to abort me we get the family we get not the one

we want as you guys recall and as a lot of people keep bringing up Morty and I did accidentally create a giant incest baby until a few episodes later they satisfy this horrible shitty promise and leave it in the past by revealing summer has a secret CIA relationship with her incest child and she names him Naruto and he saves him from certain destruction I was supposed to help discipline him so they could turn him into the Ultimate Weapon instead I trained him to love [ __ ] put that down Naruto [ __ ] it Naruto

Smith giant incest space baby extraordinaire I'm in pain his Wikipedia page says it is unknown how he is able to breathe in space un statement perhaps Rick and Morty is going to last for a long time and these guys are going to keep trying to create Evergreen endlessly rewatchable TV while honoring character development and their epic scope the first five seasons made the concept of the show Rick and Morty existing inexplicably the overarching story the characters within the show Rick and Morty are wrestling with and the climax thus far was the show Breaking from its

core characterization and Central conceit prospectively sustaining their endless episodic Fun by pushing the characters into a new endless space and you know what other show f holds its episodic structure into the DNA of the story miraculous Tales of ladybug and Cat Noir in the daytime I'm Marinette for you simultaneously unfortunate and fortunate folks who are not familiar you're fortunate because you get to watch it now I'm so excited for you Marinette dupen Chang lives a double life as the superhero ladybug keeping her identity secret saving the City of Paris from villains every week ladybug's partner

is Kat Noir a wise crack and goofball working with her to protect the city and also flirting with her with unreciprocated romantic affection but what Marinette doesn't know is Kat noir's secret identity is Adrien agress the boy of her dreams that goes to her high school it's tragic it's frustrating they're in love with each other but they don't know it and people complain about this episodic conceit the fact that they won't change this or allow them to fall in love with each other [ __ ] these two are not mature enough to love each other

they're in childish love with idealized versions of the other they need to fall in love with the version that they're not looking for taking a shortcut by revealing their identities to each other prematurely would literally end the world due to their Indulgence in their personal teenage fantasies the show teaches us this again and again we literally see the world end when it occurs and we have to use time travel mechanics and other reality bending strategies to reset ourselves back to our episodic structure that lack of progress towards relationship with each other is the point of

the show these two kids have a million lessons to learn before they're mature enough to discover they are in the daily presence of their soulmates yes Marinette is deeply flawed yes she makes mistakes she can be selfish and immoral because she's a kid being perfect is not what makes your canonically on Santa's list as the best girl in the world unbelievable ladybug you are the best behaved kid in the whole world her constant willingness to course correct is marinette's quami Tiki is a part of Marinette a representation of the incredible responsibility that this kid has

been called into unfairly Tiki is there to be the constant voice of reason and morality pulling her away from her selfishness into the impossibly beautiful hero that she's destined to become and yes it's unfair it's too much responsibility to put on the shoulders of a child but the fact that she can't do it alone is what will eventually rebuild the miraculous Guardians in a new generation one by one her most trusted friends will be allowed in on the secrets to pick up the slack Marinette is destined to be a leader not because she's perfect but

because she can take criticism because she respects friendship and Community Trust above all she's wise enough to realize she's imperfect change and rely on others to keep her accountable and at the end of this process she's going to fall in love with cat Noir and Adrien is going to fall in love with Marinette and they'll finally be ready to know each other's identities that will be the union of ladybug's power of creation and restoration alongside with the opposing power of Kat noir's destruction and Annihilation they will unite as a force to defend Humanity forever we

are progressing towards this conclusion episodically and incrementally quote me on it in fact I just thought up of another dialectic between two unstoppably powerful protagonists with endlessly unfolding Powers but completely different ethical systems part seven Rick Sanchez and Marinette dupen Chang I think I'm aact with the world and I'm a have it I'm so [ __ ] dramatic I got all my bones up in the attic and I dance them all around like a Marette Morty what are you watching is this a review channel oh um I don't know Rick I'm just really liking the

new Hawkeye show I wanted to see what other people thought oh Morty you think this guy is interesting you think this is valuable a bunch of people no more qualified than you just telling you their opinion like your mom on the way out of the movie theater you think their feelings matter oh jeez maybe I care what people think it kind of rounds out my opinions you know Morty if you like the show watch the show don't seek out other amateurs to regurgitate opinions back to you to dilute your personal interpretive and analytical prowess but

Rick I really like this guy I I think he's I don't know he's relatable he's kind of funny being funny doesn't mean you're smart don't conflate superficial passive engagement with actual value well isn't it kind of valuable if it makes me happy not if you're a bottom of the bar piece of bacteria mindlessly seeking crumbs of comfort what you you you like the hawk person show you like the art does this feel like art to you does the white man with the green screen background and cash phrases make you feel like like you're living a

life of significance you're drunk go to my garage you piece of [ __ ] Morty look at this look look at this I made a video about inside that was longer than inside and barely about inside do you think you could do that Morty do you think anyone could do that except for me well I think you make good videos but I just don't get why you're so mean about what other people do you know you'd be less stressed about money if you just took a sponsor or two right you think I would for a

second reduce the quality what I produce on behalf of a corporation that doesn't give a [ __ ] about what I make or my audience for that matter you think I'd set that precedent the second you take corporations money you're beholden to them you have to take notes Morty do do I look like I take notes well I guess not but that's just how people make money well I'm not here to make money Morty I want power I want resources I want to defy corporate profit motive my ambitions don't Plateau at bending over and letting

a studio gently [ __ ] me while I thank them for letting me try to create within the parameters what does this have to do with sponsorships are you even talking about YouTube anymore whoa big money loves us throwing up in each other's mouths they don't want us to know it's possible to build their own creative Industries they don't want us to be independent they don't want us to develop a relationship with God through our myths and stories is not profitable enough for these lizards look I don't know what you're talking about anymore I like

Marvel I like YouTubers sue me oh sure then your flimsy convictions would seem worthy of debating by Merit of my participation you're not even qualified to disagree with me we're not even having the same conversation your opinions are like the sneezes of a fly I'm constructing a better world for flies you know why YouTube shows you your analytics so you know what people like so you can make better content you really believe that Morty they they show you data that represents how much money you make them those numbers represent how profitable your channel is to

their automated bottom line they don't care how well your career is doing they just want you to feel like you're not doing enough so you slave away as a loyal employee to aad of money that it doesn't even know you exist Morty so YouTube is bad YouTube's a system Morty it's it's land ownership they own the market in which we trade that just sounds like nonproductive anti- capitalist lip service oh I'm a mass in capital baby I'm making my own money I'm ensuring the longevity of my career I'm establishing a foundational authenticity that's magnetic to

the public I'm going to have these Studios begging at my feet like dogs I'm only making video essayes to pay my rent and build my audience then I'm going to leverage that momentum and capital into doing something I actually give a [ __ ] about oh [ __ ] you don't care about YouTube you spend all day on your stupid videos uh yeah cuz I'm not a [ __ ] hack well maybe stop acting like you're so far above it don't tell me what to do I'm not telling you what to do you're telling me

what to do I'm telling you the truth Morty shut up Rick you don't know what's best for me you never ask what I think you always say you don't like Jordan Peterson you sound just like him take that back well it's true he talks about myths and meaning and stuff I've seen his stuff on YouTube you say the same things as him just less implicitly transphobic that's because of Joseph Campell Jordan Peterson Campell Peterson when you are a child when you are young and uh young person you are a c a camel