Rick & Morty: A Tale Of Co-optation And Disappointment
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Rick & Morty: A Tale Of Co-optation And Disappointment

Can Rick & Morty Deliver On Oversized Promises?

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Rick & Morty: A Tale Of Co-optation And Disappointment
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History hasn't been kind to teases. At a certain point, there is only so much anticipation one can build before their project is bound to be a failure. Look at the end of the famous television series "Lost" (2004-2010). Look at "The Hangover 2". Look at pretty much any number two (or more) of a film. Hell, even this past week there was the Phelps vs. Shark mayhem. Flashpoint prediction: You can add Mayweather Vs. McGregor to this list now. A touch of hype-building is good, but it's important to recognize how easy it is to go overboard. The creators of the up-and-coming Rick and Morty (Dan Harmon and Juston Roiland) would have done well to heed this advice.

First, some facts about the show. Rick and Morty, for those who are unaware, is a cartoon television show following Rick, a mad scientist who drags his grandson, Morty, on crazy sci-fi adventures. The second episode of the third season premiered on July 30th, 2017 after a four month break since the first episode of the season, which premiered April 1st, 2017. The April 1st premier, mind you, was the first episode to premier since October 4th of 2015. That means there was nearly a two year gap in between the featuring of new episodes. In that time, Rick and Morty has taken off. The time off served to allow a lot of new fans to watch the show and begin to follow it. In fact, in the last two years, the show's aesthetic has gone from a niche market to a mainstream mutation of itself. In spite of the fact that many of the shows undertones are clearly a refutation of capitalism and its tendency to hyper-commodify, the creators have now gone precisely that direction.

Fans of the show may have heard of the Rickmobile: a giant van filled with merchandise with Rick's face plastered across it. The Rickmobile is more than halfway through with its North American tour, and it even recently stopped by my home city of Boise. I'm not proud to say that I went to the event, but you better believe I'm thrilled that I didn't buy anything. The event itself was a horror scene which would surely have tens of millions of the infinite Rick and Morties rolling in their simulated graves. As far as the eye could see there were people lined up with fists full of cash ready to consume overpriced Rick and Morty memorabilia. It's not as if no one on the Rick and Morty production squad had thought of this, in fact, I managed to capture the photo below by leaning into the bus. Mind you, people typically weren't allowed in the bus so most of the people who bought from the store couldn't have seen the following image.

Perhaps there are those who would argue that Harmon and Roiland deserve to make a buck, but isn't that precisely the logic the show would seek to critique in the first place? At the end of the day, one can't help but taste disingenuity in the mouth of the Rickmobile.

Let's not forget the famous Szechuan sauce incident. After the first episode of the third season of Rick and Morty featured a memory of Rick eating McDonald's 1998 promotional nugget sauce, an actual petition was started to bring back the sauce. The petition has already gathered more than 40,000 signatures and social media has been explosive this week celebrating McDonald's sending the sauce to Harmon and Roiland. Fans all over the world, people with legitimate political potential, people who could be addressing any number of mounting global concerns, all found themselves gathered around one central point: A nugget sauce whose very essence makes up the epitome of capitalism.

Where does that leave Rick and Morty, then? It is difficult to imagine that the show will be able to deliver on such major expectations. It is even more difficult to imagine this if the creators have lost sight of what makes the show so incredible in the first place. Not to mention the show has already had more than 15 different writers amongst its two seasons. I want to be wrong. I want so badly to be wrong. But if there are really 9 more seasons, Morty, then the wheels of the Rickmobile are under a hell of a lot of pressure to keep turning and to keep turning well.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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