Neil Rush Communications Media Technology Blog: May 2016

May 10, 2016

Hello, blog readers, it's Neil again. This week's assignment is to write about our favorite TV show or web show and three reasons why we like it. I've talked about most of my favorite TV shows many times before here, but that's the assignment, so here I go again. I list it as my eighth because my reasons for liking shows 1-7 aren't likely to take up a blog post. Because Rick and Morty is an Adult Swim show, a few heavy and mature thematic topics will be brought up, so reader discretion is somewhat advised. And with that, I present the three reasons why Rick and Morty is the eighth best television program in the gigaverse (the gigaverse is the term I've created for a theoretical universe bubble containing all of the universes. It works like this- Teenyverse<Miniverse<Microverse<Universe<Multiverse<Megaverse<Maxiverse<Gigaverse.)
1.) It's funny. Created by Justin Roiland (an animator-voice actor-comedian-writer-producer-director known for creating the 2005 animated short House of Cosbys and for voicing Oscar on the Disney Channel animated series Fish Hooks, Blendin Blandin on Disney XD's Gravity Falls, and the Earl of Lemongrab and all other "Lemon" characters on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time) and Dan Harmon (creator of the NBC sitcom Community and a writer on the first season of The Sarah Silverman Program) for Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's late-night block meant for ages 18-49, Rick and Morty is an animated science-fiction-fantasy-supernatural-cosmic-horror-action-adventure-black-comedy-drama series based on a series of short films made by Roiland in 2006 called The Adventures of Doc and Mharti, a parody of the Back to the Future films. Having grown tired of being an associate producer of reality television, Roiland submitted the shorts to Channel 101, an animated short film festival ran by Harmon and some of his friends. Because Roiland was hit with a lawsuit from Universal for trying to use the names of Doctor Emmett Brown and Marty McFly in a more tasteful parody, he called Doc Brown just "Doc", changed the spelling of Marty's name, and making the shorts disturbing and graphic out of spite for Universal. Despite the confused reaction of much of the audience, Harmon found promise in Roiland and hoped to work with him more in the future. In 2012, Harmon was fired from his own show, Community, due to public feuds with NBC executives and one of the show's stars, Chevy Chase. Adult Swim saw this as an opportunity to ask him to make a show for them. Initially, Harmon was hesitant, unfamiliar with the creative process of animation and finding Adult Swim not suited for his style of storytelling. He preferred writing stories that blended humor that parodied conventions, cliches, and tropes of nearly every genre and subgenre of entertainment with character development and story depth. Up until around the time Adult Swim probed Harmon, with a few exceptions (Moral Orel, The Venture Bros., The Boondocks, and some episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken), most of Adult Swim's original programming was centered around off-color and surreal humor with not much more under the surface than that, aside from something you could watch while under the influence of mind-altering substances. Most of their other shows were either syndicated reruns of Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, King of the Hill, and Bob's Burgers or imported anime on the Toonami block. Keith Crawford and Mike Lazzo, the two men who run Adult Swim and Williams Street, clearly were interested in producing a prime-time show for a wider audience than most of their other original programming and were fans of Community, taking pity on Harmon after he was fired from his own show that was now being ran by people that didn't understand the characters like he did and after pilots for original sitcoms that CBS and Fox wanted him to write for them were not picked up (because Harmon straight-up didn't care about those shows like he did Community and would eventually come to care about Rick and Morty and he was busy taking his podcast, Harmontown, on tour across America and playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends on the podcast. The CBS and Fox shows didn't even have clear premises, aside from they had Dan Harmon's name on them and they were supposed to be distributed by CBS Television Distribution and Twentieth Century Fox Television, respectively). To get help with making a show for Adult Swim, Harmon contacted Roiland, who had tried to get a show that was a heavily sanitized reimagining of his Doc and Mharti shorts approved as a pilot for Fox's Sunday night animated block. Roiland didn't like how the only way he could get it approved for Fox would be if he removed the hard science fiction elements present and just made it about a grandpa being a bad influence on his teenage grandson while a single mom tries to keep it all together. Fox apparently was only OK with unrealistic occurrences in their prime-time cartoons if they serviced one-off gags, as they often do in Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, and the work of Seth MacFarlane, and feared that it would alienate mainstream audiences if the show was centered around such bizarre things, blaming that for Futurama's initial cancellation (completely unaware of the fact that they were constantly putting it on at bad times). Roiland believed that if you go into animation, you deserve the right to make your show as crazy and ridiculous as you can imagine, and after receiving the call from Harmon, they got together and wrote a pilot, doing things such as renaming the characters Doc and Mharti to Rick and Morty, making Rick Morty's grandfather to better justify a connection between the two of them than the inexplicable connection between Doc Brown and Marty in Back to the Future, and building a family around the two characters to create some emotional grounding. Adult Swim approved the pilot along with more scripts. The show became something like this- Rick Sanchez (voiced by Justin Roiland) is an eighty-year-old, alcoholic, mentally ill, and narcissistic-on-the-outside-self-loathing-on-the-inside scientist who has been back in his family's life for some time now after spending the past twenty years traveling through space and to other dimensions engaging in pseudoscience, criminal activities, and hedonism. He brings his fourteen-year-old grandson Morty Smith (also voiced by Roiland) on many of his adventures partially because of a rule affecting all other versions of Rick and Morty across the multiverse that the presence of a Morty cloaks Rick's DNA from his enemies and partially because Morty is pretty weak-willed (at least when the show begins) and will just let Rick take him wherever and constantly endanger him. Morty is an awkward and nervous teenage boy with no real friends aside from those in his family and, to an extent, his high school crush Jessica (voiced by Kari Walgren). Initially, Jessica just thinks that Morty is a sweet and cute boy, but later on, she shows signals that she may like Morty back romantically. Morty's mom and Rick's daughter, Beth Smith (nee Sanchez) (voiced by Sarah Chalke) is a horse-heart surgeon that, on the surface, seems like your typical stressed-out wife and mother who greatly admires her father as many daughters do. However, she is later revealed to be a pretty dark deconstruction of this type of character. She has an unrealistic ideal of human superiority, partially stemming from shame for only being a B-student in medical school and having to "settle" for becoming a veterinary equine heart surgeon rather than a highly-respected human-heart surgeon. This is why she allows her father to put her son in dangerous situations- because while she knows very deep down that Rick isn't a very good person, she prefers him over her mother because he was more "remarkable" than her mother, even if in Rick's case, "remarkable" means "sociopath that holds his entire species in contempt simply because they aren't all like him". Beth also believes that if Rick weren't around, Morty would turn out just like her husband, Jerry Smith (voiced by Chris Parnell), whom she holds in contempt for being something of a beta-male. Jerry is confusing. Depending on the episode and writer, he's either a sympathetic Charlie Brown type that you want to see things go better for despite nothing ever going his way or an unlikeable weasel of a man who lets his insecurities make him do extremely selfish, cowardly, or ignorant things. In some episodes, he's both of these things. I would probably like him more if he wasn't voiced by Chris Parnell. Or if Chris Parnell didn't voice the Progressive Box in commercials for the aforementioned car insurance company. Or both. Jerry and Beth only stay together because of a daughter they had out of wedlock when Beth was seventeen. This daughter is named Summer Smith (voiced by Spencer Grammer, Kelsey Grammer's oldest daughter). Summer is Morty's seventeen-year-old older sister that, in the first few episodes, is your typical rude teenager with an attitude of wanting to be anywhere other than wherever she currently is, valuing her phone above almost all else, and having an unhealthy obsession with high school popularity. Later on, she joins Rick and/or Morty on adventures and is more willing to stand up to Rick when she doesn't agree with what he says and does and acts more competent than Morty, becoming a bonafide action heroine. Most people will come for the humor, dark and gross as it often is. My selected funny moments are these- S1E06 "Rick Potion #9"- After Morty asks Rick to make him a love potion to get Jessica to fall in love with him at the annual Flu Season Dance, it actually works. Unfortunately, Jessica has a mild case of the flu, causing her to spread the effects of the love potion until everyone at school (and I mean EVERYONE, aside from biological relatives) to fall in love with Morty, and later everyone on Earth falls in love with Morty. S1E09 "Something Ricked This Way Comes"- After spending the episode in a conflict with a human-form version of the Devil named Mr. Needful (voiced by Alfred Molina), Rick and Summer grow buff bodies for themselves and beat Mr. Needful senseless as he tries to give an Apple-style presentation for his Facebook-parody company. Rick and Summer then go beat up a few more easy-target bullies, set to "X Gon Give It To Ya" by rapper DMX. S2E07 "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez"- Rick makes a teenage clone of himself and sends his consciousness into it so that he can feel youthful. The old Rick's personality, however, is trapped in the younger clone, whose adolescent personality seems to want to take Rick over permanently, and the only way the real Rick can communicate his desire to be free is through various things resembling teen angst, such as singing a song, creating a drawing, and doing a dance about it. "Tiny Rick" has become the most popular "kid" in school, so all of the kids that follow Tiny Rick think he's just expressing himself and can't possibly know what he really means. This leads him to make a song-and-dance routine at the next school dance. Tiny Rick's song goes like this- "Let me out! Let me out! This is not a dance! I'm beggin' for help! I'm screamin' for help! Please come let me out! I'm dying in a vat in the garage!" And nearly the entire rest of the school gets in on singing and dancing to this with Tiny Rick. These are just a few of the laugh-out-loud hilarious moments of the show.
2.) It's an emotional roller coaster. Other shows on Adult Swim have tried to add more emotional pathos to their stories in the past with varied results. Moral Orel began as an off-color parody of shows like Davey and Goliath and Leave it to Beaver before eventually becoming a thoughtful mediation on the positives and negatives of religious faith. The Venture Bros. began as a parody of Jonny Quest before becoming a harsh analysis of masculine failure. The Boondocks is probably the most cynical, blunt, and unforgiving show from the African-American perspective ever put on television, equally hard on people of color that promote a culture of a lack of self-respect as it is on Caucasians that continue to keep the lower class down. Rick and Morty, however, tried going for a more universal sad theme. The five main characters are deconstructions of common sitcom archetypes- Rick of the wacky grandpa, Morty of the socially awkward teenage son, Jerry of the bumbling sitcom dad, Summer of the bratty teenage daughter, and Beth of the stressed-out mom. They show the common traits of these archetypes coming from a high level of selfishness and narcissism on the outside and self-loathing on the inside- knowing you're doing something bad yet continuing to do it because it's what you're good at. The family continues to stay together despite knowing that they are not good for each other because of general willful ignorance and knowing that their lives wouldn't be much better even if things were different. In S1E08 "Rixty Minutes", Jerry, Beth, and Summer look at the lives of other versions of themselves on a pair of interdimensional goggles and learn that Jerry and Beth are more successful in the universes in which they never married and never had Summer, with Jerry as a world-famous actor, screenwriter, and director and Beth as the human-heart surgeon she always wanted to be. Furious and distraught that the very fact that she's alive is why her parents are unhappy, Summer prepares to run away to New Mexico and "do something with turquoise". Morty manages to stop her by explaining a lesson he learned from his adventures with Rick- "Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's going to die. Come watch TV?" This is supposed to mean that you shouldn't dwell on what might have been and abandon your family because of uncertainty of your own existence. Things aren't going to be perfect no matter what happens. Nearly everything that happens to anyone is a chance encounter, so no other universe matters other than the one you live in. Jerry and Beth learn this shortly afterwards after seeing the Jerry of one of the universes he was more successful in have a creator meltdown and have a slow-moving chase with the police on a moped while his head is partially shaved and drives all the way to Beth's house and admit that he wishes he married her instead of becoming an actor/screenwriter/director. Upon seeing this happen to their alternate selves, the Jerry and Beth of the main universe decide that they can stay together another day if it means preventing anything like that from happening. The show also looks at other existential concepts, such as the possibility of Rick's pursuit of science being why he is so bad with people, the idea of humans not being all that important in the grand scheme of the universe and that we only think of ourselves as such because, well, we ARE humans (this is underscored by the presence of multiple alien races in the various dimensions and on the various planets in the show), and whether or not a relationship not being with a real person makes it any less valuable, as shown when alien parasites implant memories of themselves as various cartoonish longtime family friends in the heads of the Sanchez-Smiths and how the relationships with the mental creations of the parasites the family have are more satisfying than their relationships with each other. The show looks at social issues such as whether or not being a victim of misogyny can justify misandry (spoiler alert, it doesn't), denial of facts out of an obsessive desire to be right, double standards of sexual assault in situations when it is female-on-male, male-on-male, or female-on-female rather than male-on-female, relative morality and when it is and isn't acceptable to get involved in a conflict you have no personal stake in, the ethics of subjugation as a means of preventing conflict, what makes something a religion versus a mere passion, how to truly define "slavery" and the twisted ways people try to justify it, if communication through the filter of another's comfort keeps people safer, more mentally secure, and from remembering trauma or if it just reinforces and justifies ignorance of the realities of the world and keeps censorship alive, and how much mental and physical abuse one can take before snapping and becoming the very thing they hate the most. This last one was most prominent in S2E09 "Look Who's Purging Now", in a loose parody of the concept of the love-them-hate-them-or-love-to-hate-them social science fiction action horror thriller films in The Purge series. After Rick and Morty get stranded on a "purge planet" on the night of its purge, referred to as "the Festival" by its residents, the one night a year they let out their worst inhibitions by trying to kill one another, they hide out in a lighthouse to wait for power suits to be sent by Summer. The alien cat-man who runs the lighthouse will only let them do that if Morty listens to a draft of a screenplay he wrote. Morty explains that he doesn't like it, thinking that having the second act take place three weeks before the first and third act is not good storytelling. The cat-man, being really obnoxious and unable to take constructive criticism, attempts to force Morty and Rick out of his lighthouse just as the power suits are coming, and, fed up with the cat-man's attitude, Morty shoves him down the lighthouse steps and inadvertently snaps his neck. Morty then takes his power suit and goes on a rampage on the rest of the planet's population, even forcing people out of hiding and attacking people that are already dead, forcing Rick to knock Morty out. Once Morty wakes up and he and Rick are flying off the planet with a new ship they found, Rick lies to Morty to spare him guilt and says that he ate candy bars with a chemical called "Purginol" in them that raises the aggression levels of anyone that eats them to unnatural heights and that's what made him completely lose it, though it is immediately revealed on the candy bar wrappers that they read "Now 100% Purginol Free!", proving that Morty killed those people because of his own pent-up rage at the universe that is extremely unfair to him. This is expected to come back into play in Season 3 this fall, and Morty will be faced with the idea that hanging out with Rick is causing him to lose his moral compass. One of my other favorite dramatic aspects of the show is the possibility that it may be the most realistic take on Asperger's Syndrome in fictional media that I'm inclined to watch. Dan Harmon received praise for "accidentally" making a positive role model for those with Asperger's Syndrome in the form of the character Abed, played by Danny Pudi, on his previous show Community. Initially unfamiliar with the disorder, he looked it up and began to notice traits of Asperger's within himself. He tried not to take them with a whole lot more than a grain of salt, because, as he has said, "if you find a lump on your neck, think it's cancer, and research it on the internet, you're going to find that it's cancer, whether or not it actually is cancer." From there, Harmon began to make the central theme of Community that no one wants to be alone forever, even if they are loners that connect better to fictional people than real ones, and that the relationships we form with our family and friends are what make life worth living. I'm pretty sure that Dan has Asperger's, as it would explain why he's so difficult for many people to work with, his outlandish and self-destructive personality, and the nature of most of the fights he has had with Erin McGathy, his girlfriend from an unknown time in the past to October 2014, when they became engaged and married, and a year later, when they divorced on mutual terms. As revealed in the documentary Harmontown, a documentary about Dan at his best and worst while taking a podcast on tour, McGathy has said a few times the expression "it's not what you said, it's what you did", meaning that it's never the specific things he says that are hurtful, but the intention behind them- Dan feels a need to "win" nearly every conflict he comes into, even with his loved ones, and is reminded of his mother in many of his fights with Erin, whom he had something of a rocky relationship with. In the documentary, he admits this self-loathing aspect of himself while on the verge of tears, ironically while talking about how, in the heat of those moments he's in conflict, he likes knowing that he made his "opponent" cry, and then later wish he were dead for even having that kind of thought and believing that those like Erin deserve better. Dan says that he is the villain of his own story in that regard, and says that his friend and dungeon master for the D&D tournament of his podcast tour, Spencer Crittenden, is the hero, because despite his often introverted nature, Spencer is kind, optimistic, and everything Dan wishes he could be. Anyway, Asperger's in Rick and Morty. It is stated in the pilot that Morty has a learning disability and that Rick has multiple mental illnesses. Morty could easily have Asperger's because of his social awkwardness, introversion, and (initial) optimism. Rick may be a look at the darker traits of Asperger's, the kinds mentioned by Dan earlier- ignoring social norms due to not seeing a practical purpose for them, giving off an attitude of believing he is genuinely better than everyone else in his life, and presenting an attitude of self-hatred just under the surface for knowing that it's in his nature to turn away those he loves. If we're grasping at straws, then any other member of the immediate Sanchez-Smith family could be interpreted as having Asperger's as well. Jerry, Beth, and even Summer all come off as potential candidates primarily because of their respective selfish motivations combined with insecurities and mistrust. If this was the intention of Justin and Dan, then I think that's really good, because I think it's important to show people with Asperger's not merely as awkward or innocently insensitive kids, teens, and young adults that need guidance (Parenthood, Adam, The Bridge), people who value pop culture to a hyper-focused level at the cost of social skills (Community, The Big Bang Theory), pathological narcissists (Silicon Valley), or, probably the worst one, something people only claim to have so that they don't need to abide by conventional manners (Glee, and this is probably one of the main reasons why Dan Harmon hates the show- taking pride in saying that Asperger's is something fake that doesn't deserve sympathy while pretending to be progressive on nearly every other issue known for affecting teenagers in the late 2000s-early-2010s). Sometimes, the insensitivity of people with Asperger's isn't so innocent. And yet this doesn't mean that they are bad people. Everyone is just trying to work hard to better themselves, and it gets easier the more you focus on doing it. OK, back to actual R&M talk. The show has plenty of existential horror stemming from its use of the multiverse as a plot element. There's a near-infinite amount of other versions of you in an infinite amount of other universes. Plenty of them have gone on to become more successful and noteworthy than the you of this universe may ever be, while plenty other versions of you died long before you ever got to wherever you are now, if they were even born at all. No wonder Rick is insane. He's seen himself die several times and doesn't know why he hasn't died yet if so many other Ricks have. I find the three most nightmare-fuel-inducing moments of the show to be these- Almost the entirety of S1E06 "Rick Potion #9" after the love potion goes global. Rick bluntly explains that Morty trying to make Jessica fall in love with him through use of a love potion is essentially the same thing as giving her roofies. Rick tries to use praying mantis DNA to cure humanity of its psychotic attraction to Morty, but that just makes everyone part mantis and want to eat Morty now as well. Rick uses an assortment of DNA from various other animals as the base for a new cure, and while it rids everyone of their attraction to Morty, it turns them all into hideous monstrosities referred to as "Cronenbergs", a reference to David Cronenberg's body-horror films of the 1980s. With no way to reverse the situation, Rick finds a universe in which he and Morty did successfully find a cure and then conveniently died shortly afterwards and decide to take the place of the dead Rick and Morty of that universe. As "Look On Down From The Bridge" by Mazzy Star plays in the background, Morty walks into his "new" house past Jerry and Beth arguing for the umpteenth time, made more sad by the fact that the Jerry and Beth finally did resolve their marriage in the now-abandoned universe thanks to the apocalypse bringing them together, with a thousand-yard-stare on his face. S1E11 "Ricksy Business"- While Rick, Morty, and Summer are throwing an inter-dimensional high school party back home, Jerry and Beth are trying to have a Titanic-themed getaway. Beth just wants to stay in her cabin while Jerry does the things referencing the Titanic film with someone else, though that someone else, Lucy, a maid for the attraction, turns out to be a psychopath who is tired of cleaning up after everyone else that uses the attraction and forces Jerry to do all of the romantic Jack-and-Rose things with her while holding him at gunpoint. At least Beth cares about Jerry just enough to save him from that. S2E05 "Get Schwifty"- The planet is invaded by giant head creatures called Cromulons that create apocalyptic events, teleport Earth to their galaxy, and force them into an intergalactic singing competition in which the losers have their planets blown up. It's the general ominous feel of the Cromulons' presence that makes this one of the creepier episodes. As mentioned before, the show has plenty of tear-jerker moments for a show branded as a "comedy". The biggest ones are probably these- S1E05 "Meeseeks and Destroy", when Morty is crying into Rick's arms shortly after being assaulted by the way-too-creepy Mr. Jellybean (voiced by Tom Kenny, the same guy that voices SpongeBob, for the love of Pete!) in the bathroom of a tavern in another dimension on an adventure Morty was supposed to be leading for once rather than Rick. The endings of S1E06 "Rick Potion #9" and S1E08 "Rixty Minutes", as mentioned before, are particularly emotional. There's also the end of S2E02 "Mortynight Run", when Morty is forced to kill a gas cloud he made friends with after trying to save it from an assassin, only to learn that it intended to wipe out all carbon-based life in the universe. It's a reminder of how many bad things can happen even when one has the best of intentions in trying to save someone from an assassination. Another one is the end of S2E03, which has a name that probably shouldn't be printed here, even with the discussion of all of the other things this blog post has mentioned. Rick reunites with an old flame, a pangendered hive mind referred to as Unity (its central body being voiced by Christina Hendricks) (it should probably be quickly mentioned that Rick is pansexual and capable of attraction to nearly anyone and anything, which is why he can have a relationship with an entity that takes over the minds of both the males and females of an alien species, and Unity uses "it" pronouns), though after a fun day with Unity and many of the aliens it has assimilated, Unity leaves Rick and explains why in a series of notes- that as fun as Rick is, he is an extremely dangerous bad influence on Unity and, in a way, is better at what Unity does than Unity itself, being taking you out of your body and making you forget who you are. When Rick gets home, Rick is so depressed that he accepts Beth's wishes to not hold any more alien prisoners in the garage without a fight, as she and Jerry spent the afternoon locked in the basement lab of the garage arguing over whether the alien being held there was a prisoner or someone Rick was trying to help. He tries to act as if he didn't agree with Unity enslaving people and that is why he left her to hide just how tormented by what happened he is. Set to the song "Do You Feel It?" by Chaos Chaos, Rick sets up a laser, brings an organism to life only to kill it under the laser, and then puts his head in under the laser only to pass out and for his head to fall out of the laser's range right before it can go off. He spends the next few days unconscious in the garage. Ouch. The end of S2E07 "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" is actually pretty sad as well. Morty and Summer fight Tiny Rick to save the real Rick's personality from him. Morty holds Tiny Rick down, and Summer puts earbuds in Tiny Rick's ears and plays a sad song about drowning your sorrows in alcohol on her phone's music player. This brings back the old Rick and makes Rick decide to cancel his immortality project... by cutting up all of the other younger clones of himself with an axe. However, S2E10 "The Wedding Squanchers" takes the cake for the saddest episode of Rick and Morty, if not the saddest episode of any TV show made in 2015. The Sanchez-Smiths are invited to the wedding, or "Melding" of Rick's old alien friend and fan favorite character Bird Person (the only major recurring character to be voiced by Dan Harmon) and Summer's friend Tammy Guterman (voiced by Cassie Steele), who Bird Person picked up at the party in S1E11 "Ricksy Business". However, Tammy reveals herself to be a deep cover agent for the Galactic Federation, a police organization that Rick and his friends have been enemies of for years, and murders Bird Person in cold blood. The Sanchez-Smiths barely escape with their lives on one of the catering vans and are forced to find a new planet to live on, as the Galactic Federation wants to find and interrogate them. They settle on a small planetoid with a log cabin on it. Rick goes exploring and finds the planet's core, which is directly under the house. He overhears the rest of the family talking about the situation. Jerry wants to turn Rick over, but the rest of the family angrily refuse, saying that in spite of their problems with Rick, he's still part of the family. Jerry, dumbfounded by this, asks if they're seriously going to sacrifice the rest of their future for someone who only values others as far as they can help him with whatever thing he's become interested in doing this current hour. Beth explodes in tears at this point and says that it's because she doesn't want her dad to leave her again. Rick, feeling guilty and reminded of how much he hates himself, tells Morty, as he plays with a frisbee by himself (simply by throwing it, turning around, and catching it as it comes back on the other side of the planet), that he's going to go get some ice cream. Morty can tell that Rick actually intends on leaving, and tries to tell Rick that he won't forgive him for breaking Beth's heart again, barely concealing Morty's feelings that he needs Rick as well. It doesn't stop Rick, and as the song "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails plays, Rick flies away in the van the family stole, contacts the Galactic Federation, and announces himself as Jerry Smith, saying that the wanted criminal Rick Sanchez kidnapped him and his family, left them on a dwarf planet, and went to the Flim-Flom Tavern in the Gloppydrop system. "Jerry" also asks that the family be allowed to have a normal life and not be bothered by the Federation ever again after this, which they agree to, as they say they only want Sanchez. Rick looks at a picture of himself with his friends Bird Person and Squanchy in better times while having one last drink at said tavern and walks outside the bar with his hands up as it is surrounded by Federation police. The rest of the family is retrieved by the Galactic Federation and is returned to Earth, which has been turned into an alien tourist destination in the hype going around the galaxy surrounding a human terrorist being at large in the Milky Way. Jerry is given employment by the Federation in an unspecified position and while Jerry is overjoyed to be safe home on Earth and have a stable job after spending all of Season 2 unemployed, Morty, Beth, and Summer are all ill at ease from the trauma of what happened to them and from the uncertainty of whether or not Rick abandoned them because of his selfishness and cowardice or if he had another reason for leaving. When Rick gets to the space prison and is strapped to a wall of criminals, he is asked the obligatory "what're you in for", and he, with an apathetic and self-loathing face, says "Everything." Dare we try to find something happier in the show?
3.) Despite its cynical musings, it knows how to be uplifting. Yes, the show is probably the most cynical mainstream western animation series ever created. Its premise is centered around life having no apparent meaning aside from the one someone chooses to make and how we must live with the choices we either make or have thrust upon us and are powerless to change the past. It reminds us that we're not powerless to change the future, however. Despite the fact that most of the links between the members of the Sanchez-Smith family are irreparably broken, they still know how to be there for each other when it counts. Morty has pretty strong relationships with Jerry and Summer, despite getting frustrated with them often, and while we have yet to see any real one-on-one interaction between Morty and Beth, the two of them seem to at least want to think the best of each other. The three selected heartwarming moments I have on my mind are these- S1E03 "Anatomy Park"- Much of it, because of how it's the show's Christmas special, even if most of it is at the expense of Jerry, who wanted a technology-free "human holiday" and invited his parents over, only to quickly learn that he was not the most important person of the day like he was trying to have it be. The events of the day seem earnest regardless. S1E09 "Something Ricked This Way Comes"- Morty assures Jerry that despite his insecurity and lack of intelligence, he's still his dad, and while he doesn't want his help in science projects, Morty still wants to hang out with his dad. S2E04 "Total Rickall"- After the house gets invaded by mind-altering parasites pretending to be beloved and perfect family members and family friends and the family can't tell family from parasite, Morty, believing Rick is a parasite, gets two of the "friends" to hold Rick down. Rick tells Morty that he only has a few good memories of him and that most of Rick's memories of Morty are of him being a whiny little punk, so he should just go ahead and shoot him through the head. Morty reads into these words, realizes that the parasites only made positive memories of themselves, and convinces the rest of the family to shoot the family members that they have no bad memories of, and that the ones they do have bad memories of (which the Sanchez-Smith family has plenty of bad memories of one another) are the real ones. The message here is how the relationships we have with people are supposed to be imperfect, as that's how we know they're real. If something feels too good to be true, it probably is. It's the bad times we have with our family and friends that make the good times that much better. The show is truly satisfying oftentimes. My three selected "awesome" moments- S1E01 "Pilot"- At the very end, as Morty is writhing on the garage floor in pain as seeds that he ate to get Jerry and Beth off of Rick's back to make him appear smarter than he is so that they don't force Rick back to a retirement home in order to get Morty to go back to school more often rather than be on adventures with Rick dissolve inside him, Rick stands over him giving a rambling speech about the two of them being together for a hundred years and all of the great things they will accomplish together. S1E11 "Ricksy Business"- Bird Person explains that Rick's seemingly nonsense catchphrase, "Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub!" is bird-person-speak for "I am in great pain. Please help me." He reminds Morty that despite his problems with Rick, he knows that Morty likes the time he spends with his grandfather, and convinces him to not blame him for the house being trashed as a result of the party and the house going to another dimension. S2E01 "A Rickle In Time"- When the time surrounding the house gets split into sixty-four "equally possibly impossibilities" and one of the Mortys in it nearly falls outside of the space-time continuum, one of the Ricks prepares to sacrifice himself to save Morty, even saying "I'm OK with this. Be good, Morty. Be better than me." when it happens. Many believe that Rick and Morty is the best show ever produced at Williams Street, and I would have to agree.
So what's next for the show? Season 3 is expected to air on Adult Swim sometime in between September and December of 2016 and be fourteen episodes long rather than the eleven of Season 1 and the ten of Season 2. Rick is expected to escape prison pretty quickly, though whether or not it will be something he planned in advance is yet to be seen. The fan favorite race of characters known as Mr. Meeseeks are expected to return, even if they have to be forced into an episode in an extremely awkward and contrived way. Mr. Meeseeks are blue creatures that initially have a positive and helpful demeanor and exist to fulfill simple tasks asked of them and made their first appearance in S1E05 "Meeseeks and Destroy". They will try, however, to fulfill any task asked of them, regardless of whether it's simple or complex, as they hate existing and can only fade away after the task asked of them has been completed. They become more and more psychotic the longer they are alive without their assigned task being finished. Jerry learned this the hard way when he tried to get one to help him take two strokes off of his golf game, but Jerry was so bad that he couldn't even be taught by thirty Meeseeks. The Meeseeks even try to hold hostage a restaurant that Jerry and Beth are having a date at in order to scare Jerry into improving his game. He manages to prove himself to the Meeseeks, improve his gold swing by improvising with a rusty pipe for a club and a tomato for a ball, makes the Meeseeks fade from existence, and saves the restaurant (after showing a "Stickler Meeseeks" his short game). Perhaps the Meeseeks can help in breaking Rick out of prison. They would probably bring the Gromflomites, the aliens that make up most of the Galactic Federation, to extinction. Season 3 is also expected to go deeper into the show's myth arc, with episodes that go deeper into explaining why Rick is the way he is and his history with "Evil Morty", a version of Morty that wears an eyepatch from S1E10 "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind" that, for currently unspecified purposes, used a robot "Evil Rick" to kill various Ricks across the multiverse, kidnap and torture their Mortys, and frame the main Rick for all of it. This has led many fans to speculate that Evil Morty is the main Rick's original Morty who gained a darker personality and a vendetta against all Ricks as the result of a past betrayal by the main Rick. At least one episode is supposed to be a flashback episode set in Beth's childhood that shows her relationship with both Rick as a younger man and her mother and show what exactly made Beth's mom leave Rick, under what circumstances Rick began traveling the multiverse for twenty years (relative to how time flows in Dimension C-137, as I think that other dimensions could have time pass at different rates and be in entirely different eras than our own timeline), and why Beth is so self-centered and believes that only extraordinary people are worthy of love. They are even expected to have a crossover with Disney XD's Gravity Falls, as Justin Roiland is close friends with the creator, showrunner, head writer, and star of that show, Alex Hirsch, and they say that both shows are set in the same multiverse. Just as Roiland has voiced both Blendin Blandin on his friend's show along with a Billy Mays parody named Bobby Renzobbi, Hirsch voiced Toby Matthews in S2E07, a teenage boy who is essentially a blonde version of Alex, who in real life has reddish-brown hair. Toby was Summer's crush for the episode and began to date her because he found Tiny Rick to be pretty cool and liked dating a family member of his. As soon as Tiny Rick was expelled for killing the vampire lunch server earlier in the episode (something the principal hated to do because he thought that Tiny Rick made his life at the school better), Tiny Rick told everyone at the school dance that it's Summer's fault he got expelled, as she tried to get Tiny Rick to stop being in denial of his original old man personality. Everyone hates Summer after that, and Toby angrily breaks up with her. In that same episode, as tribute to Gravity Falls, the image of Bill Cipher is hidden on a computer monitor on the deep space marriage counselor's office Jerry and Beth go to in the episode's B-plot. It may be hard to pull off because of tonal differences between the two shows and legal reasons, but I think it could be done pretty easily now that Gravity Falls has formally ended. I believe that the Gravity Falls/Rick and Morty crossover would be partially guest written by Alex Hirsch and serve as a deconstruction of most crossover tropes. Ford and Rick have been implied to be friends in the past, with Ford as a freedom fighter alongside Rick, and Rick may have helped Ford smuggle the infinity-sided die from Gravity Falls S2E13 "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" through inter-dimensional customs. In this same episode, it is stated that the dimension the main events of Gravity Falls are set in is Dimension 46'\, showing a connection to the multiverse. The deconstruction aspect would come into play with Dipper and Mabel Pines having extremely severe psychological trauma as a result of seeing something from one of the dimensions that Rick and Morty go to, showing just how horrifying it might be to go from living in a TV-Y7/TV-PG world to a TV-14/TV-MA world with no preparation. This may end up being one of the few television crossover episodes to darkly and dramatically move both shows forward rather than just be a cheap way to show characters from different shows in situations that might attract viewers and ratings. I certainly hope something like that would happen. No matter what happens next season, I think that Justin and Dan will know what to do. They hope to have the show last at least ten seasons and do something similar to Simpsons-aging for the characters in that they stay roughly the same age throughout the series. Rick and Morty forever and a hundred years indeed. I'm glad that Justin and Dan have made the show a part of my life and the lives of hundreds more, and it is my primary inspiration for the main TV show I want to make. I even would want to be a writer on Rick and Morty or a similar show for a few seasons before making my own show and would want someone from Rick and Morty's creative department to tell me what they think of my material. That would be one of the best things to ever possibly happen to me, hands down. The only things that might be better could be meeting someone involved in the Lego company or someone who worked on one of the films in The Lego Movie franchise, the Portal video game series, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, or Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated. Rick and Morty currently airs in reruns Sunday nights at 11 pm American Eastern Standard Time on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block and is always available on Xfinity On Demand, the Watch Adult Swim App, and Hulu, and individual episodes and seasons are for sale on iTunes, Google Play TV, and YouTube. It's available for free on YouTube as well, but most of the videos that contain the entire episode have altered video and audio to get around piracy laws, so you'll probably want to avoid that. Thank you for reading, and remember to watch Rick and Morty Season 3 when it airs this fall.

Neil Rush Communications Media Technology Blog

Monday, May 23, 2016

Neil Rush CMT Blog- May 24, 2016- The Most Important Things I Learned This Year

Monday, May 9, 2016

Neil Rush CMT Blog- May 10, 2016- Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub! Why Rick and Morty is the Eighth Best Television Program in the Gigaverse