“And away we go”
While I enjoyed the first season of Rick and Morty, I wasn’t all that sure about the show’s staying power with Adult Swim. I’d talked about the show with some friends, but for the most part this seems to be a show that finds its fan base more in their late teens. It’s fair to say it’s been more than a few years since I was a teenager, so perhaps it shouldn’t be much of a surprise I was a little hesitant with this season (feel free to check out my review of Season 1). Maybe I’m just more in touch with my inner teen, or maybe Rick and Morty has stepped out and into the realm of a broader audience, because Season 2 kept me laughing throughout. The show, for those who may be unfamiliar, is something of a blend between Back to the Future and more than a sprinkle of Futurama. If that sounds like a fun ride, well, then this may be the animated series for you.
Season 2 kicks off six months after Rick has frozen time in order to fix some things while he’s with his grandchildren, Morty and Summer. When it’s time to restore things back to normal, well, it of course doesn’t go as planned and causes a ripple in reality. Rick is the mad scientist we’d expect Doc Brown from Back to the Future to be if he happened to be a full-blown alcoholic and possibly even dabbled into a few hallucinogens.
What makes the show more than a simple juvenile comedy is that each of the characters find themselves engaged into some heavily questionable moral situations. In one episode Summer and Rick find themselves on a planet with Rick; on the planet all the inhabitants are mentally enslaved by Rick’s ex-girlfriend. The notion of being mentally enslaved may seem bad, but instead she seems to have improved upon the lives of everyone on the planet, so the question is posed, is it OK to enslave these people even if it keeps them from harming themselves? We get to see what happens when the inhabitants of the planet no longer are under control, and we get a surprising reaction to this.
As the season progresses and Rick continues his travels, we go on to see him take his daughter, Beth, and her husband Jerry to marriage counseling, but with a twist. As you’d expect, the twist is the counseling is on another planet where aliens go to work out their marriage difficulties. To reflect more of Rick’s mad scientist mind, we also get an episode with Rick and Morty travelling to universes created within universes as a means of creating electricity. The entire family gets into the parallel universe, time travelling misadventures filled with profanity-laced humor that is definitely not meant for all viewers. Even with a character that is a singing fart voiced by Jemaine Clement, despite how childish the show may seem, I’d have trouble recommending this non-censored version to all families.
While the show certainly has grown on me, and I feel it’s one of the better shows playing during Adult Swim, I would say families should be a little cautious when making this purchase for their kids. I can understand it being difficult for parents to have to monitor everything that their kids watch, and cartoons would seem a safer option, but this is a far cry from Transformers or Power Puff Girls, hence why it’s on Adult Swim. For those with older teens or simply adults with no kids in the picture, well, then this is a collection to pick up. I’m really hard pressed to pick a favorite episode, and for the first time I can honestly say it’s because I liked just about every episode the same and I feel the rewatchabilty of this season is pretty high. While I’m still more partial to South Park and Family Guy, Rick and Morty is quickly becoming a series I can put in the same category, because already I’m ready to go along for the ride to whatever crazy universes creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon plan to take their characters to.
