This Week In Retro: Rick and Morty (Patreon)

December 2, 2013: Wubba lubba dub dub!!

by Diamond Feit

As virtues go, I hold intelligence in high regard. Not in video games, stat-wise, I'm talking about real life; I respect witty, clever people and I aspire to become such a person myself one day. Certainly, one of the best rewards of building bridges with developers, writers, and podcasters over the years has been meeting so many thoughtful individuals and getting the opportunity to talk to them about their work and their passions.

While I have held these values for as long as I can remember—all my friends growing up were similarly-minded—it is only in recent years that I have dared to ask myself what exact traits determine whether or not someone qualifies as intelligent in my eyes. It's a deceptively difficult question to answer because everyone has their own image of what makes a person smart but few of us actually attempt to connect the dots and explain how we apply that label to others.

Without a doubt, one reason this conundrum has come to vex me as an adult is my enthusiasm for a cartoon that turns 10 years old this week. Ostensibly a wacky comedy where nothing really matters, the show revolves around a scientist who views himself as the smartest being ever to exist and he's not necessarily wrong. While his super genius affords the writers free reign to tell literally any story they want, Cartoon Network's Rick and Morty has spent the last decade forcing me to ask what intelligence means and why I hold it in such esteem.

Like its title suggests, Rick and Morty stars Rick and Morty, an eccentric inventor and his teenage grandson. Rick's aptitude for science goes beyond all modern technological understanding; he builds fully sentient artificial lifeforms in his spare time, he visits other planets on a whim, and he has enough cybernetic defense systems embedded in his own body that he can shrug off wounds that would kill any normal person.

Rick's signature invention is his portal gun, a small handheld tool powered by a bubbling green liquid. Like the similarly-named device at the heart of the Portal series, Rick's gun serves a mobility need rather than an offensive one, as it opens gateways to distant locations. More than that, Rick's portals cross the fabric of reality itself, enabling him to explore an infinite number of alternate dimensions parallel to our own.

Accompanying Rick on most of his adventures—sometimes unwillingly—is Morty, an anxious high school student. To call Morty an ordinary kid feels disingenuous, as he struggles with rudimentary academic work as well as basic social interactions. He has a crush on Jessica, a girl in his math class, but otherwise seems cut off from all other kids his age; his mother Beth believes her father Rick is Morty's first-ever friend.

Given Rick's expansive scientific knowledge and his handy portal gun, an episode of Rick and Morty can take place virtually anywhere in any universe at any time. The pilot has Rick cajoling Morty into helping him smuggle "mega seeds" through intergalactic customs; we never learn what they do, only that Morty must hide these pineapple-sized pieces of contraband inside his rectum where they slowly dissolve and leave him writhing in agony on the floor of the garage.

If you're a science-fiction fan, the premise of Rick and Morty likely reminds you of a couple different franchises. The dynamic of an elderly scientist and a teenage boy closely mirrors the central duo of Back to the Future. This is not coincidental: Rick and Morty began as The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, a lewd parody wherein the only solution to every crisis they encounter is for Mharti to lick Doc's balls. Doc and Mharti creator Justin Roiland had so much fun voicing the two characters that he wanted to keep telling stories with them, eventually teaming up with Dan Harmon to pen the Rick and Morty pilot in a single evening.

There's also more than a little Doctor Who in Rick and Morty given the shared element of a mismatched team traveling through time and space. However, the relationship of a wise, seasoned adventurer and a young, naïve companion as seen in Rick and Morty is much more confrontational because of Rick's attitude towards the rest of the universe. As much as The Doctor's personality changes over the run of the show, their optimism and eagerness to help people in need remains constant. Rick's primary concern is Rick; he has some degree of affection for his immediate family but little compassion for anything else living or dead.

To put it bluntly, Rick is a gigantic asshole, a raging alcoholic, and a borderline sociopath. Whether this worldview stems from the loss of his wife or his incredible intellect rendering most challenges irrelevant, the fact remains that he lies, cheats, and steals without any remorse. Murder, too, comes naturally; when his scheme in the pilot fails, Rick doesn't hesitate to hand Morty a laser rifle and instruct him to fire at the authorities. He calls them "robots" to assuage Morty's hesitation to shoot living beings, but Morty sees them bleed and cry in pain from their wounds. Rick justifies his lie by saying "It's a figure of speech, Morty. They're bureaucrats. I don't respect them."

Television shows have long featured unreasonably arrogant geniuses as foils for our heroes to overcome or allies to support our heroes when needed, but in the early 2000s a great deal of them seemed to assume the role of protagonist. Fox had two different dramas about impossibly intelligent medical doctors, House and Bones, wherein the leads often ruffled the feathers of people around them but were invariably proven right by episode's end. Walter White on Breaking Bad also qualifies, since he used his knowledge of chemistry to magically become the world's best meth cook. Sherlock Holmes has always been portrayed as the smartest man in the room but in the 2010 BBC series Benedict Cumberbatch could barely contain his contempt for anyone not on his level.

Yet Rick Sanchez eclipses all of these folks through the magic of animation. He doesn't waste time treating patients, solving mysteries, or dealing drugs, he only cares about experimenting on his own body through biotechnology, stimulants, and bottle after bottle of booze. He's a cynic who has seen it all and likely drags poor Morty along just so he can have an audience to witness his accomplishments. Early episodes keep Rick and Morty's exploits hidden from the rest of the family but before long Beth, her daughter Summer, and even her inept husband Jerry get sucked into Rick's increasingly elaborate escapades.

I believe it was the meteoric rise of Rick and Morty that first called this trend to my attention, helped in part due to the gradual rise of social media during that same period. A half-hour animated sitcom takes time to produce; the second season of Rick and Morty premiered almost a year and a half after Cartoon Network officially renewed the show. This turned each new episode into an event that the entire internet couldn't stop talking about. Even the old guard of the cartoon world took notice, as The Simpsons featured Rick and Morty in a lengthy crossover couch gag written by Harmon and Roiland themselves.

What I saw as Rick and Morty fandom grew was a groundswell of support for Rick Sanchez not as a ridiculous cartoon character but as a philosopher. To be fair, many episodes of the show do offer compelling, thoughtful lessons about life and family, but people really loved Rick's unabashed hatred for religion, education, love, and just about anything he doesn't respect. And since Rick is demonstrably the most intelligent person in his make-believe universe, some viewers in the real world decided that his opinions must be correct. These Rick-worshipers adopted "Rick and Morty is a show for smart people" as a mantra of sorts, with the unspoken implication that they are smart for being fans of the show and any dissenters are therefore dumb.

As I stated at the top of this essay, I'm a sucker for smart people both in real life and in fiction. When Rick and Morty blew up, I took notice, for its blend of high-concept sci-fi and broad comedy greatly appealed to me. I likewise noticed when the online fervor surrounding the show grew louder and more hostile, causing me to realize the commonalities between Rick Sanchez, Sherlock, Dr. House, and any number of other characters who said and did horrible things but it was OK because they're so brilliant.

I suppose this is also the point that I must mention Rick and Morty co-creator and lead actor Justin Roiland developed a reputation of his own as his show brought him such widespread success. While other networks and studios rushed to sign him up to develop new properties, he also used his newfound fame to make unwanted advances on female coworkers and fans, some of whom were underage. We'll never know the entire truth about his behavior behind the scenes, but the allegations were serious enough that Cartoon Network launched an investigation in 2020. These accusations, combined with actual domestic abuse charges, led to his eventual dismissal from Rick and Morty in 2023. That means employers kept him on the books and flooded him with offers for years even after the stories about him broke.

I see a lot of parallels between smug cartoon geniuses and arrogant corporeal geniuses. It's all too easy to overlook people's shortcomings when we like them personally, yet that sadly includes strangers whom we admire but don't actually know. I've never met Justin Roiland so I have no idea how he presents himself around the office or in the club or online, but even when the people who do know came forward, Rick and Morty continued production unabated. It frightens me how many executives and producers could have stepped in at any time but didn't because they looked at Roiland and only saw dollar signs.

For whatever it's worth, I continue to enjoy Rick and Morty as a piece of entertainment without placing Rick Sanchez or Justin Roiland on a pedestal. The most recent episodes as of this writing are the first to come out after Roiland's departure and they're just as hilarious as previous seasons. Turns out that the one guy causing a stir behind the scenes wasn't the keystone holding up Rick and Morty all by himself. I hope we can remember this the next time we encounter a "creative genius" or "auteur" who says and does horrible things but it's OK because they're so brilliant. Maybe real intelligence requires knowing when to check your own attitude before it costs you everything.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.