Rick and Morty: Season 7: The Off-Balance Review.
The recently concluded seventh season proves the show still has creative steam. How long will it last?
For a show that has spent the past decade courting both acclaim and controversy in equal measure, when Rick and Morty’s seventh season ended earlier this week, it did so somewhat quieter than usual.
It was a reminder though, of the strengths it can play too when it chooses - but the reality is, Rick and Morty occupies a vastly different space, both creatively and in broader cultural sense, than it did when it began in 2013.
From phenomenon to social pariah and back again. Terrific storytelling and character work, often undercut with real world difficulties - not to mention the show at large being the bane of McDonalds entrepreneurs the world over.
That goddamn Szechuan Sauce, man.
Perhaps the most surprising thing, in hindsight, is that Rick and Morty wasn’t afraid to shake up its established foundation so soon.
The initial framework was already strong - Rick Sanchez is a misanthropic, alcoholic mad scientist, who claims to care little for human connection, as he uses his specialty-designed “portal gun” to travel the multiverse - infinite realities, after all, means little reason to form attachments.
But after supposedly abandoning his daughter, Beth, twenty years prior he suddenly reappears and moves in with her family, The Smiths, who must try, grandson Morty in particular, to balance their domestic day-to-day with Rick’s particular brand of other-worldly chaos.
In the vain of many of its animated predecessors, it probably could’ve stuck with this for as long as it wanted - held together with the occasional sentimental moment here-and-there sure but primarily centred around “flavour of the week” stakes that are set-up, resolved and concluded, with the board reset at the end of every twenty-two minutes.
And it still does, to be fair, more often than not, with wacky, week-by-week sci-fi shenanigans contributing much to the show’s overall success.
But even as early as that first season, it became clear that Rick and Morty was striving for something bigger - not just in its conceptual ideas (like the duo abandoning their reality, with recurring consequences, after a series of misadventures in “Rick Potion #9”) but working to establish just who the characters were as well, as it embraced occasional (and self-referential) serialization.
Rick presented himself as someone who believed little for attachment, as he operated just a degree below total sci-fi God but as the show’s borders expanded, alongside the rest of the family (Sarah Chalke’s Beth and Spencer Grammer’s Summer, specifically) it became clear that the character wasn’t as infallible as was initially believed, his backstory, slowly revealed and hinted at before being confirmed at the end of the fifth season.
His family killed by a rouge variant (Rick Prime), Rick would spend decades, hunting, well, himself across the multiverse, with no success. Despondent and emotionally shut-off, he would eventually choose to settle in Prime’s reality (as shown in those first few episodes), planning to simply bide his time until his rival returned.
But in the meantime, he would, somewhat reluctantly, form bonds with the family he never had.
And when the show wanted too, moving past the more juvenile and purposely shock-value humour that became its calling card, there was little it couldn’t achieve: a unique mix of high-octane science fiction, domestic comedy and legitimate pathos.
Simple though? Not a chance.
Rick and Morty was co-created by actor-animator Justin Roiland and writer-producer Dan Harmon (best known as the creator of Community).
Building off one of Roiland’s submissions for Harmon’s short film festival (a deeply weird parody of Back to the Future), it almost immediately became one of the most celebrated television shows within its creative space but equally controversial as well.
A subset of “fans”, were openly called out by Harmon for harassing the show’s female writers or that whole debacle where McDonalds was bullied into reviving a promotional sauce from the 1990s that Rick raved about in the third season premiere (and not that I’m one to side with “the man” usually but… c’mon, that whole thing was ridiculous).
Then, there was the rot at the top.
In 2018, Megan Ganz, a former writer on Community, accused Harmon of misconduct and sexual harassment during the time they worked together - Harmon, to his credit, not only openly admitted to his behaviour but apologized, enough so, that Ganz said she accepted it, considering it “a master class in how to apologize” - but why are we even harassing people in the first place?
Harmon is still actively involved in the show, a driving creative.
Roiland, who most notably voiced Rick and Morty both, alongside various other characters throughout the show’s run, was fired by the network, Adult Swim, in January after accusations of domestic violence and abuse were brought against him. The domestic violence charges were dismissed in March but other accusations, including those that Roiland tried to leverage his fame and engaged in predatory behaviour with minors, are horrifying.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Roiland’s creative involvement in the show had been minimal at best since the second season, hardly even engaging with the writer’s room in person and recording his dialogue separately - but that doesn’t matter really, in the grand scheme of things. His behaviour is simply inexcusable
Moral reckoning isn’t where the money is, though.
He was swiftly replaced with new voice actors (Ian Cardoni as Rick and Harry Belden as Morty) before the seventh season began, the show, having committed itself to at least ten seasons back in 2018.
It goes on, after all.
So as the show’s seventh season premiered in October, it did so juggling two major plot lines - Rick’s renewed search for Rick Prime, as he recommitted himself to avenging his long-lost original family and the continuing adventures of one of the show’s most intriguing recurring characters, “Evil Morty”.
A Morty variant, who, sick of his Rick’s machinations, chose to strike out on his own, often coming to conflict with the “main” Rick and Morty in the process.
Did it land?
Yeah, for the most part. Again, when it wants too, there are few shows currently on television that bring the same moving parts to the table that Rick and Morty does, even if that doesn’t (or shouldn’t) mean it is beyond legitimate criticism.
While the episodes that engaged with those long-running storylines were terrific (and won’t be spoiled here) it also meant that the narrative lulls were clearer than ever - something that has become much more apparent in recent seasons. I mean, of course. After a decade, things are going to shift creatively - how the show can manage that though, for presumably another 30 episodes, at minimum, is the bigger question.
Cardoni and Belden deserve praise too, asked to step into major roles and tasked with making that transition as seamless as possible, to both the casual and more committed viewer. They do, to exceptional effect, bringing range and a sense of a depth far beyond what Roiland ever achieved.
In the end though, watching Rick and Morty now is much the same viewing experience it has been for the past several years.
Highly entertaining, competently made, successfully tackling a variety of themes with ease. But when you consider everything else around it?
Never easy, either.