Rickmortimus Rex

Does Ricky and Morty have a point? Does it even need to have one? I’m a little late to reviewing this eighth season of the show in large part because I rely on streaming for all my television needs and Rick and Morty doesn’t come to streaming until it’s had a long run on Cartoon Network with multiple airings. Other reviewers finished up the series back in July, I’m just getting to it now. Being unplugged from cable is nice, but every once in a while it does present some minor inconveniences.

But because I don’t get to watch the series live as it comes out it also allowed me to see what other people were saying about the show, and many reviewers commented that the show felt aimless, that it didn’t have much point this season. I would counter that by saying, first, is a show about a drunk and murderous mad scientist and his family having wacky adventures that are, at times, ad libbed really supposed to have a point or aim? But also, I think being aimless kind of was the point of the season. I think the series actually wanted to reflect where Rick is right now in the series and how he just doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Let us consider that Dan Harmon famously has his own writing formula that he applies to all his shows. His Story Circle, as he calls it, goes from a person realizing something is wrong, going on a journey to find something that fulfills their need, and then returning home having learned or gained something… only to then do it again in the next episode with a different inciting incident. This is how things work on the episodes of his shows, but I think we can also apply it, in a certain way, to his seasons. If the character is supposed to take ten episodes to go on an emotional journey, even if that journey happens in the background in fits and starts, then it too can eventually reveal itself over time.

And I think aimlessness is the point of this season. Yes, that means some of the early episodes seem to meander without attaching to a cohesive whole. We get three episodes that seem to have no connective tissue. One has Rick put Morty and Summer into a simulation to teach them a lesson (“Summer of All Fears”), another features Space Beth needing Rick to help her on an unrelated adventure (“Valkyrick”), and then we get an episode that barely features the main characters at all, instead focusing on alternate Ricks and Mortys from the ruins of the Citadel. None of these really emphasize anything except that life goes on and adventures continue to happen.

In fact, I would argue that the show barely contains anything truly resembling a plot for most of its runtime. Once in a while there’s a mention that Rick can’t remember what his deceased wife looks like, that the evil Rick that caused all the carnage in the universe wiped all memory of her. We also see him trying to move on and just have adventures with his family. And some of these adventures are great, like “The Last Temptation of Jerry”, which turns Jerry into the Easter Bunny, or “Nomortland”, which sees Jerry traveling the multiverse with another Jerry. In fact… are some of the best episodes this season Jerry episodes?

It’s all aimless in a way, but that’s the point, I think. Rick feels aimless, and this is something that comes into much greater focus in the last episode of the season. Here we see Rick trying to finally move on from his past, and he does this by extracting the last memories of his dead wife from his brain, all so he can love someone new. This then leads to a weird adventure where the Rick in that extracted memory goes full Rick and hatches a plan to revive his wife from that memory and change time so they can bring her back for real. It’s about loss, and struggling to let go, and it’s a really poignant episode even while still being weird and fucked up. You know, like Rick and Morty often does.

Which gets me back to my first question of: does Rick and Morty need to have a point. I think if I hadn’t read reviews complaining about it I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Rick and Morty hasn’t ever been the most linear or cohesive show. Heck, the first season didn’t even really seem to have anything in the way of continuity, with random adventures like Rick needing Morty to smuggle space beans up his ass, or them visiting a theme park built into a human body, or Rick making Morty’s dog, Snowball, super intelligent and that causing a dog uprising that threatens the world. None of those things really seemed to matter the next episode around, and even when Rick ends up ending the world, like in “Rick Potion #9,” when a love potion Rick makes mixes with Morty’s mild flu and creates a super bug then turns everyone into insectile monstrosities, such that Rick and Morty flee to a different dimension where their Rick and Morty just died, taking their place… the stories just went on as if nothing happened.

Sure, those moments of continuity are referenced again later, in little asides (a picture of Snowball still hangs on the family’s wall, and there are a couple of graves dug out back for the dead Rick and Morty of this world), but otherwise there was no harm, no foul for the whole accidentally ending the world thing, or many other things Rick has done. And that’s the point. The show doesn’t want to get bogged down in heavy continuity. This isn’t a show with long, drawn out cliffhangers (season two finale notwithstanding and eventually quickly brushed away) and it doesn’t care about really pushing the character arcs. This is a silly show about fucked up science.

When I sit down to watch a season of Rick and Morty I want those wacky, off-the-wall, totally fucked up adventures. I want to see Jerry turn into a monstrous Easter Bunny (which was a great story), or Beth and Space Beth turn themselves into murderous little kids (which was also great). And while, sure, continuity is fun, and it can lead to good callback episodes, such as Morty and his half-alien son, Morty, Jr., having an adventure in Rick’s space dump in “Morty Daddy” this season, it isn’t always needed. The show is packed with characters and ideas and it rarely ever feels stale.

So no, I don’t think I really care if the show has a real purpose to its storytelling. Right now, anyway, the show feels like it’s still firing hard with the really out there, fucked up ideas, and even if it doesn’t have much “purpose” to them, it still finds ways to twist and bend and break ideas in its episodes, leading to a lot of laughs and many a moment where I think, “did I just watch that?” When a show continues to work really well in its individual stories that can make up for the fact that it doesn’t have an overall arc, and I think this season didn’t need an overall arc as it finds its way forward.

Rick lost his wife years ago and was on a quest for revenge against the Rick that stole her from him. He finally got some kind of closure last season in an event that also broke the multiverse and changed the balance of power in the ‘verse, destroying the foundational Citadel in the process. All of that created a new status quo where Rick doesn’t know what to do or where to go. He finally decides to move on at the end of the season in a move that’s both healthy and really toxic (as only Rick can do), and that feels perfectly on point for the show.

If this season is about anything it’s about finding your way when you don’t know what to do anymore. Rick has no real purpose, and this season lets him go off and be whacky without pushing him. That’s the point, if the show even needs to have one. Maybe it finds a purpose next season, maybe it doesn’t, but while the individual episodes, moment to moment, continue to be laugh out loud funny and really wrong, I also don’t think that matters at all.