RICK AND MORTY

***1/2 (out of ****)

The easy headline when writing about Rick and Morty is “Finally Someone Mentions How Weird It Was That Marty McFly’s Best Friend Was A Mad Scientist,” or “What if Doc Brown Was Drunk?” And, just based on that premise, I’m already interested. Marty and Doc are such an ingrained part of our brains and our culture that it’s high time they became dissected, or became archetypal; I’m shocked it took this long. But even in it’s pilot, Rick and Morty proves it’s not going to stop there and coast on that one idea. Rick is Doc, an insane, drunken, homeless looking scientist who could have done great things in his life if he stopped hating the man, and stayed sober for more than ten seconds. Morty is his nerdy grandson, an indoor kid whose grandpa is his only friend, regardless of the danger Rick gets him into. Together, they go on crazy adventures in search of fame, fortune, anarchy, and a cure for eternal boredom.

One of the main dances the first episode revolves around is regarding Rick as a grandfather. Does Rick love Morty? I know it might be an odd question, but this is a buddy show, and our buddies aren’t cops assigned to each other, or best friends since college, but a grandfather and a grandson. The nature of their relationship is everything. Is Rick a mentor, preparing Morty for the real world, or preparing him for what it’s like to be a member of this family in the real world? Is he just using him as an assistant/guinea pig? And how fucked up is that? One of the few gross-for-gross’-sake moments of the show (and it was still pretty fucking funny) involves Rick needing to smuggle two alien seeds, each the size of a pointy watermelon, off of some crazy planet. So, of course, Rick asks his grandson to shove them up his ass so they can get through alien customs. How selfish is Rick? How exactly does he feel about his grandson? These questions aren’t ignored, or stretched out over the course of the run of the show, but answered in the final minutes of the pilot – final minutes that you will never forget for as long as you watch TV.

I want to say that there’s nothing about the world that Justin Roiland, who voices both titular characters, and Dan Harmon that makes sense, but that’s not true. It’s all incredibly original, but still just enough of a twisted take on everything else we’ve seen that it all works. At one point, Rick use a freeze ray on a bully that’s picking on Morty. Then that frozen young man tips over and breaks into a thousand pieces. Throughout the episode we cut back to the school to see how they are dealing with the death of a high school student. Later, Morty falls down a cliff and breaks both of his legs. Rick jumps to another dimension to find an instant cure. Instead of following Rick through his interdimensional travels, we stay on Rick the entire time, writhing in pain.

I have no idea how much Community leader Dan Harmon had to do with the creation of the show, as opposed to co-creator Justin Roiland, but as the lead voice actor, it’s Roiland’s joint. His Morty is fine, but mostly just another nebbishy kid. It’s Rick, and Roiland’s performance as Rick, that steals the show. It feels like Roiland has been workshopping this character his entire life. To be fair, Rick and Morty is retroscripted, which means the actors get to improv all or some of the dialogue, and then the animators animate over that (like the Genie in Aladdin!). But fuck that noise – it’s not like that then makes it simple to create a character. Just the varied ways that Rick belches and pre-pukes through his lines is enough for the Emmy already.

As an episode of television, this sneak preview of Rick and Morty works great. As a pilot, it’s one of the most flawless of the entire Fall TV Extravaganza. The creators clearly wanted to create a world where anything could happen, but then spent the entire episode setting up the rules of their world, the rules of their characters, and a very specific view and tone. With the exception of the final two minutes, this feels like it could have been an episode from halfway through the second season – the highest praise you can give a pilot.

– Ryan Haley