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Rick & Morty Season 5 - commences June 20th

Started by NoSleep, June 07, 2021, 10:16:56 AM

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BritishHobo

I used to be bothered by fanbases of shows, but that has disappeared completely as a problem since I stopped browsing reddit. It was self-inflicted really.

The last season lost me because it showed the limits of their writing outside of the meta stuff. All the sudden emotional turns with the family start to feel hollow and empty by the hundredth time. Unlike Bojack, where there's an actual purpose behind the emotional relapses, this just feels like Harmon and Roiland repeating the same few ideas because they think it adds an edginess to all the meta/sci-fi stuff. Going over Beth's father issues, Rick's depression and shitiness, and Jerry's uselesness doesn't feel like Bojack making the same mistakes because he's conditioned to - it just feels like they have no other ideas and hit those buttons for easy emotional darkness at the end of a wacky episode.

The train episode and the vat of acid episode seemed to be highlights to everyone else, but they left me cold. I just thought we've seen those ideas a thousand times already, and it showed they don't have anything else.

BUT I'LL FUCKING WATCH IT ANYWAY WON'T I


brat-sampson

Characters in Bojack suffer and change and learn and grow and move on. Relationships form and struggle and either end or recover with more strength than they had before. Very few sitcoms actually follow this model and successfully stick with it because it's fucking hard on top of an episodic format which itself kinda relies on some return to status quo at the end of every episode. South Park has had moments of doing this, as has Rick and Morty, but comparing them to Bojack is almost unfair because I don't really expect them to.

lankyguy95

I like the show. It makes me laugh. The last season was good apart from the crowbarred ending where Rick felt remorse about being a bad father.

I have nothing else to add, sorry.

BritishHobo

Quote from: brat-sampson on June 08, 2021, 12:13:20 PM
Characters in Bojack suffer and change and learn and grow and move on. Relationships form and struggle and either end or recover with more strength than they had before. Very few sitcoms actually follow this model and successfully stick with it because it's fucking hard on top of an episodic format which itself kinda relies on some return to status quo at the end of every episode. South Park has had moments of doing this, as has Rick and Morty, but comparing them to Bojack is almost unfair because I don't really expect them to.

That's true, but most sitcoms don't go to that same well of self-destructive behaviour for genuine emotional moments in the same way. South Park knows its characters are awful, but it feels like Rick and Morty tries to appear a bit deeper with its moments of Rick's self-hatred, and the impact of that on the family.

Petey Pate

Agree that citing the fanbase as a reason for disliking Rick and Morty is strange, especially as it really doesn't inform the content of the show at all. Harmon and Roiland even explicitly baited fans with the trailer for the second half of season 4, which contained clips from the story train episode hinting at big plotlines but were really just throwaway gags.

Ironic that one of the most notorious videos used to demonstrate the awfulness of R&M fans is actually someone mocking the Szechuan sauce debacle. That's not to say that there weren't people sincerely behaving like idiots at McDonalds though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GC5rAX0xHg

Video Game Fan 2000

The moichandizing! is so much worse than the fans. Seemed be plastered all over everything for eighteen months.

I think the snobbery around Rick and Morty can be pretty gross as it often middle class university educated people sneering at teenagers who've been exposed to ideas by a cartoon rather than in the proper way (youtube video essay, medium article, twitter threads that start "sit down let me learn you a thing") in the same way that sneering at Dawkins/Degrasse Tyson fans gets a bit much for the same reason.

Though that said Rick and Morty undeniably seemed to pander to edgelords early on as a natural extension from Roilands House of Cosbies/Doc and Marti animations with nudge-nudge in jokes on 4chan related stuff. And though they did go back on that and address it through jokes I don't think they did that very well.

MoreauVasz

I struggle with Rick and Morty because it does that very American thing of combining melt-yer-face abrasiveness with overt sentimentality in an effort to strike some kind of balance. I think they lost me with the whole 'oh he seems like a nihilistic prick but he' s actually in pain'.

That Jack-knife tone change always strikes me as inauthentic and manipulative, doubly so when it's from Harmon as his abrasiveness and manipulativeness are not just well reported but a genuine source of personal pride.


BritishHobo

Yes, exactly! I was struggling to vocalise how I feel, but you've nailed it. It's that feeling of 'oh we're pretending to be sad about Rick being complicated and Beth having abandonment issues again, aye?'

I think that plane crash/coma thing in the vat of acid episode was where it lost me. In any other show, or maybe even an earlier episode, that would have swept me up. In this it felt a really artificial attempt to shock. At the end when you see the girl walk away and it's meant to be tragic, I just thought 'nah fuck off mate'.

wooders1978

My rule of life is that more people who like it the shitter something is - this is the case with Rick and Morty sadly
Will watch anyway though!
Is this on any legit channels in the Uk I.e. sky etc?

Quote from: wooders1978 on June 08, 2021, 07:37:17 PM
My rule of life is that more people who like it the shitter something is - this is the case with Rick and Morty sadly
Will watch anyway though!
Is this on any legit channels in the Uk I.e. sky etc?

Gets shown on E4 in the early hours

druss

I used to like all the wacky adventures of Richard and Mortimer but then I heard their fans aren't very nice so I don't watch it anymore.

Mister Six

Quote from: brat-sampson on June 08, 2021, 09:27:32 AM
Eh, I remember really enjoying most of S4, especially the heist ep, the Vat of Acid ep and the Snake Planet ep.

Yeah, although acid and heist episodes basically had the same premise -
Spoiler alert
Rick sets up an elaborate and emotionally gruelling revenge on Morty just to win an argument
[close]
- which was weird to get in the same season.

I don't recall S4 as strongly as some of the earlier seasons, but that might just be because the novelty has worn off, and even the outlandishly brilliant episodes like the narrative train one aren't a surprise any more. I fully expect R&M to churn out brilliant high-concept episodes now. Which is a great problem to have.

The whinging on this thread, though. The only thing more pathetic than people who want to be Rick are people who want to hate Rick & Morty because of the people who want to be Rick.

Bernice

Quote from: Mister Six on June 09, 2021, 03:16:31 AM
The whinging on this thread, though. The only thing more pathetic than people who want to be Rick are people who want to hate Rick & Morty because of the people who want to be Rick.

There's like two posts in this thread referring offhand to the fan base being shit (posts that clearly come from fans of the show) and then a whole bunch of weirdly defensive pushback against that idea.


mjwilson

Is this a full season in one batch, or are we getting a "season 5a"?

mr. logic

Quote from: Petey Pate on June 08, 2021, 01:40:59 PM
Agree that citing the fanbase as a reason for disliking Rick and Morty is strange, especially as it really doesn't inform the content of the show at all. Harmon and Roiland even explicitly baited fans with the trailer for the second half of season 4, which contained clips from the story train episode hinting at big plotlines but were really just throwaway gags.

Ironic that one of the most notorious videos used to demonstrate the awfulness of R&M fans is actually someone mocking the Szechuan sauce debacle. That's not to say that there weren't people sincerely behaving like idiots at McDonalds though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GC5rAX0xHg

That might be the case. But what an arsehole anyway.

mjwilson

Rick is being added to Fortnite, apparently.

Hot take: Dan Harmon is not a good writer. He learnt to play a few piano keys very well and went "I'm a genius!"  His rants against serialisation in Tv shows on his podcast would mean something if his episodic television didn't all feel the same after awhile and his attempts at doing serialised-like storytelling always falter.

Cold take: Rick and Morty is still capable of being funny, but every time it tries to convince me there's emotional depth I go "boooo"

mippy

Quote from: JaDanketies on June 08, 2021, 09:43:30 AM
Yeah, the "Rick and Morty fanbase is terrible" concept is just a meme. Who even encounters 'fanbases' anyway?

I had Python spoiled for me by terrible pub quote bores before I had chance to actually watch it, and R+M is kind of like that on the internet. Even then, the Szechuan Sauce thing was a barometer of terribleness.

mippy


GoblinAhFuckScary

stopped watching at the dragons having cosmic telepathic sex with children episode. yikes



Captain Z

I don't like how their pupils are squiggles instead of solid dots.

Bigfella

I was thinking about watching this tonight so I pored over this thread to see if I could pick up the basics.  Oh dear.  I have no idea what pickle rick or the venture brothers are, and even fans seem to worry that the whole thing is too challenging.  Any chance I might actually get and enjoy it?

NoSleep

#56
Dive in, but start from season 1 and go from there. If you like sci-fi and comedy there's not much that can go wrong for you.

Perhaps more importantly, you have to seek out The Venture Bros, too.

NoSleep

I watched the first episode of the new season and it was a good R&M episode, far exceeding my expectations from those trailers.

Chollis

Quote from: Captain Z on June 20, 2021, 08:46:16 PM
I don't like how their pupils are squiggles instead of solid dots.

yes. watched a few of these last night and found the pupils very unnerving

selectivememory

The storyline with Morty and the portal was a good idea and escalated in a funny and entertaining way, but I wasn't that taken with much else in the episode. Didn't really find Rick's nemesis amusing at all, and Beth and Jerry are increasingly becoming comedic death for me. I mean, Beth has always been a shit character, but there was a time when Jerry was one of the funnier characters in the show.