Playing the Devil’s Advocate - Rick & Morty

If you wish to contribute or write your own opinion pieces please feel free to get in touch with either Rob on editor@uccexpress.ie or myself, Chris, on opinion@uccexpress.ie . Why to watch Rick and MortyBy Edger NeubauerFor any of you that don’t know Rick and Morty is an animated sci fi show centred on an alcoholic, narcissistic but incredibly intelligent and resourceful scientist Rick who works out of the garage and his awkward teenage grandson Morty. Cue crazy adventures in a massive expansive and incredibly detailed universe. Sometimes, they make Morty's parents mad. Other times, they accidentally open a rift in the universe. There’s probably a hundred different reasons to watch but here are probably the most important ones.The first and most important reason to watch Rick and Morty is that it falls on the right side of the balancing act, with animated or sci fi shows there is little limit in terms of imagination but at the same time the show and the characters need to be grounded enough to be relatable, for example shows like "BoJack Horseman," where the characters are anthropomorphic animals which share the same emotions and feelings that humans do. Then, there are also shows like "King of the Hill" that could have been live action and lost nothing. Rick and Morty gets this right, the show rarely if ever seems unrelatable to our lives today, often the premises of episodes are based on exploring established premises from sci fi or pop culture. For example, in one episode, Rick and Morty plan to incept one of Morty's teachers. As they go deeper and deeper through dream layers and a knockoff Freddy Krueger appears, but it never feels like the show is just ripping off an established concept but rather it goes further, finding new depth and often even poking fun at those same ideas. Secondly the show is a lot darker and deeper than one might expect. The show deals with a lot of deep and heavy issues such as life and death, meaning of existence, purpose in life etc. (it can be quite callous in respect to how to deals with death and violence), also for Morty it deals with the issue of his innocence and specifically the death of his innocence, recall the episode where Rick and Morty destroy their world and jump to an alternate dimension or universe, the only catch being the alternate versions of themselves have to die and Rick and Morty have to dig their own graves and bury themselves. For Rick, it has little effect on him (as if he’d done it before) whereas for Morty, he seems mortified (excuse the bad pun) as if a part of his innocence had died that day. Furthermore, on a point of depth, the show easily could have gone down the episodic route, where any character development in one episode is reset by the next, but it didn’t instead it made the character development subtler and nuanced which only adds to the complexity of the central characters. We see that deep-down Rick is not as self-obsessed as he is made out to be, he actually does care about some people and becomes incredibly depressed when he loses them, (the Hive episode) and we can then see a more human side to him. Similarly, we see Morty develop from a naïve and easily bullied and manipulated kid into a more confident, stronger and assertive character as a direct result of his experiences with Rick.Finally, as the Season 3 trailer told us “, this is a show that’s “so smart, it’s stupid”, that’s probably the best way to sum up the show. It will make fun of anything under the sun; from humans’ fascinations with male genitalia to parodying various popular movies and shows such as Nightmare on Elm Street and The Purge. The show’s brand of dark humour may not be everyone’s cup of tea so to speak, but it does show how they don’t shy away from poking fun at how unintelligent and miserable people can be. Such as Morty’s dad Jerry or the worshipping of giant floating heads in the sky. It’s this light heartedness which greatly compliments the darkness and the depth of the show casual watchers of the show can be entertained and bewildered by how silly the show is. It does not take itself seriously as you can tell from the animated hilariously half-hearted voice overs for the shows and commercials screened in their inter-dimensional cable episodes.***A Waste of all of our timesby Prudence GoodwyfeI absolutely adore Rick & Morty - it’s probably my favourite show going. Why I am against it, then? Because of the fans. Rick and Morty fans are one of the worst fandoms out there, and that includes Harry Potter & Steven Universe fans. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being in any one of the Schwiftposting groups on Facebook you know exactly what I’m talking about. These neckbeard mouthbreathers think that because they watch a show with scientific themes they’re absolute amazing geniuses. The most common ways this is expressed is twofold: a belief that there are only two genders, and you have to have an innate knowledge of scientific theory to understand the jokes.If you have a basic knowledge of biology, you know there’s at least three sexes: male, female and intersex. In saying that, intersex is an umbrella term for hundreds of different things, including slight chromosomal abnormalities. To say there’s only two genders is the most unscientific thing out there. And you have to know particle physics to get the jokes? Get fucked, it’s a dumb TV show losers. As much as I love Harmon & Roilan, they’re not Monty Python, nor are they Brian Cox. Wubba-lubba-fuck-you.