Rick and Morty
For efficiency’s sake, you could describe Rick and Morty to someone by calling it Futurama, just as an Adult Swim show, but to do so would be giving it short shrift. Sure, it’s got an imagination as expansive as it is twisted; in the world of Rick and Morty, a sci-fi cliché like a love potion is only ever about 20 minutes away from the complete destruction of all life on earth. And yes, it’s often at its funniest when going off on stoner-friendly riffs and tangents, with half of the first season’s best episode being entirely devoted to creator Justin Roiland improvising bizarre and bizarrely accurate TV show parodies.
Look under that colourful and crass surface, though, and you’ll see that Rick and Morty is an experiment in controlled chaos executed with supreme skill. This won’t surprise anyone familiar with co-creator Dan Harmon’s other original creation, Community, but his instincts for strong storytelling and developing audience investment through continuity translate just as well to an animated playground. With infinite possibilities for where the show could go each week, Harmon and Roiland followed their absurdist desires with complete abandon, often exploring sci-fi concepts and tropes to their metaphysical limit.
Rick and Morty becoming 2014’s most accidently thought-provoking show did little to impede its showmanship. If all you needed was a laugh, you couldn’t have picked a funnier pairing to watch than the titular grandfather and grandson. Morty, while loveable as the universe’s punching bag, provides one of the more realistic takes on early teenage puberty you’ll find on TV. Meanwhile, Rick Sanchez is one of the breakout characters of the year, a mad scientist who can outwit the literal Devil one episode, then throw the Star-Wars-cantina-scene of house parties the next. Effortlessly bouncing from pop culture parody to philosophical comedy and back each week, the only thing you knew to expect from Rick and Morty was just how good every episode was going to be.
