The PAINFUL Decline of Rick and Morty

[Music] [Music] [Music] sorry [Music] listen we need your help hey brax did do you want to stop stealing my content for a second what i said stop stealing my content who don't back out of this i know you've been poaching my videos you [ __ ] cares well it's official everything i like is destined to burn up and die oh hey didn't see you there my name is cartoonchi i was just pondering my orb and looking to the near future apparently the next month my entire family is going to contract corona mutated with aids so before i fall into another self-destructive and depressive episode i think i'll watch a show i haven't seen in a while to distract myself from coming ruin scene transition rick and morty is unfortunately a very popular adult swim animated series created by jim roley hormones pumping when i have sex with a children's story that's known for a lot of things outside of its detrimental impact on our culture some good some bad but mostly bad but it is pretty good starting to crude back to the future parody and quickly establishing its own identity the show is the most popular adults from show of all time and from the looks of things one of the most beloved shows ever made season one of rick and morty came in more unexpectedly than my birth and charmed audiences around the world with clever meta humor its surprisingly compelling narrative and heaps upon heaps of mind-sucking to go around it's not often you get a show that has no bad episodes in its first season much less have every episode be an absolute gem in its own right not only was it funny it had characters with more too than what originally meets the eye moments of fascinating nihilism that today may come off as reddit tear oh we are about to spec in the infinite cosmos of the multiverse shlock but back then it was hard hitting even if in hindsight it was more tryhard than your average sniper i know it's a massive meme to say that rick and morty is smart thanks to a select group of individuals but it really was at times believe it or not it does take some form of intelligence to write a character as layered as rick even if you don't need an extremely high iq to understand that's not to say the show with some profound emotionally mature introspection or meaning in place in the universe because if you go in with those expectations you may find yourself obsessively analyzing the subtext for the scene where rick rips a fat one in front of a planet full of women but it was the subtle touches of these themes that made the show stand out more than its already wildly different humor was doing for at the time season 2 expanded on the show immensely with better animation more jokes character development and honestly well-written narrative of an overarching story amid the episodic craziness it's not what i was interested in personally but the cartoon community eating up anything with the substance of a to be continued sit your bird ass down that would be crazy right and shockingly with only one episode that people commonly refer to as bad season two is where the show really started to explode with attention countless theories endless praise and a devoted fan base in the infancy of its awfulness truly rick and morty was at the top of the world and then nothing an entire year goes by nothing everyone kept quiet for a bit after this and then come april fool's day down the highway thank you samurai jack here's rick and morty season three an explosive beginning to this day is still one of the show's best episodes with this one move roy and harman are not only revived the show's fan base but the attention attracted so many viewers season 3 was easily rick and morty at the peak of its cultural relevance memes were made of varying quality petitions were signed for a mcnugget source foreshadowing the darkest day of humanity and season 3 was slated to be fully aired during the summer of 2017 [Music] now that was a fine history lesson was it not i've actually been rather eager to see how the show turned out after all it genuinely used to be one of my favorites of all time i own a t-shirt which i have never actually had the courage to wear out in public and for having a molotov thrown at me i only rick and morty funko pop hey it was 2017 different times and it sits neatly on my shelf amid a row of black eyed creatures silently staring at me from behind and filling me with existential dread as a constant reminder of my horrible money spending habits oh yeah that's the perfect way to spend my grandma's inheritance i also have a small poster that's in a rather unfortunate position as it constantly looks like the mercs from tf2 are going to come down and beat it to death believe it or not i did own a lot more merchandise than this at one point you want to know what happened to that but now we're getting sidetracked i'm quite interested to see where the show went after all this time so with that said everyone grab your popcorn your rick sanchez body pillow and what have you welcome to the future of rick and morty [Music] or i will tweet and you will be cancelled all right that's it arms are crossed what the [ __ ] now i'm struggling to find a cohesive way of phrasing this so i'll just outright say it rick and morty fell off plus ratio plus unfortunately your mother there are many parts of season three and over half of seasons four and five that contain writing so badly unrecognizable compared to the show's previous feats that each one of these seasons contains at least one episode that could be classified as a sin in the new testament i don't know what happened was a sudden change in cognition has the show been corrupted by the woke if that's the case i suspect whoever approved the sperm baby episode to have some kind of severe learning disability other than being obnoxiously horny and a cartoon network executive if anything i'm concerned about this show not just because it's bad now although it is i mean i think it's trying to tell me something trying to keep a continuing plot going on while constantly mocking serialization self-loathing in other words continuously referencing things hoping people will laugh at them because they recognize it self-doubts then there's the sperm episode that probably counts as self-harm actually guys it is okay i'm here to help you gamergate okay never mind this is just another tale of seasonal rats a tale you're most likely all too familiar with if you watch anything these days actually but this time it's about something that i used to genuinely love unconditionally so this is technically my archduke franz ferdinand whether it is the originally fun meta humor being two wrong steps away from a marvel movie the creativity being exchanged for creative attempts or the originally solid overarching story being taken about as seriously as a modern gwenpool comic there's plenty for me to rip into and i don't exactly take pleasure in doing so i'm going to be mean in this video i'm going to be very mean actually but it comes from a place of love for a show that seems to have taken memes on dna of the soul far too literally expose someone to cringe long enough they will learn to see they become a cooper desperation love anger all means all passed along monsoon 4-6 the thrilling spectacle of a show that has run out of room to grow its gargantuan ego after all you need to have a very high iq to understand you're wrong about me i mean moving on helped me forget about deceiving inside but who am i kidding i was born to cope please don't say it doctor turn off my cringe inhibitors oh god this will be a sort of deep dive to the modern hellscape it's rick and morty today and to definitively figure out the how the what is wide and who conceived and whenever or however they are claw through the walls of uncertainty that surround my steadily declining mental stability but more importantly the future of rick and morty let's begin rick and morty hates serialization right no drama keep it episodic yes i heard what you [ __ ] said and because they hate serialization so much they go to some incredible lengths just to let the audience know just how much they want to stay episodic dead wife yes now everyone can shut up about it now a welcome disc at matpat aside rick and morty begins a fairly episodic show events from previous episodes would of course be referenced but there was no real ongoing plots every episode was self-contained usually involving the a-plot of rick and morty going on adventures with a b-plot involving the smith family on the side it worked very well extremely well in fact considering that season 1 is the tightest when it comes to comedy although i'm still eagerly anticipating the day someone makes an angry tweet about this little miracle hey hey hey that was until season 1 episode 10 close rick counters of the rick kind what's interesting about this episode apart from the fact that i had to do a double take reading out its name is that it was the first episode to really kickstart an ongoing plot insert obligatory evil morty theme because that's all i have left in life kermit suicide [Music] the fandom was practically set alight with this one episode evil morty would become the center of theories for years to come some of these theories in hindsight were made up by fiending cokeheads but it got people talking it got people invested but evil morty would only be the beginning of the continuing story that the show would follow as in the same episode the citadel of rix is established we are given subtle hints to rick's past and his shaky history of the citadel and the galactic federation i like to convince myself that the fans of the show take after rick not because of his sociopathy because of the irrelatable struggle of fighting the illegal yakuza if you were convinced that evil morty was going to be a haha funny cliffhanger not like i did because the concept just seems so absurd to me then you are most likely taking this in instead that's not just something you can drop on a viewer and expect them to take it as a parody going into season two the stage was absolutely being set returning characters glimpses at rick's past honest to god character development and above all an ending that was legitimately impactful and i don't mean it was life-changingly impactful rick and morty is of course a dumb show of amazing writing thank you jake so just because to understand the show you need to have the literary intelligence of this man it doesn't mean the show is devoid of emotional substance season two's finale worked because they had set up an overarching story about giving too much away while still giving just enough to keep stringing people along there was genuine uncertainty for the fates of the characters and the tone was decidedly not comedic rick deciding to give himself up to the galactic government out of need to protect the people he loved while at the same time pushing him away like he always does was a fantastic ending this was genuinely great storytelling then of course season 3 followed up on this by wrapping up the storyline but still leaving some loose ends for a continuing plot so that the show could have its status quo challenged but still be sort of familiar when they go back to being episodic season 3 episode 7 tales from the citadel is without a doubt the single best episode of the entire show when you see people grabbing each other's knobs and throwing up gang signs of their college professors because rick and morty enlightens them with intelligence they are most likely riding on the high of this episode in particular it's such a dumb looking allegory for real world class drivers and police brutality i think if every black person on the planet was replaced with morty the police would be too [ __ ] petrified to pull them over but it's the way the story is told it's somehow gripping and as long as there's division and corruption in the world this episode will remain timeless but aside from how politically charged the episode is it also brought back evil morty and set him up as a legitimate antagonist instead of what i assumed was a joke about cliffhangers and it was a legitimately shocking reveal the way he climbed up the presidency by saying the right things about the current climate of the citadel but only so that he could be in control is of course absolutely sound when you look at the episode dramatically and how relevant it is today but it was also a fantastic way to write him providing this genuine political candidate who survived an assassination attempt just to pull the rug out from under us with oh [ __ ] he's that guy from the first season so you can definitely see why the show gave so many 14 year olds a brain erection bitterly ironic when the american education system is still failing the vast majority of teens by having money thrown at it constantly laying on a little thick aren't you well no but what are you doing in my house harley that's aside i understand why people think rick and morty requires a nasa computer to be implanted into your cranium to understand its deep social commentary i just think that some of them should keep that gemmy neutron complex themselves but hold on my fellow viewer how did we get here so far it seems that rick and morty set up a very intriguing and well told story it is therefore serialized but i thought rick and morty hated serialized stories apparently not considering that this one is genuinely interesting the show loves being serialized but what if it didn't hey t-source tune here if i take my show and drive it off of a cliff i can certainly tell my audience that i was simply trolling them the entire time rick and morty is a dumb show with amazing writing but what if the writing isn't even amazing rick and morty is a dumb show but how could this be well seasons three four and five were to develop somewhat of an ego despite them always finding a way to set up a serialized story develop the characters etc they will always show some form of contempt and bitterness towards telling a cucking story i've reached through that obnoxious use of meta humor in later seasons which i'll touch on in a second or it's them finding a way to constantly undercut a serious moment in favor of doing a little trolling that's not to say the show cannot make jokes about serialized stories it's when they directly insult the viewers intelligence with wow this is garbage you actually like this that my patience begins to wear finn here's an example of the show making a joke about serialized stories that's actually good rick reveals his tragic backstory to the galactic federation so that they can discover the formula ricky made to create his portal gun he feel bad for rick as he has to relive the death of his wife and daughter just to be extorted for information against his will when the federation obtains the formula it turns out that the entire backstory was completely made up nothing about it was real nothing about it the formula was actually a virus that gave rick full control of the machine that is currently melting his brain so that he can escape it was a very clever dig at tragic backstories without completely insulting the audience's intelligence while also pushing the plot forward in an interesting and smart way it's simply good writing for contrast here's an example for show waving at stick in the audience's face it turns out the previous backstory was actually true i i'm sorry but did kojima write this then it goes for the entire goddamn thing get somewhere close to an emotional high only for rick and morty to have this little exchange afterwards oh dead wife yes now everyone can shut up about it cool there's several reasons why this absolutely blows since a substantial part of this memory was used in rick's fake backstory that means that rick did alter the details of a memory which they specifically stated was impossible what are you talking about this is a memory you can't alter details of a memory wow that twist was so good it find a previously set up parts of the world to stop this specific incident from happening aren't i a [ __ ] what are you talking about this is a memory you can't alter details of a memory and then there's just dead pulling the crap out of the scene just to break about how you're one step ahead of the fans effectively torpedoing any sort of emotional investment someone might have had for this moment and what makes it unfortunate is that this scene represents the current attitude the show has towards not only comedy but storytelling and character arcs in general and it has been like this since season three yes despite season 3 being home to one of the show's best episodes to date i struggled to define the season as either ambitious or pretentious largely in part to the times where the show attempted to be character and story driven only to either laugh at the audience for taking it seriously or taking its story seriously but with literary competence of a circo professor which means old monkey and annoying it's sad to watch the show suffer from a severe mental disorder and identity crisis all at once because all they end up doing is half-assing both of the shows that they want to be and there are far too many examples of this but i'll list a select few just so you don't have to take my word for it the first episode of season 3 is really solid if you completely disregard the context the finale of season 2 was rick at the apex of his development turning himself into the government in order to keep his family safe after losing his best friend during the one moment he decided to show his caring side eavesdropping his family and also having it be implied that he agreed with jerry's sentiments season 3 comes around and suddenly revealed that rick was just backseat gaming the federation into playing themselves it was all just a game of chess to him so he could dismantle the government and kick jerry out of the family now there are several phrases going through my mind right now mostly containing the words what the [ __ ] rick's development is just curb stomped in favor of the writers displaying their fetish for making rick a literal god we're also having rick kick jerry out of the family despite agreeing with him in the last episode as well as contrasting his previous policy of not getting involved in his daughter's marriage i am simply [ __ ] surprised not a single person working on continuity caught wind of this also if it was this easy for ray to destroy the government by wrecking the economy herbert hoover's style and why he's never done it before to get him off his back is a mystery that we simply can't solve these issues take an otherwise solid return for the show and stomp it into the ground vindicators is already one of the worst episodes of the season which i will get into later but the episode dunking on the audience for thinking rick would actually give a damn about morty just for the sake of subverting expectations and cracking a joke will always be borderline insulting to me and it's not because the joke caught me out i knew exactly where they were going with it but undercutting a serious moment that has some semblance of build up just for rick to drunkenly start singing the praises of a character that he memed with previously in the episode feels incredibly tacky and the reason why it feels tacky and unfunny is that this joke has been stuck on repeat for free seasons rick dismisses any possible carry yes for morty with a joke except here there is legitimate build up to a slightly different kind of scene only for it to be the same joke we have heard for free seasons and when the show isn't trying to make a joke about character development or serialization it opts to actually taking it seriously and then somehow failing harder than the infrastructure of libya the entire plot line involving beth potentially being a clone is one of the most embarrassing displays of the show flaunting its intelligence while having the depth of a puddle the scene where rick starts giving a speech about intelligence in the universe the beth when proposing the idea of cloning her so she can live a separate life is so up its own ass you'd think it was written from a daily cage game it seems to walk the same line that morty's monologue to summer and rixty minutes did except there the conversation was grounded it brought up a life-changing event from morty from a previous episode that being him burying his own body he actually gave summer an answer to her feeling of being an accident and it was one of the many parts of the show where its nihilistic themes had some form of soul telling both summer and the audience that nothing matters in the ends they should just make the most out of life and just enjoy themselves it's both poignant and effective abcs of death on the other hand aside from being the worst episode of the season for reasons explained later is so bafflingly vague in what it's actually trying to say we can't relate to it as an audience beth certainly doesn't get a very clear answer out of it and it's not the climax of a previously established plot point which pins down exactly why i feel this was rushed out the ass if they gave this plot more time to simmer and made rick's speech more coherent than the discord vent post this could have been more effective than rixty minutes and this is just one of the many examples of the show dropping the ball when it comes to both serious storytelling and just simply not caring it plagues not only season 3 but every season going forward consistently failing to live up to its previous standards by having a toxic and schizophrenic relationship with serialized stories it's a relatable feeling of disappointment at this point speaking of relatable disappointment let's talk about divorce the ongoing divorce plot between jerry and beth is a travesty of storytelling and i mean i'm not gonna judge and the plot was mildly interesting for about five minutes before being whatever it also gets resolved in less than like three minutes and it's terrible why bother making a big deal out of summer loving jerry yet the next time we see them both together and episodes were for development down the bloody toilet just because the writers wrote oops silly jerry what a [ __ ] [ __ ] on the script and thought it was a serviceable b plot jerry has a habit of letting things go to his head and making situations worse but the previous episodes that did this similar plot always had him mature and learn from these experiences taking the initiative and coming out on top of a win and in abc's of beth he doesn't even get to do that as the conflict is completely resolved without his involvement and in the finale of season 3 opts to resolve the divorce fiasco by interrupting rick's mostly solid a plot of the stupid rush the melodrama of beth possibly being a clone mixed with beth and jerry just getting back together in the span of three minutes with beth's reasoning being that her memory of hating her first kiss with jerry doesn't matter anymore because now she loves it which in her mind means she's a clone despite rick stating the clown would be an exact replica of her so she essentially just admitted that she'd rather believe she was a clone and realizing she loves jerry again after spending a few months apart christ the audacity of this [ __ ] imagine having your wife just admit in front of you that she only loves you because she believes she's a clone that's rough buddy if that was the point of the scene then i'd be down with it but it's not this is supposed to be a serious and heartwarming moment and it's ruined by plain amateurish writing that somehow makes beth more unlikable and the entire cloning fiasco is just rico makes an identical clone of beth but for some reason is too stupid to remove the conversation of them discussing cloning her from her memory despite already making it so that she doesn't know if she's a clone or not if rick had just gone full nuclear instead of being a conniving prick about the entire ordeal this problem would not arise it is completely unrealistic for rick to not do this as it's obvious that this would eventually happen he is the smartest guy in this self-contained part of the universe he shouldn't be oh my god just please stop i think we've had enough tails beth skywalker over here if she was still on earth she would have eventually gotten with jerry too since they're both the same but beth's reasoning for even liking jerry again is because she thought she was a clone did someone fall asleep when thinking of this i know god we haven't even scratched the surface of season 3's attempts at serious plot and character development an episode so simple on the outside so classic in its approach to rick and morty isms with actions so fun so violent and so unabashedly rick and morty that they take the time to have the proverbial hype train crash and collapse so hard you mistake it for being the average driver in turkey just so they can make you feel terrible for committing the horrendous crime of enjoying yourself i am of course referring to peak fiction the majesty and perfection of i'm pickle rick [Music] pickle rick is the storytelling masterpiece that redefined adult swim's legacy the personification of the word comedy and all of its varying synonyms vaudeville does this mean funnyville exists pickle rick will occupy the church of that oh never mind it's french okay pack it up everybody show's over wanna know what's funnier than the french pickle rick of course i slipped my arms when i was 14 and horribly depressed that is what pickle rick is like off the wall entertainment and then suddenly you get a sledgehammer to the bollocks reminding you you just enjoyed watching people getting brutally murdered providing a lecture where a therapist sits rick down and explains to him all the nuances of his character and his fatal flaws in an attempt at being smart and grounded but instead ends up being the worst case of tell don't show i have ever seen if you want a quick and easy way to feel like you're being scolded by a writer's mouthpiece for liking something watch pickle rick such a masterclass in being condescending by now you have probably picked up what season 3's main problem is it tries to be ambitious with its storyline and characters but not only struggles with deciding when's the right time to take something seriously they also struggle with general consistency and coherent writing that doesn't bring the script to a screeching halt and it overall severely handicaps how much you're going to enjoy an episode take the whirly dirly conspiracy for example the a plot involving rick and jerry is fantastic and if that was it then they would easily be one of the best episodes of the season but the b plot involving summer morty and beth not only completely ignores summer's character development from episode 2 by bringing her down from her badass independent side to a sniveling self-loathing mess who tries to make her breasts larger just to get back of her boyfriend it is completely and shockingly out of character and the resulting b plot cannot be saved because it is inherently dumb that's not even taking into account what the series does to morty morty becoming more like rick over time is completely believable and i love the idea but having him become borderline jaded and pissed off the point where he mutilates summer's boyfriend for the crime of being a bit of an [ __ ] is so hilariously out of character for him it's not like he was always this jaded beforehand sure he was on his way there but this was a massive leap from what we saw of him previously morty's development is seriously rushed he's just a mini rick at this point and if you're going to develop him like this try to commit because randomly turning him back into the horny teenage average cartoon she enjoyer for a specific episode only helps to make things more inconsistent episode 6 is also where the bulls were sort of dropped just not as severely as the other episodes it's all right but it's mostly carried by what could have been a brilliant concept and just not so much the execution no one speaks like a human being here and it all goes by far too quickly these are just a handful of problems for season 3 specifically if i could go through each episode scene by scene i would but i don't want this video to be too long however season 4 must have taken note of how ambitious season 3 was because instead of trying to refine their storytelling to do what season three did but good they instead opted to completely reset the status quo of the series back to episodic adventuring which i must stress i really don't mind but instead of these episodes feeling like a breath of fresh air they feel stale self-conscious and absolutely littered with metal humor that i'll discuss soon in the show's drive towards being more and more benched as it continues the episodes just feel desperate and lifeless like they're trying really hard to recapture the magic of the first two seasons i'll talk more about season 4 later on but i just want to bring up episode 6. people were very divided on this episode when it came out but a bunch of youtubers started talking about how genius it was because of how much it deconstructed storytelling conventions and people's expectations where the series may go or constantly mocking themselves for being too meta not a real train it's a story device literally a literal literary device quite literally this isn't particularly smart guys it just feels like an extension of the writer's mind rather than something that's supposed to entertain people it's the equivalent of a youtuber criticizing something for doing the big cringe and then turning back to the audience and going now i know i do this as well but it's an easy trap to fall into for a cheap joke i've fallen into it before but for professional screenwriters to be going this low there has to be some form of self-doubt going on because this episode was painfully unfunny apart from the bechdel test gag which was admittedly pretty smart and when it comes to providing ironic fan service just to take a jab at the audience looking at you evil morty scene it's borderline pretentious the writing is just cold and dead like the love from my father can't think of a bigger or worse way of telling people we don't like being serialized especially after giving up on being serialized because you [ __ ] suck at it but then by the end of the season you become serialized again what is this show's deal either commit to one or the other you smug neanderthals constantly trying to stick it to the fans more than a few times will get old super fast there's teasing people from making crackpot fairies and then there's just practically beating people of the brutality of a yakuza heat action this episode just reeks of writers desperately trying to look and sound smart constantly referencing the fact that their writing is awful and then doing it anyway as a form of therapy or self-assurance it's really bad i am thankful at the finale episode of season four star morick turn of the jerry okay [ __ ] off guys i am thankful that this one tries to at least take its storytelling seriously for a change even if it feels rushed it makes the clone bef plotline sting a little less it brings back tammy and bird person and the galactic government it has good action it's really funny without going too meta it's a good episode but it's just bizarre it feels like a begrudging acceptance from the writers that they have to make at least one story focused episodes each season to avoid having a pipe bomb melt to their offices and it's really telling you to how much season 4 avoided overarching stories like the plague dedicated entire episodes to making fun of the fans and then suddenly just brought back tammy and bird person for an episode that was entertaining but not exactly satisfying it again feels like it's incredibly up its own ass and desperately wants to end the story content to get back to what it's doing as seen by tammy being unexpectedly killed after being absent for two seasons i highly doubt that royland and harman actually have a plan for what they're doing because some of these decisions just come so out of left field and the dialogue is so spiteful towards she died the way she lived over serialized good grief that i can't view it as anything other than begrudging crowd pleasing but after this season five also avoids storytelling for episodic episodes which i must stress i don't mind but what the hell happened here season four at the very least had a handful of pretty decent episodes that's acid specifically is up there of one of the best in the series but season five is so perplexingly awful that it feels like an entirely different show episode one is okay and that's like one of the best in the season again i'll talk about season quality along with season four in a bit but the serialized story told in season 5 only really comes into play near the end with the final three episodes now i'm gonna flip the script on your second there we go so basically these episodes are the best in the season but i'm a little mixed on the execution episode 8 finally resolved what's going on with bird person and it's a cliche and very simple episode concept for rick and morty but what it does is admittedly interesting it's not short on comedy for the most part but yeah it blows but what's interesting is that there are many parts here that are played completely straight it's not a particularly good episode due to how absolutely insane the pacing is but it does a lot of stuff that i would love to see the show continue doing the interaction between and his younger self are brilliant and a lot of moments here really get to the heart of rick's character you know without requiring a [ __ ] therapist that he is an inherently contradictory person who believes that nothing matters but still tries to connect with people only for well even though nothing matters okay you matter to me would you like to join me doing awesome [ __ ] that matters no i would not i would rather be a judgmental dork case closed underneath all the usual rick-isms is a deeply troubled and lonely person who pushes people away and we technically already knew that but to see it be explored further throughout an entire episode that is played mostly straight is a very rare occurrence and the next two episodes are honestly pretty solid each containing serious scenes of plot and character development played completely straight while still having time for jokes which are unfortunately lacking in being all that funny it shows that rick and morty is very capable of striking a balance between comedy and serious plot if it wants to however yes now everyone can shut up about it it still has moments that show it's completely unfiltered spites towards being serialized and it is unbearably disappointing even as the episode ends with evil morty breaking through the self-contained universe that rick set up so that he is the smartest and having that moment where rick and morty both work together suggesting that rick is finally humbled after being outsmarted by a morty and for having his morty view his crybaby backstory it gets incredibly hard to really care because the show is a constant walking contradiction and i can only hope that season six finally strikes that balance we got to see a glimpse of other than that i appreciated that the show did something with morty's growth that seems in character for him i like the episode 10 took its ending mostly seriously with few interruptions and yeah that's kind of it season five despite going out on the high notes is a laughable train wreck otherwise overall seasons three four and five rick and morty cannot decide whether to be serious with its plot or treat it like a joke often leading to them half-assing both choices and negatively affecting the quality of the show's storytelling by frequently shown that they have no idea what they're doing they're just making things up as they go along just to satisfy people who are understandably annoyed at this persistent schizophrenia now with that out of the way my own schizophrenia is telling me to stop finding appropriate music for transitions because my video is not funny enough and autism equals funny i guess so [ __ ] it now let's jump into the disintegration of creativity which led to the show seasonal rot elon musk and his consequences have been disastrous for the human right weight that's not let me fetch it remember when rick and morty episodes offered a weird but interesting premise not only provided clever twists and turns were also written unpredictably in a way that didn't just rely on the shock value season 1 and season 2 understood this assignment better than the others and it's telling just by how different they feel in comparison remember the simulation inside a simulation inside a simulation where rick tricks both the antagonist and the audience in order to win remember rick's faulty love potion that completely destroys humanity forcing him and morty to move to another dimension with the contrast of morty's shock and rick's jadedness implying that he's done it multiple times before remember the episode that was just [ __ ] ad-libbing before then spiraling into a story about the effects parenthood can have in careers remember how all of these were much better more surprising and tasteful than the [ __ ] [ __ ] dragons and the [ __ ] monsters there lies the fatal problem even if rick and morty couldn't nail basic storytelling progression i expected them to at least keep their quality of entertainment consistent but alas here's an episode comprised entirely of jokes at the expense of fans and itself in an effort to look smart here's mutant turkey people i can't say i understand the thought process behind this here's an elon musk cameo wait that's not uh motherf oh here's the sperm episode again do i need to state how much i hate the sperm episode again holy [ __ ] what happened if it wasn't enough for summer and beth to just randomly jump into the scene and start bombarding the viewer with feminist talking points i should have died in college out of nowhere it's the mere concept of the episode making it so abundantly clear the writers are fresh out of creative ideas it takes the absurdity of rick and morty and just dials it up far past the point of necessity in the hopes that people find it entertaining and back to summer and before tend to lecture the men in the room on sexism the scene is so out of place and ridiculous that you think it would be done for parody reasons which is something rick and morty would have absolutely done in the first two seasons how do you manage to unironically write this scene in rick and [ __ ] morty you know i really don't want to think about the sparrow episode anymore i whoever approved this needs to sit in the corner in timeout uh yeah go away now i am a rather easily amused child spending most of my free time wasting my life away on a domestic violence stress outlet and hard coping by simping for japanese women that don't exist so take this with a grain of salt but come isn't funny and neither is most of seasons four and five actually what is this picture of elon musk doing here scraping the bottom of the [ __ ] barrel for a concept that works and even when stuff like the voltron episode sounds kind of cool on paper they told me to anyway actually in all fairness it's quite accurate the voltron itself it all feels like an incredibly severe reaction to the criticism season 3 got for deviating from the status quo so instead of trying to deviate from the status quo about the perception of a death bat they're instead trying to badly mend the status quo by overdoing the rick and morty with sub brick intelligence that's two new vegas references in a row i'm on the road today listen we need your help rick hey hey hey hey hey wait you're [ __ ] i mean rick and morty can't make an anime parody funny something plenty of cartoons had done in the past including children's ones then there's a problem while we're on the topic actually this isn't just a problem that stemmed from seasons four and five sure they were the ones to fart on the flames causing a deadly explosion but the warning signs of the machine breaking down can be traced back to season 3 from the only episodes that actually feels disconnected from the horrible storytelling morty's mind blowers were season 3's replacement for an interdimensional cable episode where instead of ad-libbing commercials and programs on interdimensional television they instead opted to creating an anthology of sorts of adventures that rick had wiped from morty's brain that he couldn't handle spiraling into morty realizing that rick had just been wiping memories he didn't want morty to remember and then resulting in them both losing their memories the memories themselves vary from mildly entertaining to some of the most boring [ __ ] i've ever seen the vast majority of the memories were unfunny and instead of actually tackling the idea of rick controlling morty's entire world view through mind erasure of a bit more seriousness which could have led to a standout episode of both the season and the entire show they instead opt to erasing both rick and morty's memories just to create more opportunities for terrible skits let's compare that with rixty minutes all of the comedy is entirely improvised with the visuals being animated to try and paint a picture of what the [ __ ] is going on in justin roiland's brain even when it isn't funny the concept of it is so novel and the idea is so out there it's hard not to appreciate the efforts and it's good then that most of the improv was actually funny inherently professional voice actors and comedians trying to come up with a weird nonsensical story on the spot while not editing out mistakes or brief laughter is immensely more entertaining than watching 20 minutes of mediocre skits that are structured and confined to the adventures of rick and morty only rick's the minutes also use the concept of the characters being obsessed with seeing their alternate lives across the multiverse with good drama surrounding beth and jerry's relationship and some are feeling like she was an accident it had a perfect balance of improvisational comedy and effective dramatic and emotional beats and it's why you always hear people talking about rixty minutes the episode of rick and morty improvised comedic skits and commentary on parenthood in general yet nearly five years after it aired you never hear anyone talk about morty's mind blowers it is an inferior comedy that wastes the potential for good drama in service of jokes and it is perfectly representative of the show's desperate attempts to recapture its former glory and just how much the writing has changed by trying to replicate an episode that had already been done and failing in every possible way in many ways things will be like season one but more streamlined uh-huh uh-huh now look what you [ __ ] did you really don't have to be a critic to notice the steep drop off in quality what the hell is dogecoin oh no elon musk sorry elon task is yet another example of the show being short for ideas by taking the simpsons approach to celebrity cameos and i mean modern simpsons not classic simpsons which told actual stories of their cameos most of the time it's like yeah it's elon musk congrats guys how much does the subreddit pay you to do this it's such pathetic pandering it's no wonder reddit is in love with the show there is a scene in the episode featuring massive meme celebrity elon musk where rick just sits down and starts playing minecraft to elon musk's intrigue that's the joke accentures from adult swim animated series richard and mortimer is playing minecraft with elon musk in the room and no one saw the jokes that could be made at its expense laugh and that children is why elon musk is a try-hard meme celebrity who uses his status to try and create a parasitic relationship with his crypto investors and leaching reddit audience you're welcome why am i allowed to communicate with other human beings like what why when people in imdb start realizing that your show is in the gutter then you have a problem although of course you can just win the back of a story episode that always works and speaking of drawing creativity i don't know what the fascination of rick being a god is about but the fact they had to retcon the dumbass idea that he was the smartest man in the universe the season 5 finale really speaks volumes as to how broken they made rick all tension or stakes are completely annihilated from every episode because rick is just an all-powerful all-knowing god previous seasons firmly established that while rick was powerful and incredibly smart he was not invincible nor was he incapable of making massive mistakes remember when he cronenberged an entire planet because he couldn't create a proper love potion or an antidote that doesn't seem like something the smartest man in the universe would just do and that's just one of many moments where rick is clearly out of his depth and that's in season one and yes we know now that rick isn't the smartest man in the universe he's the smartest man in his contained part of the universe but this comes off as the writers doing a sharp u-turn before driving a show into the pits of hell as this was not shown to us beforehand and it's very clear that in every season past season 3 the writers are incredibly insecure about the criticism the show received and go to some bafflingly desperate levels in order to rectify their freak ups and it still doesn't make any sense because the ricks must be crazy the entire plot hinges on rick creating his own little universes microverse a teeny bird okay yeah thanks which contained people that eventually developed to become his equal in terms of intelligence effectively confirming that the season five finale was a desperate retcon it is impossible for the same guy who literally says taking things for granted to be the smartest guy in the universe or even his own self-contained universe especially when evidence from previous seasons continued to create massive plot halls and contradictions or how about rick just being an all-powerful god seemingly able to [ __ ] his way through every conceivable threat now he's a living swiss army knife and it's always dependent on the situation and what the writer wants rick to do as opposed to setting believable limitations what rick is capable of at any given moment depending on if the writers won't rick to win or lose a fight rick can just have insanely complex cybernetic implants invincibility shields shields that protect its heart electricity shields laser bracelets extendable staff the ability to create multiple clones of himself hamster ball random [ __ ] go and it's never a constant rectus either has somebody's abilities all of them or none of them depending on what the writers want killing all possible stakes and tension and what takes the absolute piss is that rick can literally win any fight that the writers put him in if he took full advantage of these abilities but it's like he never realizes he has them this is a man who can instantly kill people just by having them touch him there is no way for him to lose what was that death what kind instant that would have come in handy for the time of rick went toe-to-toe with a literal god literally god he got his ass kicked how oh yeah by the way the episode where rick gets his ass kicked by a god because he just didn't use any of his gadgets is right before the episode where rick pulls off this act of [ __ ] rick has used goofy gadgets before but it has never been on a level he can literally kill people if they touch him and then suddenly have him be completely nerfed when fighting an actual god and it's not like he's in any danger anyway because apparently rick just has a special operation phoenix that makes it so that whenever he dies his mind is automatically uploaded into any rick currently being stored in the basement in any dimension casually just revealing that rick is immortal anyway because stakes be damned i guess rick can die all he wants he will just instantly be brought back to life for the miracle of [ __ ] [ __ ] rick destroyed his operation phoenix like two seasons before this deeming it worthless and i totally would have accepted it if they just had us forget about it have rick die in later season and then be summoned back for his own machine but since rick just destroyed his operation phoenix stuff it seems like the mightiest of ass pulls to just bring him back to life via any dimension and even if that doesn't work he has an entirely different method of bringing himself back to life requiring morty's inputs so what's the point in any of the later episodes when they try to give the illusion that rick is in actual danger when he can just be brought back to life easily in his own universe and if that doesn't happen he could just hijack any universe's operation phoenix and reincarnate himself this show is so well written this again strongly conflicts with the first two seasons where rick seemed to be given actual limitations by people there are so many scenarios in the first two seasons where ricky would have greatly benefited from having these gadgets and yet he never used or had any of them on him despite some of them being cybernetic implants that would certainly remain in his body why bother with hand-to-hand combat or gunfights when you have the power of god an anime on your side i want more characters on the chopping block how about the entire smith family you can tell i'm getting tired of putting up you know the video voice because this is just this is just genuinely tiring me out it wasn't just morsi who had his identity stripped from him before becoming the younger version of rick only to have his previous self occasionally escape which makes him more inconsistent everyone in the smith family is an unbridled bag of cuts beth is borderline unwatchable now with nearly every line that comes out of her mouth being fueled by anger even when the person is directed to as being civil jerry's idiocy is no longer endearing and his sarcasm and cynicism puts him on power with rick just without any of rick's likable qualities and the gift of actually being somewhat funny the only character in the family who hasn't been majorly destroyed is summer and that's because she doesn't do anything you can remove her from the majority of recent episodes and there would be no significant change by knocking all of its main casts down to just being unlikable versions of rick a character written to be an [ __ ] you've essentially told the audience that your cynicism and hatred for the world around you is being directly juiced into your writing instead of being a smaller part of the show's philosophy writing the exact same character over and over when the show's original direction was just going to be about rick's nihilism being flipped in its head instead the show literally became the spitting image of an edgy nihilist teenager think of every stereotype for a reddit user and people who get their grasp on 4chan for the 4chan subreddit in spite of it all honestly i do think that rick and morty used to use the concept of nihilism well in its stories it wasn't insanely forced on people despite falling out of rick's mouth faster than i did down the stairs when i was five and it was clear from the season two finale that rick's cynicism and nihilism was fated to go in a direction where he could have an old flip and gradually learn to be more open and caring only for season three to kick down the door no thanksgiving incinerating all of that build up just to give us free seasons of pure unfiltered and arrogant hatred of the world from the writers using rick as their proverbial mouthpiece and the sad part about it is that i think they just realized that halfway through season five as we get glimpses of rick's caring side once again but it's too little too late if you ask me on and all that side anyways what's a show that tries to tell a story that has no problem of unceremoniously killing off characters at random without stakes what's an intense fight if you're left wondering why the protagonist doesn't just annihilate everyone in sight as he's very capable of doing what's an entertainment product that loses its edge amidst an identity crisis personally a waste of time and that's just a sad truth right there isn't it all these lost viewers one star ratings rotten reviews directed at a noticeable lack of care rushed storytelling inconsistent rules and characters episodes that strive to recapture that old rick and morty feeling only to painfully fall short and deliver an episode carried by ludicrous premise after ludicrous premise following a right track and path for creating something special but tainting it with wasted ideas sterilized jokes the creativity just isn't there all of this criticism only for viewers to be dragged back when they lay out the bait for a constructed story in a rather subpar fashion and we'll all keep falling for it hook line and sinker every time because we've watched this show for a long time think about it really this show is nearly a decade old at this point we're just around for the ride ironically or unironically the show is a fascinating car crash of wasted and spoiled potential that we just keep observing as we wait for it to recapture that one burst of lightning in a bottle that reminds us of the good days all right that cut a little deep at the end there here's my cat for some healthy juxtaposition look at her go beautiful little creature okay back to reddit hello everyone cartoon she here in this video i'm going to detroit become hypocrites as attentive viewers have noticed i am not funny and as a result i shouldn't really be in a position to complain about a show not being funny what's not being taken into account is that i am currently on my i don't give a [ __ ] i don't give a [ __ ] right now remember my comment about youtubers criticizing the things for doing the thing and then going well i know i do this as well but cool none of us are professionals we're just little voices on the internet or in your head i might not even exist but you should absolutely drive your car for that protest but when professional screenwriters and comedians may i remind you end up devolving from when they are universally considered funny i believe it's important to point out rick and morty post season two and to some extent season three is a parade no more lucky visual and auditory assault on the book to see if you can withstand its meta humor try to imagine the average youtube comment but as the basis for comedy writing it's quite terrifying we all know it oscar ramirez 2006 in our lives we don't need the reddit show to follow suit i've touched on this repeatedly throughout the video but the current state of rick and morty's comedy is vastly different and considerably worse than it used to be the show was never a stranger to meta or fourth wall breaking humor often making references to other aspects of pop culture in the form of jokes being made out of those references other shows and movies at the time had done this but rick and morty is one of the few to really make a big splash of its comedy as it was wildly different for every show at the time sure didn't just rely on reference humor though as it would also easily function as a dark comedy which determined it seemingly lost all meaning these days thank you for that michael sure not every joke was a winner but the vast majority of them were so it brings me great sadness to finally come off the copium and admit the show is just not funny anymore granted there are some decent lines but it feels the originally sharp bite of the show's wit has been sterilized in favor of safer and broadly appealing we didn't speak and actually clever jokes and i don't mean safer as in wow this show is so woke now i preferred it when rick said aloha akbar i mean the jokes just don't have any real bite to them anymore clever reference jokes like this one go go ski shoes are few and far between amidst the lines that are literally just references oh i forgot i literally have a screwdriver in my hand i mean the door i'm basically inspector gadget it's the same joke sure but which one feels more natural to you there's a lot of other more egregious examples too lab coat rip off doctor strange and then there's the constant self-loathing in the form of its constant internal battle with serialization and continuity that it shits out at every opportunity it's just so buggeringly lazy to constantly address that you hate serialization that you like episodic stories and being so overwhelmingly and stomach churningly self-aware you just end up being annoying it's so bloody insecure about itself like it knows that it's stupid but simply addressing that you know you're unfunny and lazy does not make the problem go away that's not how it works and it's not how it's ever worked and you know part of rick and morty's humor did stem from the absurdity of the multiverse in the many places and creatures rick and morty would encounter as well as the ways they would be dealt with sure some of it was low brow but it was inherently pretty humorous nowadays it's just the writers conjuring the dark spirit of seth rogen and all the cosmic power in the universe to write the most unfunny and creatively bankrupt ideas possible turkey people spur monsters [ __ ] dragons lady with tits in her arms that's not a joke i know that sounds really stupid that that's not a joke that was actually an episode that was that was a thing that happened someone actually sat down and wrote that also bring back into dimensional cable please have my babies i know the second one was married by a really crappy main plot and morty's mind blowers was a massive letdown but just bring back more of the improv stuff i'd love to see proper interdimensional cable free and with the new dynamic between rick and morty being established via season five finale the opportunity to use interdimensional cable and its improv comedy as a mask over an episode that's at heart fairly dramatic and earnest to be a great return to form how would that episode play out exactly well i don't know it's just the proposition what made rick and morty so lovable was how it went against genre and television conventions an entire episode full of improv gags that also includes effective drama and character development is the last thing people would generally expect from a tv show and maybe that at heart would make the concept of interdimensional cable more predictable since we know the stick but i think it's been a while since then and also cable 2 and mind blowers weren't exactly riveting in the drama department i see season 6 is a perfect opportunity to bring inter-dimensional cable back and the possibilities for drama underneath the absurd comedy are now practically limitless with what's been set up along with rick's directions a character being haphazardly corrected i apologize if there wasn't much to talk about here but it is very easy to narrow down the problems with the comedy of recent seasons it heavily relies on meta humor to work and it still fails it's like it's afraid to make any kind of joke over having to reference something to back it up but that's not what humor is it's such a sterilized show now it reeks of whedon and you know maybe there is a kind of possibly sort of maybe not really but possible argument to be made new writers are and bad no catering to modern sensibilities what are you expecting me to get really ranty about that well sorry there buddy but i'm not the quartering and even then i still doubt the show is woke [ __ ] word i hate it because there's still stuff like the bechdel test gag from season 4 episode 6 which was absolutely hilarious why is lesbian part of her job title oh now you're progressive dare i say the best joke of that season not because it's edgy but because it's just a well-written constructed joke that also criticizes the bechdel test that kind of stuff is what rick and morty used to relish in not aiming their jokes towards leftist ideologies or ideas in general because that's [ __ ] stupid i mean they generally just had more of a bite with their jokes and could construct a witty dig at a certain thing so it's not that the show is woke or catering to modern sensibilities i just genuinely think they no longer care about humor unless it's super meta and i'm all for assuming the best in people you won't find any culture wars here that kind of arguing tires me out and i feel ashamed for accidentally appealing to those people with my old jokes the last jedi came out five years ago chill out so generally r m's comedy can absolutely be criticized not because of personal taste but because there is a clear lack of effort compared to previous seasons you don't have to be the king of the [ __ ] comedy area to see the clear differences between pre and post season 3. and given the small glimpses we've seen of the old writers getting some of their brilliance in during newer episodes it feels understandable to me to take issue of what's currently being given no one wants to see another archer form of committed decline that just hurts to think about [Music] well i can't say i'm all too happy about this sure while this decline might not be of the same severity as other shows i've talked about over the years it's sort of unique in how bad it is rick and morty's decline is just depressing it's annoying and frustrating but not in a way though it feels cathartic to express your distaste for its current direction it's just sad my main concern with all this is how long the show can even last for of its streak of bad luck it's clear that with recent seasons that the show's ratings have tragically declined and faith in the current writers is not exactly strong and it's all perfectly reasonable the main thing i'm shocked with is just how fast seasonal rot hit the show compared to others it took two seasons for rick and morty to finally buckle under the weight of its own hype and that's just it it's a show that tried to write the ways of its own hype and seemingly believed it was this poignantly cynical and nihilist dark comedy that exists to spread its message of life being meaningless when that was never what the show was originally aiming towards sure it was cynical and nihilistic but it was never overbearing and it added a good bit of nuance to the characters and how they viewed the world around them and now every character has their individuality stripped from them and are just mini versions of rick with moments of breaking free from that horrible change in accordance with the current plot for an episode which only makes them more inconsistent and these sporadic high-stakes [ __ ] fighting between writers who want to take things seriously and those who don't want to add to the mess you simply can't help but get lost in the fascinating madness that is rick and morty and discerning why everything turned out the way it did is just as perplexing i mean one minute the show has meaningful commentary on existence from the perspective of one character and then the next second the show does a little trolling does that come swallowing there's a little does a little elon musk what oh you bastard i guess the real rick and morty were the friends we made along the way i didn't even bother to mention how shitty the pacing was in season five because it just felt overkill at that point but it really is almost impossible to follow along with the show as it's [ __ ] my name is barry allen and i'm the fastest man alive this is coming from a persona fan by the way my editing is a terrible blend of my thoughtful critique mixed with my irrationally severe autism and even then i had trouble taking in information as the show went along was part of the end game supposed to be confusing everyone because that seems more and more plausible the more i think about it and that's also the thing i cannot discern why the show is the way it is on one of adult swim's newer and much better shows does a fantastic job of demonstrating how insufferable your constant insistence of life is meaningless is and the only one who's left to defend you is some 14 year old bee nihilist it's time to wake up and smell the crack in your writing then and you know maybe after seeing season 3 be so heavily praised by people most of the time we were all waiting for the moment it would fall perhaps that was it anyway because if there's one thing people like it's having a popular negative opinion and to watch something beloved fall into the pit of hyenas that is modern animation discussion perhaps that's some of my own cynicism seeping in there as i jumped at the opportunity to make this video when i became convinced that the show was at the end of its rope then again comebacks aren't uncommon after seasonal wrath and with season five's finale taking the show into a much needed direction akin to that of season two maybe rick and morty could take the opportunity to become truly worthy of its previously godlike status as much like rick himself it takes a healthy amount of humbling to finally bring a god to its knees and to wake up to the reality of his situation and that my friends is the real reason why you need an extremely high iq to understand rick and morty i got you there comedy 100 [ __ ] you rip bozo [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh on your shoulders [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Cartoonshi シ

Views: 1,129,586

Keywords: Rick and Morty, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, CN, TV, Television, Cartoon, Cartoons, Cartoonshi, Animation, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5, Pickle Rick, memes, lol, stop, looking, at, my, tags, Rick Sanchez, Morty Smith, The Painful Decline, Criticism, Critique, Long form critique, Analysis, video essay, Modern Cartoons, Fall from grace, Rick and Morty critique, bad, awful, Evil Morty, Citadel of Ricks, A Salty Critique

Id: YDxOkC7vWAY

Length: 57min 22sec (3442 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/HowToChangeNameHELP]

Good video btw, watched the whole thing.