(Pardon the hiatus. Combination of technical difficulties and living-situation limbo.)
Isaac piqued my interest in Rick & Morty. I’ve mostly seen clips, compilations, and other people’s comments. Believe it or not, the show is pretty easy to follow by that method. It might be easier to watch that way, considering how very adult it gets.
Like so many fans, I’m fascinated by the character of Rick. His travels through the multiverse have convinced him of two facts. One: nothing really matters. Isaac talked about that before. Two: Rick is a really remarkable person.
This second fact is evident to the audience as well, considering how he keeps succeeding and surviving. From what I’ve seen, it’s never dumb luck or some surprise plot twist. Rick is just more clever and capable than you’d expect of a thin, aging alcoholic. Or of a pickle.
Rick recognizes how remarkable he is, which makes him pretty hard to interact with sometimes. In this way, he’s like Lex Zuckerberg Luthor. He’s a narcissist. But in his knowledge of that first fact, he’s a nihilist, like the Joker.
Narcissism and nihilism seem to be contradictory. If everything is pointless, that should include the person who realizes that fact. But hey, Rick has mastered quantum physics; a paradox is a minor annoyance to him. If anything, Rick’s narcissism would suggest he is the only one that matters.
But that’s not it, either. Rick hates himself, too. He has very little in the way of self-preservation tendencies, at least consciously. On the other hand, he always survives. Maybe he’s lying about his own death wish. So he really is a narcissist. And why would he lie about that? Because he’s a nihilist. He’s trying his darnedest to believe his life doesn’t matter. It seems funny…until you hit the end of Season 2/beginning of Season 3 and find out the real reason he’s so jaded.
The answer to the paradox, of course, is everything isn’t pointless and Rick is not quite as good as he thinks he is but also more important than he realizes. God loves him, even when he’s being a Rick.
One more thing: Recently, Hank Green made a YouTube video saying that so much TV these days sacrifices meaning for plot. Rick and Morty has plot and, believe it or not, also meaning. Unfortunately, like Welcome to Night Vale or Black Mirror, that meaning is inevitably the darkest punch line the writers could think of.
The Correlation 