We here at TVWriter™ are huge fans of Adult Swim’s bizarre – and often grotesque – animated show RICK AND MORTY, which returned to our screens last Sunday night. For us, watching this mind-gobbling bit of whackery is like listening to Nirvana. We love its craziness because we’re crazy too:
by Neil Strauss
“Most second albums suck,” Dan Harmon says, lounging in a back room of Starburns Industries, a Burbank studio, across the table from Justin Roiland. The mismatched pair — Roiland is clean-cut, fair-skinned and upbeat; Harmon’s unkempt, grizzled, and cynical — are in the midst of creating not a second album here, but a second season. The show is Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, an animated sci-fi sitcom that’s very loosely based on Back to the Future and just may be the best-written comedy on television.
Each 22-minute story arc is plotted using the principles of Joseph Campbell’s mythological hero’s journey, but shot through with world-weary humor like a George Carlin comedy special in triple time. In just 11 episodes, the show has amassed a sizable cult following of devotees, with nine million people watching the show’s first season. Among them is Matt Groening, who recently had Roiland and Harmon create a Rick and Morty couch gag to introduce this season’s finale of The Simpsons.