You don’t have to feel bad about liking it, but you don’t need to express pride in your good taste either. Given the state of Rick and Morty fandom, this is probably the safest approach to practicing fandom: soft sells only. This is the easiest way to transcend a fandom problem: by being a sort of anti-fan But say it all with a kind of shrug, like what you really want to say is “just live your truth.” Say you like Rick and Morty because it’s weird, and you like being surprised every time you hit play or that you just love trying to spot the voices of the many guest stars that roll through or that you really like gross jokes about farts and genitalia, and you didn’t know how clever someone could be with them until you saw Rick and Morty. Instead, focus on something specific and work on your noncommittal voice, like you’re trying to sound cool in high school by showing off how much you don’t actually care. No shock and / or surprise that the other party hasn’t seen it yet or doesn’t know about parts that they would really enjoy. Don’t call it “the best / funniest / smartest show on television,” even if you have a pretty solid argument for that. It can feel strange to publicly be into a show that has some truly bad fans - but it can be done if you are delicate about it and completely abandon the hard sell. Like working in an excellent cafe with poor ventilation, the stench of that grease clings to you, an unpleasant reminder of what was actually a pretty nice time. (Lazzo retired in December 2019.) It’s hard, then, to be surprised when the bulk of its audience isn’t supportive of people the network only showed interest in recently. Cartoon Network’s late-night programming block notoriously did not order a show created by a woman for most of its existence, and former creative director Mike Lazzo did not handle public criticism of this fact very well. (Harmon, it should be noted, has also very publicly confronted his own gendered abuse of power.) The outrage was further proved baseless and embarrassing when Gao wrote “Pickle Rick,” one of the show’s fan-favorite episodes.īut fandoms don’t spring forth from the ether, and Rick and Morty’s status as an Adult Swim show is part of the problem. Misogynistic fans reacted predictably with much whining online that quickly gave way to actual harassment, compelling Harmon to call them out. “They don’t ask for directions, and they leave the toilet seat down.”Īfter chalking it up to oversight, they corrected the writers’ room homogeneity by staffing Jane Becker, Erica Rosbe, Sarah Carbiener, and Jessica Gao in one big spree for the show’s third season. “I blame them for the inflation and the recession at the same time,” Harmon continued to riff.
“They make my wee-wee feel weird,” said Roiland. (When the chain brought back the sauce for a limited time, fans were then upset that there wasn’t enough.)įans have a documented history of being extremely annoyingīut some of that reputation comes from the behind-the-scenes dynamic of the show in the lead-up to season 2, a Hollywood Reporter interview noted that there were no women on the writing staff, and creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon made jokes about it in response. Rick and Morty fans have a documented history of being extremely annoying - most notably, when an episode mentioned a discontinued McDonald’s Szechuan sauce and said fans began a sustained campaign to resurrect it. When I asked a friend if he watched Rick and Morty a few weeks ago, he replied: “Yes, but wokely.” The fan reputation can be so prevailing that enjoying the show often feels as if you need to be at least a little self-aware in your fandom. Like anything so obviously Online, it’s impossible to tell if this post is sincere or satire, but it definitely struck a chord. “People who dislike Rick & Morty truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Rick’s existential catchphrase ‘Wubba Lubba Dub Dub,’ which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Sons.” “You have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty,” the post begins, claiming that much of its humor would go over the average viewer’s head. It’s been a meme for years now, fueled by a comment that went viral on Reddit. As a cultural object, however, there have been problems around its fans.
The series is as good as it’s always been - shockingly crass but also sharp, easily one of the funniest and most inventive shows on television.
After a mid-season hiatus, Rick and Morty returned on May 3rd with the first of five episodes to close out its fourth season.