While Rick & Morty season 1 was generally not as dark as later outings, "Meeseeks and Destroy" features a controversial scene that remains the most divisively brutal moment of the series so far. Since the series debuted in 2013, Rick & Morty has pulled off an impressive tonal balancing act. While most of the show’s outings are light-hearted (if often bloody) meta-comedic adventures, sometimes Rick & Morty delves into more serious territory successfully.
This has resulted in some of Rick & Morty’s sillier episodes being disliked since the show has started to focus more on character growth and development in recent seasons. However, early on in its run, Rick & Morty had a single-minded focus on fun and it was not until late in season 1 that the show began to unearth some of the traumas behind its lead character’s amoral behavior. This makes it particularly striking that Rick & Morty’s most controversial and divisive scene in the series so far occurred as early as its fifth episode.
One scene in "Meeseeks and Destroy" (season 1, episode 5) earned the ire of critics and split the fanbase of Rick & Morty, eventually even prompting co-creator Justin Roiland to comment on the moment. The sequence occurred in an otherwise largely lighthearted plot that saw Rick & Morty spoof the fantasy genre, so did the moment deserve to be so divisive? A look back on the scene and its context in Rick & Morty’s tonal evolution is necessary to work out the answer.
The premise of "Meeseeks and Destroy" is a simple one. Tired of being traumatized by his misadventures with Rick, Morty demands that the pair embark on a less violent and vicious adventure than their usual outings, something simple and fun that can’t go badly wrong and result in untold death and destruction. Morty has a point, as his adventures with his grandfather have until this point already included nightmare-hopping and the gruesome Jurassic Park parody "Anatomy Park" (season 1, episode 3). However, anyone familiar with the dark humor of Rick & Morty will likely be able to guess where a story predicated on “not being traumatized” is soon going to head.
Late in the episode, King Jellybean molests Morty in a bathroom stall before Rick & Morty’s young protagonist fights him off in an uncomfortably serious interlude. While viewers could have reasonably guessed that Morty’s demand for an uncomplicated adventure would result in a more traumatic story than ever, few expected the nature of the trauma to be so grounded and handled with so little humor. Even after the finale of Rick & Morty season 5, the scene remains far the darkest moment that the show has attempted before or since, with Rick & Morty’s proceeding four seasons never touching on themes that were this discomfiting again. While there are darker outings of the series and more explicitly gross stories like Rick & Morty season 5 episode 4, none of the show’s stories have tried to take on a subject as sensitive as molestation in such frank terms before or since.
Understandably, a lot of Rick & Morty fans were shocked by the scene and the episode’s unexpected tonal shift, and the fan hate that the sequence received eventually led series co-creator Justin Roiland to address the controversy. Roiland defended the episode, saying the scene was intended to be deeply uncomfortable and he wanted to ensure throughout production that the moment was going to be presented seriously and dramatically, rather than played for laughs. While he succeeded in this endeavor, there is a larger issue with the outing that helps explain why so few fans liked the scene.
While Rick & Morty has some tragic twists and a handful of moving moments, the show’s tone as a whole was not self-serious enough to pull off such a dark scene back in season 1. Especially in season 1, Rick & Morty was largely characterized by its absurdity and irreverence. The moment could perhaps have worked better in one of the later seasons, where Rick & Morty took its characters more seriously and focused on serialized storytelling, but season 1’s wild and silly stories were a poor match for such a serious and sensitive topic.
It may be hard for fans to remember now that the Adult Swim hit is determined to take its characters seriously, but back in season 1, Rick & Morty was still mostly a raucous, filthy comedy. While Rick & Morty season 6 hopes to redeem Rick, back in the show’s early episodes, viewers didn’t even know the depths of his amorality and the character was mostly just a goofy, self-interested narcissist. Similarly, while Morty has become a sympathetic antihero attempting to escape his genius grandfather’s shadow in season 5, in Rick & Morty season 1 he was a good-natured, dim-witted springboard for zany storylines and goofy gags. As such, a scene that depicted this likable teen being molested stuck out like a sore thumb in an otherwise largely light-hearted episode. Even Rick’s eventual revenge on King Jellybean is almost an afterthought as the story wraps up, ensuring viewers got some modicum of catharsis but not engaging with the story’s effect on Morty at all. Rick & Morty often joked about the trauma Rick and Morty's adventures left them with, so never addressing the after-effects of the scene left a bad taste for some viewers.
While Rick and Morty’s power imbalance has been an issue for the series since its pilot, the series generally tries to depict Rick as an ultimately caring figure despite his flaws. While later, more serious efforts like the season 4 and 5 finales, "The Old Man and the Seat" (season 4, episode 2) and even "Pickle Rick" (season 3, episode 3) all proved that Rick & Morty could tackle darker themes and take its characters seriously, "Meeseeks and Destroy" was hated because it threw a shocking moment into a story that was silly and lightweight both before and after the scene. Rick & Morty’s later, darker episodes needed to give serious moments more room to breathe amidst all the anarchic animated mayhem, something that season 1 had no interest in. As such, the dark moment in "Meeseeks and Destroy" didn't land with many fans and became Rick & Morty's most controversial sequence as a result.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/2ZA0MwC
0 Comments