Rick and Morty

***Rick and Morty*** is an American adult animated science fiction sitcom created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon for Cartoon Network's nighttime Adult Swim programming block. The series follows the misadventures of cynical mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his good-hearted but fretful grandson Morty Smith, who split their time between domestic life and interdimensional adventures.

## History

Justin Roiland produced a show called *House of Cosbys* where a guy named Mitchell lives with a bunch of clones of Template:Wikipedia, Mitchell's favorite comedian. The show aired on Channel 101, co-founded by Dan Harmon. The show got taken down by Cosby's lawyer, however.

Disgusted by this, Justin created a crude and obscene short parodying *Back to the Future* (since Bill Cosby was a client of Universal Studios and BttF is produced in Universal Studios) called *The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti*. Justin liked his performance at the voice acting and decided to look on this idea further.

Eventually, Dan Harmon was approached by Adult Swim to create a new cartoon original series for the Cartoon Network block. But Dan Harmon didn't have any real experience on animation, however, and decided to call Justin Roiland who pitched the idea of the characters. Thus, *Back to the Future*'s Doc Smith and Marty McFly became *Rick and Morty*'s Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith.

## Why It Rocks

1. It's scientific and it focuses on exploring universes, which gives the show infinite ideas on creativity.
2. Great animation.
3. Amazing adventures and hilarious satire.
4. Rick and Morty have the best voice actors. Justin Roiland voices both Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith, and he even gets himself drunk to help portray Rick.
	* Same thing goes for the Russian voice over translation, where Dima Sienduk (Дима Сыендук) voiced not only Rick and Morty, but also the rest of the show's character cast.
5. Rick and Morty also appeared The Simpsons through a couch gag one time, which might have shown the crew of The Simpsons might have done some research of the characters, and the show itself.
6. Crazy death scenes.
7. Also has some great pop culture references, too. In the Season 1 episode, "Ricksty Minutes", Gazorpazorpfield parodies Garfield, and often times the pop culture references are often times satirical as *The Simpsons*.
8. Really entertaining characters.
9. "Pickle Rick" is an incredible episode for many reasons, and it even got it's very own internet meme.
10. Amazing action-packed scenes.
11. It is one of the very rare shows on [adult swim] to have a Japanese dub. Go on YouTube to check out a couple clips on the show dubbed in Japanese.
12. Really creative black comedy.
13. Over-the-top satirical violence that even the show pokes fun at sometimes.
14. The more dramatic scenes are well done.
15. It has some pretty interesting philosophical questions in relation to coming of age, mediocrity, loneliness, death, and ect.
16. Lots of memorable quotes like **"I'm Pickle Riiiickkk!"**, **"Wubba Lubba Dub Dub"**, and ect.

## Bad Qualities

1. The show's frequent nihilistic tone, along with how the characters constantly go through the perception that life is meaningless and should just accept that as it is can make the writing come off as immature and dumb.
2. Some of the aliens are very poorly designed.
3. The character designs and backgrounds look very weird, though this may be intentional.
4. The animation isn't the best in some episodes, such as in the pilot.
5. Jerry can be an unlikable character along with Frank Palicky, Morty's bully and a rip off of Henry Bowers from It, who tries to cut him with a knife and is never punished when Rick killed him, unintentionally.
6. On the topic of Season 3, Rick is turned into an overpowered character and is suddenly "the smartest man in the universe". This makes a lot of the dramatic fight sequences less impactful since Rick will just pull a scientific device out of nowhere and kill almost everyone around him. This is especially weird since in the episode "Look Who's Purging Now" he is wounded and robbed by a teenage girl. It also doesn't make sense for him to be the smartest man since he found someone whose equally as intelligent as him in the episode "The Ricks Must Be Crazy" and the show only started calling him this in Season 3.

## Reception

Rick and Morty has been considered to be one of the best modern adult cartoons, holding a 100% Tomatometer from critics, and currently holds a 9 on IMDB.