Film Theory: Rick and Morty Sold You Out!

After a crazy few months to start 2020, I have to say it's a huge relief to have Rick and Morty back, just something to provide a little escapism. You know, every day of 2020 seems to give us something new to worry about first. was the super virus, then the US government basically confirmed that aliens are real with declassified UFO footage and if all that wasn't enough, now we're hearing about these giant Asian insects, the Hornets, that they likes to decapitate and tire hives and kill dozens. of people a year, so will you excuse me a little while you both change and Hornet tries on my pants? alien viruses evil bees like I said, that's a lot to worry about and you see, that's why Rick and Morty is so great, it's a show that is so far removed from reality that I can just sit back and let those worries go and watch wacky adventurers science fiction about super viruses destroying the planet and invading alien species and human-sized wasps, oh my god, our entire reality is an episode of Rick and Morty, right? on the train and me in the story hello internet, welcome to movie

theory

, the show that tells its passengers that everyone aboard Matt Pat's crazy train, the first stop at the analysis junction, so Rick and Morty are back, which means I'll be back with some quick explanatory theories. about the episodes that deserve a closer look and boy oh boy was it the season for a second half premiere ever titled Ricky Morty, one that needed a little more explanation.

I mean, this show has always been meta, but this episode went off the rails in the meta department. which is ironic considering it all takes place on a train, they basically give us Rick and Morty trapped on a circular space train which, as Rick says, is a story device, literally, a literal literary device, quite literally, metaphorically, Basically, they have to break the circular pattern of stories that constitute a typical Rick and Morty episode, all without sacrificing the continuity or integrity of the characters who are captured by the Lord of the story, whose objective is to squeeze them to fuel their infinite potential for the story.

Now I will feed my anthology with your unlimited potential by pushing it to its final stop beyond the fifth so that I can defeat the story. Lord Rick has to resort to prayer, something the characters Rick and Morty would never do, causing the train to screech. Stop because the turn to religion makes the characters much less popular and much less relatable. The Story Lords machine breaks and they escape only to realize that the entire story train was a toy, something Morty bought at the Citadel gift shop, sure he trained, available now. in a Rick Citadel Just Buy It, the episode ends with Rick praising Morty for buying merchandise which he says is the most important thing.

It's a fun episode, but it starts to get complicated, so what does it all mean? What is canon? No? Unsurprisingly, the episode is a metaphor for the difficult cyclical nature of writing the Rick and Morty show, but when you dig a little deeper, it's actually much more than that: it's a really complex exploration of how difficult it is to write stories. formulated that are still achieved. to please everyone from the creators to the viewers to the theorists to the networks and advertisers who ultimately make the show possible, it's a deep dive, so buckle up tight because this little caboose is going off the rails. station, this is a very layered episode, so let's start with what's most obvious on the outside: the looping story train.

The Circle Train is a reference to one of Dan Harmon's famous writing techniques known as the story circle. It's something Harmon uses quite religiously throughout his writings, having said it before him. feels like it's tattooed on your brain, Harmon's story circle sets out the eight main steps of a complete dramatic story and at the beginning of this episode of Rick and Morty they were shown the plans for the Train and wouldn't you know it's divided into eight? parts as Rick lays out his escape plan, even pointing out how this episode's specific beats will align with certain segments of the Train.

I'll have to equip us with a couple of spacesuits that are starting to fail around here so we can pay. a high price for re-entering this threshold, steps 3 to 6 of Harmon's story circle, the characters enter an unknown situation, adapt to it, get what they want, but now they pay a high price, that type of formula of a writing. Point of view can be a double-edged sword on the positive side, it becomes pretty clear when you have all the elements you need to create a solid and coherent episode, but if the formula becomes something you absolutely must follow in every one from them.

When you exhaust your writers, limit your ideas, become predictable to the audience in terms of this episode, staying on the train is staying formulaic, getting off the train or deep rail, is completely breaking the formula, doing something drastically different from the tension. to remain faithful. to the formula, but also to expanding what you can do, really comes up throughout this episode when Rick describes his plan to fix the engine of the story train. Morty asks if they will have to abandon the train. Rick responds with this, we don't have to do anything. Morty. this is just a structural guide, obviously we are going to impart our own style, the train itself is not a bad thing, you can always put your own touch on it, in the same way, there will always be fear of leaving the comfort of that. train because doing so runs the risk of alienating viewers who have just enjoyed the ride, which strict adherence to formula is also what separates a typical Rick and Morty episode from its anthology episodes like Interdimensional Cable and Mind-Blowing Morty, you know. the ones with those very improvised short random vignettes, so Rick gives you some hints that making anthology episodes full of fun but without a deeper meaning behind them would be 10 easier to stop the anthology if we wanted one-off episodes, we do cable interdimensional, but also less so. satisfying this is where the stupid panels were, I can't imagine if that would have been all and yet when writer's block starts to set in it must be tempting to want to lean on that style because it requires less complex planning after all, It is not like this.

The interdimensional cable episodes are unpopular. Multiple sites that rank Rick and Morty episodes place the first interdimensional cable episode for 60 minutes among their top five episodes. Thrillist even has it at number one, but just because the stories can be easier doesn't necessarily mean they'll end up being faster, and sometimes quite the opposite, which seems to be the message of the exchange when Morty asks Rick why does a space suit have a built in timer, why would you set it ticking? Because if it's too easy to get there, we never will. Getting there, in other words, the limitations of story structure and timelines are challenging but ultimately helpful in determining how the narrative should develop.

Without a well thought out story, Rick and Morty would never progress and simply they would dissolve into a bunch of random jokes. Get me wrong, we all love three-cheek jokes, it's just not a sustainable way to make a show important, you're probably saying that at home every writer has to come up with stories, big shout, not worth complaining about , to which I tell you. You will be running a tight ship, they are an imaginary spectator which is itself a narrative device that I am using to make it clear that this is for you, but you are also missing some of the depth behind this theme by creating stories that are thoughtful and complete.

It's just a small part of the total battle because nowadays, especially for a show as successful as Rick and Marty, the writers also have to worry about pleasing many different subsets of people while making sure those stories fit within that Marco and That's what the rest of this episode is about about a group the writers have to worry about appeasing. Well, people like us, the fanbase, the theorists, say that the Rick and Morty fanbase is passionate, that's an understatement. Any group of people who go crazy over the availability or lack of chicken nugget sauce is a group that may care too much, but that level of passion and that level of scrutiny puts a lot of pressure on the creators to provide comprehensive answers about the world. from Rick and Morty, what really sells this point is when Rick throws the Please Kid tickets off the Train.

Rick explicitly tells Morty that everything outside of the Train is not canon. Nothing up there is canon, but later in the show we get. a strange scene between two aliens, one of whom subscribes to a

theory

about the tickets, please, the boy says this, his followers believe that the entire universe is the nightmare of the floating, bloody man as he dies in a dilated reality in time, okay, so this scene is a symbol of people who don't take canonical information into their own theories and then adhere to those theories as undeniable truth, treating them almost as if they were a religion.

In this case, you are given a piece of information, in this case floating torsos spinning through space and three steps ahead. You can give some crazy explanation of what it could mean to put so much emphasis and emotional importance on it that you tattoo it on your own body when in reality none of it was canon to begin with, now you'd make me lie if I said no. I haven't made similar leaps and logic in my interpretation of characters, episodes, and Easter eggs in the past. I mean, it's just fun to see puzzling things in history as we consume and think about what the full story or inspiration behind it really is. why you're watching this video and hopefully while you're subscribed to this channel, if you're not subscribed to this channel, now is the perfect time to do it because there's a ton of Rick and Morty discussions coming up.

For the next five weeks it's fun to theorize, you know, and that's not what the writers are pointing out here. The problem the writers are pointing out is when those fun theories are treated as truth when the fans become so emotionally attached to those made up stories that they create the set of religious beliefs around them that they are not willing to accept with changes in the direction of the story. story based on what the writers want to do, providing the level of detail to answer every question about every backstory and unexplained narrative, not only is it unrealistic for a writer it's impossible to do so within the confines of an episodic structure.

Watch as Rick literally pokes holes in the religious alien theory. He's a pretty brilliant animated refutation of his theory about the floating bloody man's true role in this universe. This also lines up pretty well with How Rick and Marty's Staff Tend to Handle Outside Theories Dan Harmon said in an interview with GQ that the writers don't make any decisions about the cannon until things actually happen on the show and also that completely avoid fan theories because I'd hate to do that. having your own ideas corrupted by someone else's having a rabid fan base that celebrates and theorizes your work is a blessing, but it also puts pressure on writers to continue coming up with ideas that are unexpected and at the same time logical extensions of the story to their characters.

On a more personal note, by the way, I hope that any Rick and Morty staff who may be watching this episode find enough to disprove any of my theories through their scripts and don't resort to ripping me in half and throwing me around. space and shooting me with laser beams don't want to go as tickets please mate, and hell I don't even have the ABS to pull it off anyway, there's an added element of pressure for the Rick and Morty writers to navigate and that's political . The correctness of all things may come as a surprise to you, but Rick and Morty and its fandom have received a decent amount of criticism over their exemplification of toxic masculinity, with all that baggage must come the desire to improve the show's image as inclusive and diverse and that's where you get something about the Bechtel test halfway through the episode if you're not familiar with it.

The Bechtel test is a tool to measure gender inclusivity in fiction, a movie, a book, or a show that does not. features two female characters arguing about more than just a man and doesn't pass the Bechtel test, so when Morty tells a strangely sexist story about his mother and sister fighting scorpions with their laser-powered special time, the episode technically passes the testBechdel, but she does it in the strangest way. In the way possible now, I don't think the story of this episode is intended to convey that the creators of Rick and Morty think the Bechtel test is dumb or that they somehow can't understand stories involving two women talking about something other than not be men, but rather We are trying to point out yet another factor that writers now have to juggle and, finally, there is the metaphor of the Lord of the story.

Story Lord as a character represents the literal stories that the creators of Rick and Morty have to contend with, but based on his behavior and motives, it seems that Story Lord could also represent another entity than the creators of Rick and Morty. they have to appease network executives. The Story Lord machine that locks Rick and Morty into has a number of metrics including relationship marketing and broad appeal that it then attempts to maximize. By stealing stories from Rick and Morty that take advantage of their limitless potential to take them beyond the fifth wall, it's not hard to see this as an analogy for a network or movie studio that wants to take a successful property and milk it until there's nothing left. .

To extract it, it all culminates with the story of Lord menacingly asking if Rick and Morty want to see how their story ends, but this isn't a blatant call-out for how Rick and Morty might end, it's a scene featuring a showdown between an army of meeseeks with spear wielding clones of Rick and gazorpazorp sleds by the evil Morty and a Mr. Palpatine esque. shitted ass against Rick and Morty and ends with the literal deus ex machina of Jesus Christ coming in to save the day. It's not so much that this is how Rick and Morty will end, but rather that the show's creators fear that's how it will end.

In this way, they lose creative control over their process and instead have to create stories that are forced to maximize relatability, marketability, and broad appeal, sacrificing their integrity along the way, while that epic climactic battle fails. makes explicit reference to any Game of Thrones series. Burning out or having to raise the stakes to a ridiculous level is clearly a real concern for these writers, we have to appease the powers that be to stay in the air, keep in mind that the Story Lords machine doesn't measure quality, it only measures metrics that will lead to a show being successful and profitable, so finding the balance between satisfying a network and satisfying fans while also writing challenging and compelling stories that are creatively satisfying complicates the whole process and that's the question central to this episode: how to please everyone?

How do you bring back crowd favorites like mr. meeseeks or birdperson or chrome Bob Ulis Michael without sacrificing narrative continuity, how can Rick and Morty, a show with a small niche audience, be profitable without selling the complexity and specificity that made it great in the first place? Our answer lies in going beyond that fifth wall. That story Lord mentions in my research. I've had a few different definitions of a fifth wall like the divide between critics and creators or the difference between characters and the people they play, but I don't think that's what Story Lord means in this case. by the fifth wall Rick and Morty have often broken the fourth wall, they make the characters recognize that they are in a show, but the barrier between the narrative and the viewer can actually be broken one step further what is the purpose of a story what is the purpose of your characters, the ultimate purpose is to make money to sell things, we are no longer seeing a narrative with characters who were watching a marketing device called Rick and Morty meant to sell things, their own merchandise, Pringles, Wendy's, this results in a strange monologue from Rick about how proud he is of Morty for buying something or, to put it in his cynical but praiseworthy words, you didn't ask questions or make ethical complaints, you just looked straight into the bleeding maw of capitalism and said Yes, Dad, Please, the voice in That Writing is clearly sarcastic, but the point remains that the success of any program depends on its ability to sell products, either directly or indirectly by serving ads.

Note that there is no true cold open for this episode. Don't know. you were watching it, but to me it was a Windies ad for breakfast sandwiches, a Windies ad for breakfast sandwiches that was produced by the Rick and Morty staff at the midpoint of the episode, one of the ads was a robot Morty eating Pringles and that's the point. That's the fifth wall. The episode's writer, Jeff Loveness, tweeted that it was about being trapped in the narrative chokehold of capitalism, meaning that the best stories don't necessarily make the most money and they also don't make the most money. the stories are often not the best, the problem is that Rick and Morty is not designed to be a number one show.

Rick and Morty is not a warm and fuzzy family comedy that can make a lot of money with safe comedy. a big network because it's too cynical, it's too dirty, it's too nice, and it's too political, all things that hurt the show's scores for relatability, marketability, and the broad appeal of the story lord machine, but they also can't suddenly switch to a formula designed to make a profit because that goes against the grain. the soul of what Rick and Morty are sacrificing for the show's identity is ultimately parallel to simply making easily digestible anthology episodes that don't really represent anything, which Rick was complaining about from the beginning of the episode and So I'm going to Story Train com to buy the merchandise as Rick told me and the link is broken.

The Story Train they announced at the end of the episode doesn't exist, damn it, and I was so mentally prepared to help him sell oh well Wendy's breakfast sandwiches we'll have to make that cookie it looked really good if it carries a bad plane but well that it's just a theory a blatant hype movie theory the next episode of Rick and Morty on Tuesday the 19th will be talking portal science with the biggest science celebrity on the planet, Neil deGrasse Tyson, which is actually coming out on Tuesday the 19th, so Mark your calendars or like I said before, hit the subscribe button so honestly, you're here for a great collaboration on the channel.

I'm really excited about this now, if I could just get Bill Nighy to appear on one of my shows then my bingo board would be complete. I'll see a new Scooby-Doo theory in a few days. Keanu for covering Scooby Doo and then more warnings from Rickon to follow. Week on Tuesday the 19th with my new best friend Neil deGrasse Tyson. He'll be super nerdy and also super cool, so I hope to see you there.