Last weekend, a major American company and institution faced yet another public relations debacle. No, it wasn’t the NFL. It was McDonald’s, which failed to have enough Szechuan sauce for the legions of “Rick and Morty” fans who showed up in hopes of getting some of the dipping sauce.
What is it about this Adult Swim show that inspires such devotion from its fans?
On its surface, “Rick and Morty” seems little more than the usual late-night adult cartoon entertainment. The show follows Rick, the self-described smartest man in the universe (and in infinite alternate realities), and his less-than-brilliant grandson Morty in their zany adventures around the multi-verse. The show also includes loser dad Jerry, seemingly normal but possibly psychopathic mom Beth, and stereotypically disinterested teenage sister Summer.
Like most of the Adult Swim slate, “Rick and Morty” is full of the typical over-the-top violence and crude humor. But unlike the other shows, it’s willing to deal with the implications that comes with that.
“Rick and Morty” separated itself fairly early from the standard late-night fare during its first season. Morty asks Rick to make him a love potion so a girl he has a crush on at school will fall for him. In typical sci-fi fashion, the potion goes horribly wrong and the entire town becomes obsessed with Morty.
In an effort to fix the mistake, Rick accidentally turns the entire planet, except his nuclear family, into monsters. Rather than figuring out a solution and saving the day, Rick decides to take Morty (leaving behind Jerry, Summer, and Beth) to an alternate reality where an alternate Rick and Morty solved the problem but were blown-up and killed in an unrelated explosion moments later. Our original Rick and Morty then bury them in the backyard and take over their lives as if nothing happened.
In other words, this show is dark.
This episode truly marked a turning point for the show. What if the whacky adventures really didn’t have consequences because you could always just head to an alternate reality to escape your problems? Do your actions still matter? What’s the meaning of your existence if really there are just infinite versions of yourself out there?
The third season confronted these questions head on as Rick convinces Beth to divorce Jerry, allowing Rick to become the de facto patriarch of the family (this is when Rick reveals to Morty that his character arc the whole time is to acquire McDonald’s discontinued Szechuan sauce). Without the family’s core holding together, Jerry becomes depressed and begins living in cheap motel, Summer begins huffing enamel, and Beth continues to excuse her father’s behavior for fear of abandonment.
Even Morty, whose naive optimism is usually a foil to Rick’s nihilism, has a crisis of conscience. This occurs when a team of superheroes Morty admires turn on each other when forced to go through a series “Saw”-esque traps set up by a blacked-out Rick.
The true test of whether who we are and what we do matters comes in the last two episodes of the third season. In the penultimate episode, Rick offers his daughter a clone to take her place in her family while the real Beth can go off and explore the universe. In the finale, Beth struggles to understand which Beth she is: the clone or real Beth. She ultimately decides that it doesn’t matter who she is. Instead, what gives her meaning is the people she surrounds herself with (her family), which gives her purpose in the life she chooses to lead.
All of this is to say that the world we live in, and the universe we inhabit, can be a dark and scary place. In the wake of terrible tragedies, we can feel powerless to do anything and, on a cosmic scale, we can struggle to find significance in our lives. What “Rick and Morty” suggests is that instead of pondering those questions all the time, it’s okay to take joy and meaning in the simple things in life — whether that’s our own screwed-up but loveable family or limited-time McNugget sauce.
So, the next time you want to judge a “Rick and Morty” fan for being upset they didn’t get their Szechuan sauce, keep in mind that spending time with other fans might have distracted them from their messed-up life or an existential crisis over their existence as a speck on a hunk of rock hurtling through space. And try to find something which makes you as happy as Szechuan sauce makes Rick.
Eric Peterson is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a native of Illinois and all-around nerd. His love of film probably comes from the fact that “Groundhog Day” was filmed in his hometown, which he heard about over and over and over again.
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