If You've Got The Spacetime

I missed the first season of Rick And Morty, but I heard good things.  I actually first saw them when their show took over the couch gag in a Simpsons earlier this year.  I've been watching episodes since its second season started a few weeks ago--and have been catching up On Demand with older episodes.  I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

Airing on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, the basic concept is simple--Rick is a sociopathic, alcoholic, mad genius capable of inter-dimensional travel.  Morty is his goodhearted teenage grandson.  They live with Morty's parents, Jerry--a loser--and Beth--a horse surgeon--as well as Summer, his older sister, a superficial teenager.  Domestic drama is mixed with sci-fi adventure.

The main conflict centers on Rick's condescension and abuse versus Morty's purity and cluelessness as they travel through space and time.  The plots are fairly complex, such as the season opener.  The last season had ended with Rick stopping time so his grandkids could clean up the house before their parents returned.  When he started time again, however, it split into 2, then 4, then up to 64 different timelines, all shown simultaneously, until they were able to put things back together.

If the show is reminiscent of anything, it would be Futurama--another animated sci-fi sitcom.  But Rick and Morty feels lighter.  And, oddly, considering how hateful these characters might seem on paper, I find them generally more sympathetic.  Morty is quite sweet and his grandfather, for all the insults, seems to really care about him.

The show is created by Justin Roiland--it started as a short he made--and Dan Harmon, who came up with Community.  Roiland supplies the voices of the title characters and Harmon, I assume, is on board to ensure professional writing standards. However they do it, it works.  It's not as good as Community, or The Simpsons at their best, but it's nice to have a new comedy around worth checking out.