The refreshing awfulness of Rick and Morty

If the show weren't so great, it would be terrible

Rick and Morty.
(Image credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo)

In the most recent season of the hit Adult Swim animated series Rick and Morty, the mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his teenage grandson Morty Smith face off against one of Rick's deadliest creations: a sentient super-robot that has synthesized the plots of every twisty heist movie ever made. The out-of-control "Heist-o-Tron" can predict — and out-maneuver — nearly any attempt to defeat it, with maximum efficiency. At one point, it executes an especially clever con as an evasive maneuver, and in the process obliterates an entire planet.

That's one grimly funny gag — like slapstick comedy on a global scale. But it's not wrong to consider the joke horrifying, too. It's an example of what the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum once called the trend in post-Star Wars action movies toward treating human beings (or aliens, in this case) as "garbage to be gleefully fed into a garbage disposal," as the plot demands.

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Noel Murray

Noel Murray is a freelance writer, living in Arkansas with his wife and two kids. He was one of the co-founders of the late, lamented movie/culture website The Dissolve, and his articles about film, TV, music, and comics currently appear regularly in The A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.