This Is the Best 'Rick and Morty' Episode for Newbies
by EG
You can be forgiven if you haven't jumped on the Rick and Morty bandwagon yet. The animated comedy has been on Adult Swim since 2013, but it's this year's long-awaited third season that has finally brought the series the attention it deserves. At this point, if you're one of the still-unitiated, you're probably wondering if you should go all the way back to the beginning or if you should just dive in with this season. IndieWire's Steve Green thinks he has just the starter episode you're looking for, and it aired this season.
Via IndieWire
First, a disclaimer: If you’re looking for a place to start with “Rick and Morty,” the greatest place will always be the pilot. From the jokes about Rick’s inherent distrust of bureaucracy to the immortal closing monologue, it’s the truest litmus test of whether even the most skeptical of first-time viewers are liable to get hooked.
With only a few episodes left in Season 3, however, people on the Internet who keep seeing these two interdimensional explorers pop up in memes (and an increasing number of think pieces) might now be curious about the show. And Sunday night’s episode “Morty’s Mind Blowers” isn’t a bad place to pick up either.
It’s certainly not the best episode of the season. (That honor goes to “The Ricklantis Mixup,” an episode most decidedly not best for beginners.) But as an encapsulation of the show’s episode-to-episode strengths, there are far worse entry points into the series.
For the uninitiated and die-hards alike, a few thoughts on this ideal episode for minting new fans.
The show tells complete stories in a very short amount of time.
As we pointed out in our “Morty’s Mind Blowers” review, one of the great strengths of Rick and Morty is its ability to immediately establish a new universe. Thirty seconds into the episode, it’s established the danger of this latest adventure, introduced an enigmatic, goth-like villain and broached the ultimate philosophical wall of knowing, well, everything. “Rick and Morty” has refined the cold open into its own art form, cutting to the thematic and narrative heart of each episode quicker than most other shows have the luxury of doing. And then it proceeds to pull that same trick a handful more times with each successive Morty memory.
Morty’s life is a constant, waking nightmare.
Even if the only horrific trials that Morty faced on this show were the ones visited upon him during school hours, there would be enough psychological scar tissue for eons of therapy. There’s something about Harry Herpson High School that seems to work as a magnet for tragedy, and the unfortunate end of Mr. Lunes is just the latest installment.
But my goodness, that demonic worm thing. In a series that’s no stranger to gore and violence and general human ickiness, that slimy devil slowly exiting and retracting into Morty’s body is one of the more unsettling sequences the show’s ever devised. “Rick and Morty” will make you laugh, but you better be ready for some semi-regular revulsion, too.
Rick and Morty are often blind to the consequences their actions have on worlds they leave behind.
Yes, the truth tortoise opening is funny because it’s an animal that looks like a handheld Simon game disappearing down a pink portal to…somewhere. But the show persists at such a breakneck speed that Rick and Morty aren’t always able to consider the ramifications that their survival has on the beings that they leave in their wake. Maybe the guy chasing them in the opening was an innocent bystander, caught in the crosshairs of some intergalactic truth war. The disposable nature of Rick’s many conquests is an important baseline to understand, especially when in episodes like “The Ricklantis Mixup” (or, on a slightly smaller scale, “The Wedding Squanchers” and “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy”), Rick’s past carelessness truly comes back to haunt him.
Check out more reasons at IndieWire.
Do you think there's a different episode that would be a good place for new viewers to start? Tell us about it in the comment section below.