Looks Like I'll Never Be Getting Into Rick & Morty Now!
Somewhere in the foggy recesses of my blinkered, confused and overwhelmed sub-conscious there’s an extremely long, incomplete, exhaustive and exhausting list of all of the entertainment I REALLY want to experience but never got around to.
You probably have an unofficial list like that in your head as well, of great movies, incontrovertibly brilliant television shows, albums of historic importance, books that will change your life and utterly essential podcasts you deeply want to savor but haven’t had the time, space or freedom to do so.
My messy mental list is dominated by television shows. That’s the blessing and curse of Peak TV. If the pundits and experts are right, and let’s face it, they’re never wrong, then there is just TOO MUCH great boob tube fodder for ANYONE to keep on top of.
I could tell you all of the essential shows I have not watched and you would be shocked, horrified and disgusted. So I’m not going to! It’s enough to admit that there are an endless series of acclaimed television shows I’ve never watched a minute of, and an equal number of all-time classics I never got around to finishing.
For example I love Mad Men but there are several seasons I haven’t seen. The same is true of The Sopranos and Atlanta. I could go on and on. But I won’t!
I would feel slightly less guilty if I were a civilian, rather than someone whose entire twenty-six year long career has been devoted to exploring the entirety of pop culture, particularly the parts that are tacky, vulgar and terrible.
But one of the downsides to being a pop culture writer who writes about everything is that you can’t delve as deeply into individual art forms as a writer devoted to one particular medium would. I’m the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none.
My big mental do-list has been altered irrevocably by the revelations of #MeToo. For example Louis C.K. has made sure that I NEVER have to get around to watching the last season of Louie, Horace & Pete or any of his stand-up specials.
I still have to watch his movie I Love You Daddy for my book The Fractured Mirror but otherwise I am done with a man who used to be my favorite stand-up comedian and television auteur for this lifetime and the next.
On a similar note I have always nursed a fuzzy desire to watch Rick & Morty. It seems like the kind of thing that I would like. I was a HUGE Community fan but even then I opted out well before the show ended.
I was put off by the show’s fanbase and its cult even before creator Justin Roiland was outed as a suspected sex criminal, predator and all-around creep. The fact that Elon Musk and Kanye West are both huge Rick & Morty super-fans didn’t make the show more appealing to me.
Now it looks like I will never watch Rick & Morty. I don’t want to support Roiland in any way and I can’t imagine the show is so brilliant that I would be able to ignore the horrifying revelations about the co-creator and main voice artist’s private life and just have fun watching it.
I’m okay with that! I was ambivalent at best about watching Rick & Morty in the first place. Now Roiland has done me the favor of personally crossing it off to my big cosmic “To Do” list.
The long list of important, great and/or controversial art I’ve never experienced but want to is both encouraging and dispiriting. It’s encouraging because it means that I could literally devote all of my free time to catching up on great television and never run out of wonders. It’s discouraging for precisely the same reason: it’s so vast that you can’t do it all unless that’s both your job and single-minded focus.
So some lazy part of me appreciates when problematic creators cross their own work off that list even if I probably wasn’t going to get around to watching Rick & Morty even if its co-creator was making headlines for saving puppies from a pet store fire and not being a monster to women.
I’m on Subtack now! Check out https://nathanrabin.substack.com/ for my brand spanking new newsletter, Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas!
Buy the 516 page Sincere Movie Cash-In Edition of The Weird Accordion to Al AND get a free coloring book for just 20 dollars, shipping and taxes included, at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free copy of The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Cynical Movie Cash-in Edition free!
Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, the Happy Place’s next book, a 600 page magnum opus about American films about American films illustrated by the great Felipe Sobreiro over at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s first non-"Weird Al” Yankovic-themed book is out! And it’s only 12.00, shipping, handling and taxes included, 23 bucks for two books, domestic only at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
Buy The Joy of Trash, The Weird Accordion to Al and the The Weird Accordion to Al in both paperback and hardcover and The Weird A-Coloring to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Colored-In Special Edition signed from me personally (recommended) over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash here and The Weird A-Coloring to Al here and The Weird Accordion to Al here
Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace
Y’all know my steez: I make my living largely through Patreon so if you would consider throwing in even a dollar a month over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace