one of the best shows on TV right now and a personal favorite — Rick and Morty. We know

you’re probably jonesing for some new episodes after the year-and-a-half wait was announced,

"Tune in to Rick and Morty Season 3 in like, a year and a half."

So we wanted to hold you over with an analysis of Rick and Morty so far: the philosophy,

the science, and everything you missed while you were laughing at the dick jokes.

Rick and Morty chronicles the exploits of a mad scientist and his naive grandson as

they go on deeply irresponsible, and awesome, space adventures. It’s more or less the

plot of Back to the Future, but Doc is a gassy alcoholic — "I agree, Morty!" — Marty, er, Morty never tries to

hit on his mom, and the two travels through alternate dimensions rather than time.

Rick and Morty is deeply rooted in the traditions of sci-fi horror, often paying homage to things

like Ghostbusters, filmmaker David Cronenberg — "Boy, Morty, I really Cronenberged the world up, didn't I?" — Nosferatu, and Freddy Kreuger to name a few.

"Looks like some legally-safe knockoff of an 80's horror character with miniature swords for fingers instead of knives."

The show even references Zardoz — a camp classic and guilty pleasure of mine. Nowhere else

will you get to see Sean Connery in a futuristic space thong. But seriously, see this movie,

it’s actually really smart.

while the show pays homage to a wide spectrum of sci-fi and horror, it has an affinity for

a particular sci-fi tradition: cosmic horror. Pioneered by literary horror legend HP Lovecraft,

the cosmic horror genre emphasizes the the terror of that which is outside our grasp

to comprehend. Like Lovecraft, Rick and Morty uses the cosmos as a way to explore deep philosophical

questions by imagining what lies hidden in the black depths of space. The show opening

even makes a visual reference to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.

Cosmic horror goes way beyond cheap jump-scares. It presents us with the vast unknown and unimaginable —

that simultaneous feeling of fright, disgust and dread that we feel as whatever lurks

in incomprehensible space suddenly comes crashing into our own reality.

Rick’s portal gun is constantly confronting us with this unknown. As he jumps head-first

into other realities, the results are sometimes horrifying, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes

both.

Occasionally, that reality comes to us, particularly in the episode “Get Schwifty.” Earth is

approached by a giant space head whose sheer gravitational mass causes mayhem on Earth’s

eco-system. The giant head commands the entirety of Earth to show him what they’ve got.

"Show me what you got!"

A cult soon develops to worship this cosmic entity and Rick, realizing the head is a Cromulon,

informs the president that they have to come up with a hit song and win the intergalactic

equivalent of America's Got Talent — "It's Schwifty time today" — or be disintegrated by a giant space laser.

Giant floating cosmic entities aren’t anything new in the science fiction universe. Our old

friend HP Lovecraft used the idea constantly — developing a race of “Great Old Ones”

who he describes in books like “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Dunwich Horror.”

There’s a few interesting questions that big floating scary things bring up. First,

cosmic horror begs the question: "are we significant?" Most science fiction is convinced that humanity

is, metaphorically, the center of the universe. Whether we’re battling the empire or trying

to get all the aliens to just be friends. Humanity, or things that look like humanity,

take center stage. Cosmic horror inverts that premise and asks the question: "What if the

universe doesn’t give a shit about us?"

For the Cromulons, humanity is merely an object of entertainment. Annihilating a planet is

not an act of spite or cause for concern — it’s just something you do. — "There's one every season." — Cosmic horror is full

of these giant entities that demonstrate just how insignificant humanity actually is, and

that’s what is really terrifying, or in the case of Rick and Morty, kind of hilarious

in a dark, dark way.

In the book “In the Dust of This Planet,” contemporary American philosopher Eugene Thacker

describes this “Cosmic Pessimism” prevalent in the horror genre that imagines a “world without us”

and thinks through the universe as “absolutely unhuman, and indifferent to the hopes, desires

and struggles of human individuals and groups.”

The show embodies this cosmic pessimism almost perfectly. Rick and Morty even die, only to

be replaced by one of the infinite other versions of themselves in an alternate reality

Not only are we but a speck of dust on a tiny blue marble in the cosmos at

large, we’re also like one of an infinite amount of the exact same speck of dust. — “There's an infinite number of realities, Morty."

Rick and Morty doesn’t want us to be terrified of our own insignificance, it want us to laugh

at it.

Even though we are but specks of dust to these cosmic horrors, we too are the cosmic horrors

to other specks of dust. In “The Ricks Must Be Crazy,” we learn that Rick’s car battery

is powered by a micro-universe whose sole purpose is to perform an inane task: produce

energy. And, in that universe, they invent another mini-universe. And

so on, and so on. Rick might as well be one of Lovecraft’s cosmic deities to the denizens

of the microverses. It’s like cosmic inception, brah. — "It's like Inception, Morty."

In a multiverse beyond our comprehension, with infinite possibilities, values and meaning

start to slip away. — "What about the reality where Hitler cured cancer, Morty? The answer is 'don't think about it'" — All that can remain is pessimism.

"Oh boy, wha— oh my god, no!"

Which brings us to our next section on the existentialism of Rick and Morty.

Rick and Morty addresses the question of our very existence in almost every single episode.

"Existence is pain to a Meeseeks, Jerry!" "Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die."

On one hand, we have the cosmic insignificance of humanity as a whole, and on the other,

we have the frivolity of individual human life. “That's my grave." The show offers us two examples of how

to respond to our pathetic existence through Rick and Jerry.

First, we have Jerry, who is seemingly oblivious to the soul-crushing mediocrity and pointlessness

of his own life. He is literally more happy in a poor simulation of the world than his

actual life. — "I... am... finally complete." — Or, as Arthur Schopenhauer might well have described Jerry’s life: “The

life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant

features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character

of a comedy.” Jerry is a failure: he’s unemployed, his wife hates him, and he’s

not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. But one can argue that Jerry is better off

than the belligerently drunk Rick, because he’s simply too dumb to realize that his

life is pointless. But in this ignorance, Jerry seems content toiling away for the sake

of nothing.

"Life is effort, and I'll stop when I die!" — Then, there’s Rick, who understands the meaninglessness of life and accepts it. But

despite Rick’s sarcasm and nonchalant attitude towards pain and suffering — "Hold your breath!" "Wait wh- wh- wh- what the hell, Rick?!" — he’s also an

alcoholic whose catchphrase means “I am in great pain.” — “Do you know what 'wubalubadubdub' means? It means 'I am in great pain. Please help me.'"

The pure rationalism of the universe furthers the feeling of insignificance of our own lives.

We’re left with a paradox. Science allows us to make some sort of sense of the universe

through formulas and theorems, but we as humans are left confronting the bleak, arbitrary

nature of our own existence. — "Yes I'd like to order one large sofa chair with extra chair, please." "High chair. No no no, recliner." — Science can reason away any sense of sanctity or emotion and

turn the human experience into something meaningless. Rick takes time out of avoiding his own pending

death to explain, mathematically, that Summer and Morty are both pieces of shit. Rick goes

on to rationalize away his feelings for Morty, explaining that their bond is only an easy

way to hide Rick’s genius brain waves — "You're as dumb as I am smart!" — from the intergalactic po-po. In another episode,

Morty, as Roy, grows up and dies in a video game. After losing, he briefly forgets his

own existence. — "Where's my wife?" "Morty, you were just playing a game." — The audience is left to question what exactly separates the fake reality of

the “Roy” game to his own existence. After all, if Morty remembers his “fake” life

and experiences all the emotions and sensations that constitute our own consciousness, what’s

the difference? Rick and Morty is constantly playing with this dichotomy between meaningless

simulations and our actual life.

If we recoil from the idea of living a “fake” life inside a video game, it’s because we

ascribe some meaning to the authenticity of our own waking life. But Rick and Morty is quick to display

for all to see that this is a giant crock of shit. What’s the difference between killing

the memory parasites whom the family feels genuine emotion for, and shooting, say, Mr.

Poopybutthole?

This crisis of values, of our own meaning in life, is taken up by tons of existentialists,

but Friedrich Nietzsche is particularly helpful here. Nietzsche tells the parable of the madman,

who comes into town screaming “God is dead!...And we have killed him!” What Nietzsche was

really trying to say that is after the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, the big being

in the sky that gave value to our lives was no longer relevant. After the death of God

in philosophy, what remains is nihilism — a void of meaning. "My life has been a lie! God is dead! The government is lame! Thanksgiving is about killing Indians!"

This struggle over the lack of meaning is what defines Rick Sanchez. Rick’s uses science

to demystify everything. "Does evil exist? And if so, can one detect and measure it? Rhetorical question, Morty. The answer is 'yes, you just have to be a genius'" — Love is just a set of chemical reactions. — "What people call 'love' is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed." — He even

beats the devil and, in a way, actively plays out the death of God. — "Yes! F*** you, God!" "Yes, I did it! There is no god! In your face!" — We’re constantly left

wondering: what does Rick care about, if anything at all?

Rick’s character embodies a tension between a kind of active and passive nihilism. The

passive nihilist, for Nietzsche, is resigned to the hopelessness and meaninglessness of

life. The active nihilist, however, actively seeks to destroy the old values and start

anew. — "Well, scientifically, traditions are an idiot thing." "A bomb?!" "I'm gonna drop it down there, just get a whole fresh start." — It’s clear that something makes Rick tick, we’re just not sure what. After all,

he’s labeled as an international terrorist fighting for something and eventually, he gives

himself up to save his family. Rick’s actions may seem paradoxical, if only because he himself

is struggling to make meaning out of the universe.

The show also does its part to interrogate our own sense of morality, refusing to draw

clear lines between right and wrong or good and evil. — “I will kill anyone, anywhere. I just love killin'!" — Morty’s attempts to be a do-gooder

are always thwarted. After freeing a group of people from the body-snatching Unity, a

nipple-driven race war commences between the now-freed rabble of pedophiles and prostitutes.

When confronted with the grim consequences, Summer aptly replies “I didn’t know freedom

meant people doing stuff that sucks.”

Here lies another existential question: What is biological life without “living?” — “Listen,

Unity, I don’t think my sister is trying to say life would be perfect without you,

it would just be, ya know, life” — If we, the audience are repulsed by the thought of

body-snatchers, the show also makes us consider the fact that our irrational attachment to

freedom is what allows us to live in a world that’s oh-so-terribly fucked up.

Another way to look at the existential question in Rick and Morty is through the work of Albert

Camus, specifically in Meeseeks and Destroy. — "I can't take it anymore! I just wanna die! We all wanna die, we're Meeseeks!" — The central tenant of Camus’ “absurdism”

is that life consists of two irreconcilable facets: the human tendency to find meaning

in life, and the universe’s complete indifference to our existence. In Rick and Morty we see

the antithesis of this in the Meeseeks. — “Meeseeks are not born into this world fumbling for

meaning, Jerry! We are created to serve a singular purpose for which we will go to any

lengths to fulfill!”. For Camus, human life was exactly the opposite, as illustrated in

the myth of Sisyphus, the king who was sentenced to spend an eternity pushing a boulder up

a hill, only for it to fall back down upon completion — over, and over again. Or, for Jerry, it’s not a boulder,

but his golf swing. And then, there’s this: "Earth Rick C137, the Council of Rick sentences you to the machine of unspeakable doom, which swaps your concious and unconscious minds, rendering your fantasies pointless while everything you've known becomes impossible to grasp."

Many characters in the show, rather than seek meaning for their own existence, simply resent

their creators for bringing them into the world. — "I didn't ask to be born!" — We see this Frankenstein complex not

only in the Meeseeks — "He roped me into this!" "Well that one over there roped me into this!" "Well he roped me into this!" — but in Abradolf Lincler — “You brought me in to this world,

a suffering abomination, tortured by the duality of its being. But I should finally know peace

when I watch the life drain from your wretched body!” Morty Jr., and, of course, Frankenstein's monster

himself, makes an appearance.

For Camus, we are perpetually frustrated by our floundering attempt to find meaning and

purpose and life and our inability to do so. He offers, as an alternate, to embrace the

emptiness of the absurd. Or, as Rick says, "The answer is 'don't think about it.'"

Or, to quote Morty: “Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV?"

The fictional and sometimes almost-real science of Rick and Morty allows us to explore all

of the ways that, despite our love of Rick, our lives are as sad and pathetic as Jerry’s. “Oh Jerry."

But the science in the show also works as an excuse for some really nerdy jokes. — "Our time is gonna need a little time to, you know, stabilize." — Some

are obvious, like the entire episode loosely-based off of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

This principle from quantum mechanics, pioneered by a notable meth dealer, states that it is

impossible to know both the location and momentum of a particle. That’s because the tiny objects

that make up our universe are at the same time waves and particles. If that’s confusing,

it’s because it is. Rick and Morty

draws humor from a superficial reading of science here, claiming that this uncertainty

of quantum mechanics can cause our own realities to split. Outside, a sea of Schrodinger’s