Entertainment
13 Years Later, Dan Harmon’s Most Influential Sitcom Is Aging Like Fine Wine
Writer and producer Dan Harmon became an icon to sitcom aficionados with his NBC series Community, which will soon return with its long-promised movie to cap off the story. Harmon has also elevated the serialized format and helped fans think about it more critically — first through his early short-form content with Channel 101 and later through his podcast Harmontown and its accompanying documentary. However, Harmon’s biggest contribution to the sitcom world is the one that breaks the formula the most: Rick and Morty. After 13 years and nine seasons, the show is still evolving and pushing the limits of genre and medium. Despite its controversies, older episodes are also aging gracefully.
Some might hesitate to even categorize Rick and Morty as a sitcom, but its impossible to deny that the Smith family and their foibles are the real heart and soul of this story. Beneath the heavy outer layer of science fiction, action, and existential dread, the show is fundamentally driven by the relationships between Rick Sanchez (Ian Cardoni,) Morty Smith (Harry Belden), Beth Smith (Sarah Chalke,) Summer Smith (Spencer Grammer,) and Jerry Smith (Chris Parnell.) That’s the reason this series has weathered all of its storms and held up for over a decade, and it’s the reason that it’s the ultimate sitcom of our era.
‘Rick and Morty’ Has Always Stayed Ahead of Its Audience
The whole point of Rick and Morty is fitting grandiose sci-fi concepts into a 22-minute sitcom format. No idea is too complex, nothing is off limits, and in the end the finer details are only window dressing for a story about the Smith family. In retrospect, Harmon and the other writers and producers clearly knew this from the beginning. The first season made a splash by boldly cramming thought-provoking ideas into each episode. The humor wasn’t just irreverent for good manners and language — it seemed at first like the writers didn’t even care about the sustainability of the story. They gleefully introduced huge paradigm shifts and contradicted their own worldbuilding at every turn.
What remained consistent was characterization. The overarching joke has always been that a sitcom completely resets at the end of episode, leaving things relatively stable for next week. This has been true for more conventional shows for decades, it’s only exaggerated and parodied here. Rick and Morty even introduced the ultimate narrative device for this in Episode 6, “Rick Potion #9,” where Rick reveals that he can and has switched realities for his own convenience. His ultimate superpower IS the sitcom reset, but the story begins when Rick takes his grandson along with him, giving the show some long-term stakes.
Holding back the reveal of this reset ability for the middle of the season was a brilliant move, creating a sense that Harmon and his team had predicted audiences’ biggest question about the show and answered it before it could be asked. Since then, the impression that the writers and producers are thinking ahead and staying in conversation with the viewers has been a core part of its humor. This is the secret behind Rick’s fourth-wall-breaking jokes as well as meta-commentary on what’s going on behind the scenes — from the long waits between seasons to the personal controversies plaguing Harmon and series co-creator Justin Roiland, and even the re-casting in Season 7.
Ultimately, Harmon was ahead of fans in terms of what Rick and Morty is all about as a show. While fans crafted elaborate theories and begged for more serialized stories about the Citadel of Ricks and Evil Morty, Harmon actively resisted this pivot and insisted on sticking with the standard family sitcom format. The show has certainly evolved over the years, but the long-lasting changes are more like those that would happen on a family sitcom than on a high-concept sci-fi adventure. Adding Space Beth to the ensemble is akin to adding Frankie Dart (Paget Brewster) to the main cast of Community, or making Rebecca (Lori Loughlin) part of the main cast of Full House as the show went on. Meanwhile, ongoing storylines like the Citadel have hardly impacted the lives of the Smith family outside the confines of a 22-minute episode except to develop their relationships and characterization.
‘Rick and Morty’ is ‘The Simpsons’ of Its Era
The longevity and continued growth of the Rick and Morty franchise is proof enough that its unique approach to sitcom storytelling is working. This year, the show concluded its ninth season with generally positive reviews, leading right into the premiere of its first full-length spinoff, President Curtis. This show takes a similar approach to the sci-fi sitcom mashup, but in this case it’s a workplace comedy rather than a family one.
Rick and Morty has extended its reach into other media over the last 13 years, from spinoffs in various mediums to games, merchandising, and even live events. The franchise’s broad success shows that audiences understand and embrace what it really is — not a sci-fi epic, but an episodic sitcom exploring what it means to be a family, for better and worse. The characters might get wrapped up in any kind of adventure from week to week, but there’s a comfort in knowing that they’ll almost certainly end up safe and sound at home in the end, right where we’ll need them to kick off next week’s installment. The difference is that while past sitcom heroes might develop a crush or deal with a bully, Rick, Morty, and the rest of the Smiths might topple an intergalactic empire between the title screen and the credits.
In many ways, Rick and Morty does the same thing for sitcoms that The Simpsons did when it first premiered. At the time, The Simpsons used animation to parody the sitcom formula and exaggerate all the absurd features of modern American life. In the process, the show told some truly heartwarming stories and fleshed out this archetypal family into characters we could really care about for decades to come. Rick and Morty is on a similar track, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Rick and Morty is streaming now on HBO Max and Hulu in the U.S. President Curtis has three more episodes to go, airing on Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. ET on Adult Swim. New episodes are added to HBO Max as soon as they air.
- Release Date
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December 2, 2013
- Network
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Adult Swim
- Showrunner
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Dan Harmon
- Directors
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Bryan Newton, Dominic Polcino, Anthony Chun, John Rice, Stephen Sandoval, Jeff Myers
- Writers
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Tom Kauffman, Wade Randolph, Eric Acosta, David Phillips, Erica Rosbe, Sarah Carbiener, Matt Roller, Michael Waldron, Caitie Delaney
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Justin Roiland
Rick Sanchez / Morty Smith
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