But no one is pushing things quite as far as Cartoon Network. Not only are they committing to gentle, gorgeous miniseries like Patrick McHale's "Over the Garden Wall," but their Adult Swim programming lineup is home to some of the weirdest, most out-there animated series ever (those of us that watched "Liquid Television" on MTV in the '90s are having some extreme flashbacks). And the crown jewel of the Adult Swim broadcast (and indeed Cartoon Network as a whole) is its highest rated, most boundary-pushing marvel, "Rick and Morty."
"Rick and Morty" started off as a crass "Back to the Future" parody called "The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti" (feel free to look it up, but keep in mind that it's tres NSFW) that creator Justin Roiland came up with for Dan Harmon's Channel 101 film festival. When Adult Swim approached Harmon about creating a new television series, he thought of Roiland and his perverse parody. So the show was altered, removing any punishable copyright infringement and given a more grounded emotional base, with Rick (formerly Doc) being an estranged mad scientist father who drops in on his daughter's family and whisks her young son Morty (formerly Mharti) on a series of far-flung adventures that sees them crossing both time and space. Roiland does the voices for both of the main characters. It's wacky as hell. But it's also the most ambitious animated series currently on television.
So it makes sense that would embed itself, like some kind of venomous space-tick that Rick and Morty come across on one of their adventures, in the larger social consciousness. And what's more -- the culture has been remarkably responsive. A gag in the Season 3 premiere centered around Rick returning to an imagined version of 1998 so that he could relive his infatuation with a Szechuan dipping sauce from McDonald's (a promotional tie-in to Disney's "Mulan"), and just last week a chef from McDonald's sent Roiland a vat of the stuff.
But it's important to remember that the show isn't just a send-up of classic science fiction -- although, that is obviously a huge part of the appeal. What makes "Rick and Morty" so special and ambitious is just how emotionally grounded the series is. This past week's episode, while based on "Mad Max: Fury Road" and featuring a subplot where Morty is injected with a serum that gives him a giant muscular arm, is actually a fairly moving look at how the different family members are dealing with the impending divorce of Jerry and Beth. It's as touching as it is funny and it's totally, wonderfully ambitious.
