Beyond the obvious and far, far away

Calvin once mused how each one of us would lead our lives differently if we spent more time looking at the night sky. Rick Sanchez decided that looking at the sky alone is simply not enough. [Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash]

If you haven’t watched Rick and Morty (2013-) yet, you wouldn’t want to read any further.

There are many shows, specifically from the animation genre, that you watch and then forget only to watch it all over again and then forget about it once more. Rick and Morty isn’t one of them. If anything, it compels you to dig deeper into your consciousness, your understanding of how our world is and how it can be in the not-so-near future.

In my book, calling a show ‘futuristic’ is a rather lazy attempt at criticism. All stories, even those set in the past, are futuristic not because they foretell what’s going to happen but because they help contribute to the future we’ll eventually build when the camera isn’t rolling. Rick and Morty, on the contrary, scratches the patina of realism with so much ease that you start believing that we’d ultimately be stepping into an era where portal guns, interplanetary travel and regenerative syringes are everyday accessories.

That is where the real magic of this brilliant, brilliant show lies.

When you first watched the classic Jetsons (1962–63), you got a mild hint of where our species are headed. But given your young(er) definition of reality and imagination, you might have dismissed the far-fetched imaginary sketches as you start comparing the utter unfeasibility of those flying vehicles with the amount of time you spend immobile in traffic. It’s been over half a century since that show and the amount of skepticism that it inspires speaks for the sci-fi genre more than humankind itself. Art, in all its boundless limitations, should make us dream shamelessly. Jetsons achieved this piece of milestone but Rick and Morty pushes the threshold by normalizing the unnormalizable world. Worlds, if you take into account the endless dimensions that Rick is party to.

As social animals, we think more in groups than in our capacity as an individual. Very rarely do we stand in front of the mirror and ask ourselves what we’d like to see. Conversely, we are more concerned with what others would like to notice in us. It’s not our fault if this is how we think. It’s just the way our society has evolved over countless generations. But one thing is for sure: we are going to break the mould someday.

And on that day, we’ll look beyond the obvious as we get busy shattering the stronghold of set mores in place. I believe that’s precisely what Rick is trying to do. We keep throwing the word ‘non-conventional’ wherever we can but in all fairness, Rick is non-conventional. Not on the merit of his desire to be unconventional but by his drive to destroy the conventions. Of course, he manages to do all of this and much more thanks to his Morty’s unwilling partnership.

In some of the high-octane episodes, it’s worth wondering whether what is the limit for this mindblowing — a word it genuinely earned — take on everything. Back in the biblical days, the meek could have inherited the world. As of 2018, the woke are going to be the inheritors of tomorrow. And Rick and Morty manifests wokeness of the highest order. Incredible technology enables it, yes, and yet it manages to highlight that spine called science. You are reminded again and again that Rick is a man of science. Technology is only a palpable byproduct for him; a means to get shit done. To me, that distinction is what forces us to reassess our current reality — if it’s not too late already.