Rather than the episode attempting professionalism by editing this material out, it instead celebrates it and relishes the moments when things go off the rails. There are so many instances where Roiland breaks down or just straight up laughs during whatever he is saying. Never before have chaotic rambles been more important.Ī lot of this episode’s success is due to coasting off of Justin Roiland’s fumbling energy and simply how much fun these guys are having with their nonsense. In the end it’s the repressive embrace of television that Morty pushes onto summer as a way of dealing with life. That’s a heavy message to impart, but one that’s completely in line with the show’s frequent nihilism. It plays hand-in-hand with the mammoth emotional impact that the episode goes out on, with this being a balanced mix of heaviness and silliness that makes the binaries of television and real-life very clear.
#RICK AND MORTY SEASON 1 EPISODE 1 SCRIPT FULL#
All of the television ads and commercials are unscripted, as if to imply that television is full of freedom and limitless expectations, whereas Rick, Morty, and everyone else are tethered to reality’s script. We also allow for this episode to be structurally different because television is such a crucial element for the series, with improv being the perfect conduit to explore it in. The episode even “premiered” early in a weird Instagram experiment where the episode was posted online in 100 15-second clips. Again, there’s no real plot here other than Rick showing off his fancy interdimensional cable box, with a plethora of media from other realities being vegged on accordingly. The synthesis here is a rare thing where the show’s intelligence and creativity work in tandem with this “laziness” and abandonment of a script to produce something very special that shouldn’t work.
#RICK AND MORTY SEASON 1 EPISODE 1 SCRIPT SERIES#
This is by far the thinnest episode of the series up until this point, yet it also became many people’s favorite entry, and this is a show that thrives on its meticulous plotting. Impressively, there isn’t even really a plot to “Rixty Minutes,” but this is barely something that you notice due to the breakneck bombardment of comedy. However, this is a show about science and experiments after all, so to actually conduct one itself – curious to see the outcome – is a brilliant application of switching to an improvised structure. The idea of doing a largely improvised episode of an animated program is deeply ambitious (look no further than Home Movies’ problematic first season) and something that could completely fall apart. In a very short amount of time the series has been able to establish itself as one that breaks the rules and takes risks (much like Dan Harmon’s previous series, Community).
Rick and Morty is a show that is constantly experimenting, whether it’s an episode that’s split into 64 separate quadrants or a fake clip show that’s also a heavy riff on The Thing. “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. All he would need to do is press the corresponding keys to kill the two characters.‘Structurally Sound’ is a recurring feature where each week a different structurally unusual, rule-breaking anomaly of an episode from a comedy series is examined. Those hammers poised over Rick and Morty’s heads - the same ones that crushed the skulls of the other captors - are part of a massive piano that’s probably controlled by the normal-sized piano in the background. Hitting a piano key actually causes a small hammer inside the piano to strike one or more metal strings that are tuned specifically to certain notes. The shot lasts only a second in the trailer and unlike most of the other featured scenes, it isn’t revisited whatsoever.
Their captor looks like some kind of creepy robo-alien Mozart seated at a piano on a platform. Look closely at this gory murder chamber and you'll realize it's actually a giant piano.