A Tedious Brief Scene: Shakespeare and The Rick and Morty Season Finale

This post was going to be about Shakespeare. Then Rick and Morty aired their last episode for Season 3.
 
So yeah. Now this is going to be a post about Shakespeare and Rick and Morty. Because apparently, my brain is made of silly putty.
 
The last episode of Rick and Morty Season 3 was unsatisfying. It’s okay, you’re allowed to agree. It doesn’t make you a bad Rick and Morty-ite. It was unsatisfying for all the reasons a show is unsatisfying. The action sequence was too long. The stakes of the story were difficult to keep track of. The characters were occasionally mildly, occasionally wildly, out of character. And the ending, by Rick and Morty standards, was pabulum. A glossed over, almost-laugh-track ending with Rick frowning at a weirdly happy Smith family.
 
What annoyed me most wasn’t actually the last episode. It was the reviews of the episode. It was the casual assumption that everything in the last episode should be taken at face value. That Beth and Jerry really have chosen to get back together, that Summer really does have a suddenly connected relationship with her mom, and that Morty, somehow, chooses a simplified lie as his life.
 
A reviewer commented that the Smith family has chosen escapism over Rick’s universe; the very “unrealness” of it suggests that it isn’t escapism, it’s temporary. Maybe Beth is a clone. Hell, maybe they’re all clones. Either way, the delightful bliss isn’t going to last, so why pretend this is some moral awakening for Rick’s character? One reviewer commented that Rick had been “returned to the ground” by this episode. What? The ground of what planet? Season 3 showed, time and again, that Rick’s intelligence often comes in the form of being a devastating curse. What it did not show was Rick being wrong. Sure, maybe that can last into the credits of the last episode, but I wouldn’t give that premise thirty seconds in the next season.
 
Which brings me to Shakespeare. This summer, I watched a production of The Merchant of Venice at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach. I do not love The Merchant of Venice, but I do love Bard on the Beach, and their dedication to performing every one of Shakespeare’s plays, no matter how terrible. I was expecting The Merchant of Venice to be mediocre at best, not because of production, but because of the script.
 
It was outstanding. The problematic parts of The Merchant of Venice were not glossed or ignored – they were embraced. Instead of pretending that the play is a comedy with an occasional dark moment, the play was filled with sleazy, arrogant characters who are cruel to each other. It might seem that such a portrayal would render us unsympathetic to the pain and trials of those characters. It didn’t. It drove home the inhumanity of the entire piece, and the fact that Shakespeare and his society held beliefs we would find unforgivable.  
 
Sometimes a writer that you love is terrible. Sometimes a character who is reprehensible is the one that you empathize with most. Why lie about either one? When we gloss over what is problematic, we fall into the same trap as the Smith family – a delusion that at best can only be temporary.
 
With the exception of the last episode, Season 3 of Rick and Morty was devastatingly good. It was dark, emotionally in-depth, well-paced, and hilarious. Reviews of the finale that talk about “resetting” and “starting from scratch” ignore the complete impossibility of actually doing that. Rick can’t. Much as he might try to, Morty can’t. And be honest – after the emotion pangs of Season 3, you as the audience member can’t.
 
Let’s hope that, as usual, we’re being messed with, and that the season isn’t quite done.