I think the reception of Pickle Rick is just so characteristic. The show's fans seem to think it's either about lel random joaks or science and philosophy. The show is honestly a bit deeper than most adult animated series, but not hugely so and apparently independently from Harmon's intentions (which is ok since the author is dead). The show is more about amusing situations, riffing on sci-fi, horror and film tropes and being oddly endeared by the dysfunctional family members.

The end result is that Pickle Rick had a genuinely well done action movie parody that was better than it had any right of being, the Pickle Rick thing was hilarious as it was genuinely absurd how far Rick could go to avoid his responsibilities, the therapist speech was great and seeing the kids develop and gaining insight into Betty was cool.

While these galas are sort of horse shit, I very much hope good things for the new female hires of season three, they made the episodes clearly better and must have held back Harmon's worst tendencies. I don't know what the other nominees are, but Gao did good work.