Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

twovests wrote

I actually agree 100%. This episode is a lot better than the meme status it has. You're in good company here, as others have expressed a similar sentiment: https://jstpst.net/f/GoldenAgeOfTV/2221/-/comment/4943

Around the time of season 3 coming out, Dan Harmon had pissed off a lot of the manosphere parts of his fanbase. First, they hired more female writers to explicitly address the gender disparity in the writers room. This made a lot of chuds angry, and Dan Harmon ended up having to publicly denounce fans who were harassing their new female writers.

During Season 3's airing, Harmon later went on a drunken rant on his podcast, saying that fascism is a cancer and you have to kill it. This angered a good chunk of their fans too.

Now, the thing about Pickle Rick? It wasn't just controversial for the "don't idolize Rick, therapy is good" message. A full year before Season 3 came out, we saw part of Pickle Rick as an early preview. It was the part where Rick, inexplicably a pickle, lures a rat to a trap to complete the last part of his rat-mecha contraption, before launching into a lengthy action-scene and power-fantasy.

It was released intentionally to stick in the mind. Pickle Rick was one of the most anticipated episodes of that season. And it really stuck the landing! A therapy named u/Akimble1 on the red site breaks down the final scene of that episode in a way that I appreciate: https://old.reddit.com/r/rickandmorty/comments/9vndo8/as_a_therapist_i_have_always_loved_the_shows/e9dk84z/

Welcome to the club of Pickle Rick Is Good true believers

5

flabberghaster wrote (edited )

The pickle rick episode is obviously about how rick does all this crazy crap because he's trying to do anything possible to avoid his feelings but the whole show is quite obviously about the same thing. The whole show is about how even tho he's got near godlike powers, his real nemesis is himself and his own egotism, which is a defense mechanism to help him avoid feeling grief and loss, and he can sometimes kind of recognize part of this but he can't really accept it about himself or overcome it long term. That episode is just the most explicit about it.

4