Gotta imagine the finale was written as a way to troll fans who were expecting something else given the title and episode 7.
That said, I dunno. And this might’ve been similar to my problems with Community too, but i’m enjoying the concepts of the episodes but that’s about it. This season, it’s cool Morty’s getting more savvy and not putting up with Rick’s BS, but from a story perspective I don’t see a direction in how that will impact his relationship with Rick or how it affects the adventures other than Morty acts snarky on adventures now. I guess the show’s not really about long story/character arcs, or at least i’m not seeing it done in a compelling way to come back to the show to see how characters are evolving, and i’m not hooked onto the lore like in other shows.
Yeah, I completely agree with you. There is a bit of charm in how self-aware the show has become of its usual nihilist procedure and how Rick is a cynical all-powerful apathetic dick that is always right, but focusing on that so much can cost the show actually feeling like its worth immersing ourselves into the characters and taking something from the story aside from just humor. It's almost like the certain episodes of season 3 like this one bask in the nihilistic aspect to the point that it even tries to make clear that its own nihilistic message is as pointless as the existentialist inspiration we are familiar with in other series, and we can never truly adapt to that idea of nihilism and will inevitably revert back to our base natures/delusions without any real development. Which is an admirable execution of that concept in a way, but also makes me care less about wanting to watch the show if it's going to continue like this if literally everything about it is pointless.
I think this video does a decent job of catching onto what our issues are on a plot structure basis of the show become so self-aware and cynical about itself early on. Or in simpler words, the show sometimes isn't willing to try to make an engagingly surprising stories and yet it tries to be entertaining in how it openly makes fun of how it isn't willing to try to make engaging surprising stories based on how familiarized we have become as fans, if that makes sense. Which is interesting, I have to admit that I haven't really seen that before to such a full-frontal degree lol.
Now, I think the show is going to lean back off of this kind of thing somewhat for season four and go back to more dynamic plots given how the episode ended and its commentary of harkening back to season one. So I'm not going to go full throttle on "Rick and Morty's past its prime and has become a shell of itself". I really liked some of Season 3's episodes like the first episode, the one with Toxic Rick, and Ricklantis. But it is a bit concerning. Especially when they're doing such a slow burn on the Evil Morty and Bird Person plotlines.
