Dan Har­mon, Rick and Morty and the search for meaning

It’s been almost eight years since we were first intro­duced to the study group that would lat­er become known as ​“The Green­dale Sev­en” – sev­en high­ly flawed and equal­ly like­able com­mu­ni­ty school stu­dents weighed down by the emo­tion­al bag­gage they keep tight­ly packed into their ruck­sacks. As much as they wish to keep their inse­cu­ri­ties con­cealed from the out­side world and, most par­tic­u­lar­ly, their peers, the moments in which their respec­tive anx­i­eties and exis­ten­tial crises burst through the seams and spill out into the open are usu­al­ly the most cathar­tic. Their per­son­al truths may not always be pret­ty or noble, but they are what makes them human and, ulti­mate­ly, extreme­ly relatable.

Dan Harmon’s Com­mu­ni­ty, which was based on his own expe­ri­ences at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, was the writer’s first expose of his own very real and intense mine­field of a cre­ative mind, and his hon­esty in explor­ing the dark, trou­bled realms of the human psy­che is what spoke to a whole gen­er­a­tion of social­ly chal­lenged but entire­ly endear­ing mis­fits. His char­ac­ters hone their com­plex, mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ties with­out ever los­ing sight of who they real­ly are and, in doing so, have become mod­ern-day heroes to an out­cast soci­ety referred to as ​“Har­me­ni­ans”.

Most oth­er shows focused on the lives of self-pro­claimed nerds (The Big Bang The­o­ry), men­tal­ly unsta­ble and vul­ner­a­ble pro­tag­o­nists (Crazy Ex-Girl­friend) or bliss­ful­ly aware nar­cis­sists (You’re the Worst) rely on a strong dose of self-dep­re­ca­tion. Com­mu­ni­ty and the Green­dale Sev­en, on the oth­er hand, rarely made excus­es for their behav­iours but, rather, laid them all out on their study-group table to be work­shopped until a clear under­stand­ing of out­burst-ori­gins was detect­ed, accept­ed and even­tu­al­ly wrapped up with an opti­mistic, moral-of-the-sto­ry speech by the group’s qua­si-leader, Jeff Winger (Joel McHale). 

This form of self-accep­tance is most notable in Community’s male char­ac­ters Abed (Dan­ny Pudi), Troy (Don­ald Glover) and the Dean (Jim Rash), who defy male arche­types and stand by their eclec­tic per­son­al­i­ties, their unique rela­tion­ships, and their need to find the fan­tas­ti­cal in the mun­dane (“Troy and Abed in the Morn­ing”). The main dri­ving force behind each and every char­ac­ter is their quest for love – not nec­es­sar­i­ly roman­tic love, but a deep­er con­nec­tion to the peo­ple in their imme­di­ate environment. 

When Har­mon was let go after three sea­sons of Com­mu­ni­ty due to dif­fer­ences with Sony exec­u­tives, he began host­ing the month­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al com­e­dy pod­cast Har­mon­town with Jeff B Davis as his trust­ed side­kick. The pod­cast is best described as ​“live ther­a­py ses­sions” allow­ing Har­mon to flow into a comedic stream of con­scious­ness, mixed in with uproar­i­ous Dun­geons & Drag­ons ses­sions led by Spender Crit­ten­den. The suc­cess of the pod­cast led Har­mon to take the show on the road, and the tour even­tu­al­ly became the sub­ject of the inti­mate 2014 doc­u­men­tary Har­mon­town, direct­ed by Neil Berkeley. 

Through the Har­mon­town doc­u­men­tary, we get to know and under­stand the man whose ten­den­cy to self-destruct and get lost in a haze of his own con­coc­tion of arro­gant angst is bal­anced by his abil­i­ty to chan­nel his innate rage and lone­li­ness into his cre­ative out­lets. The minute he opens these por­tals into fic­tion­al, ani­mat­ed worlds par­al­lel to his own emo­tion­al land­scapes, we enter a realm of pro­found comedic dra­ma and fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ter work that goes way beyond your typ­i­cal sit­com or cartoon.

Rick and Morty is one of Harmon’s finest cre­ations to date, and the fact that so many aspects of his own char­ac­ter tie in with the show’s high­ly intel­li­gent but deeply trou­bled sci­en­tist, Rick (voiced by co-cre­ator Justin Roi­land), is not entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal. While there may have been an influx of dark­ly pro­found ani­mat­ed series focused on dys­func­tion­al char­ac­ters (Bojack Horse­man, for exam­ple), Rick and Morty sets itself apart by exam­in­ing an entire fam­i­ly in search of mean­ing in var­i­ous time­lines and inter­galac­tic worlds, yet always arriv­ing at the same con­clu­sion: ​“Nobody belongs any­where, nobody exists on pur­pose, everybody’s going to die.” To say that the show is Harmon’s per­son­al cathar­sis would be an understatement. 

Though Rick and Morty are the pro­tag­o­nists of the crazy sci­en­tif­ic adven­tures we embark on in each episode, the rest of the fam­i­ly – Rick’s daugh­ter Beth (Sarah Chalke), her hus­band Jer­ry (Chris Par­nell), and daugh­ter Sum­mer (Spencer Gram­mar) – is just as impor­tant to the show’s nar­ra­tive and its pur­pose: to iden­ti­fy how each indi­vid­ual goes about find­ing their own mean­ing in life, and how a family’s col­lec­tive his­to­ry as well as per­son­al mem­o­ry can steer this quest into many dif­fer­ent directions.

‘Rick­manc­ing the Stone’, which marked the offi­cial return of Rick and Morty’s third sea­son, not only high­lights Harmon’s inge­nious­ly sim­plis­tic ​“Sto­ry Embryo Tech­nique”, but also the family’s evo­lu­tion and the side effects there­of. When Rick brings Morty and Sum­mer into an apoc­a­lyp­tic, Mad Max-esque world fol­low­ing Beth and Jerry’s divorce, the kids bat­tle out their feel­ings of dis­ap­point­ment and aban­don­ment by ways of ultra-vio­lence, inter­species hook-ups and a gen­er­al ​“who gives a fuck” men­tal­i­ty, very much mir­ror­ing their grandfather’s alco­holic motives.

The new sea­son is bound to explore the new ter­ri­to­ries which have come into view with the absence of the family’s list­less patri­arch, while con­tin­u­ing to look at the forces that dri­ve humans to come to terms with their own pur­pose or seem­ing lack there­of. And the clos­er we come to under­stand­ing the intri­ca­cies of Rick’s mind, the clos­er we will come to appre­ci­at­ing the close rela­tion­ship between Har­mon and his cre­ation, Rick Sanchez.