Surprise season premiere of 'Rick and Morty' is rousing success

While some people might have had reason to curse on April Fool’s Day, fans of Adult Swim’s hit TV show “Rick and Morty” (2013-present) had reason to celebrate: the network unexpectedly announced that the premiere of season 3 would be airing that night, with the option to either streaming it or watching it live. Pandemonium ensued as people tried to confirm whether it was all just a cruel joke, but there was no joke to be found. “Rickshank Redemption” premiered in spite of this chaos, a fitting entrance for the convention-breaking show.

“Rick and Morty” has always focused on heavier topics ranging from alcoholism to failing marriages to teenage angst and all of the show’s characters are deeply flawed in their own individual ways. It was wonderful to bask in the show’s dark humor once more. The episode opens with Rick Sanchez’s interrogation in a Galactic Federation prison, where he remains prisoner from the end of season 2. Back on Earth, his family is living under the thumb of the Federation. Unhappy with this new life, Rick’s granddaughter Summer decides to free Rick, dragging a hesitant Morty, who’s lost faith in his grandfather, along for the ride. As expected, the two manage to mess up Rick’s plans, and the show quickly takes a turn (or ten) for the worst.

Any fan of “Rick and Morty” will appreciate this long-awaited premiere, as it jams everything there is to love about the show into an action-packed 25 minutes with plenty of the usual self-aware melancholy that viewers likely expect at this point. It is fitting that the episode was released on April Fool’s Day, because so many of the series’ charm lies in its aforementioned willingness to break conventions. Anything and everything, from the nature of humanity to the driving forces behind each character, is criticized and juxtaposed within the show, and “Rickshank Redemption” delivers more of this meta content.

The highlight of the episode, however, is the ending, which mirrors the ending of the first episode of season 1. In a way, everything has come full circle, but the viewer is left with a sense that in spite of all that’s happened to the Smith family, they remain trapped in various stages of self-loathing, unable to progress in light of the literal collapse of a galactic empire.

The writing is, as usual, phenomenal. Each character comes alive once more through witty and well-thought out dialogue, and viewers will find themselves in stitches throughout the whole episode. The voice actors do a great job, bringing the show’s characters to life once more through sarcastic and intriguing interactions.

Perhaps most fitting about the episode, however, is that at the end, the only thing that matters to Rick is a forgotten McDonald’s Szechuan dipping sauce. This type of punchline is “Rick and Morty” at its finest, with nonsensical and irrelevant topics becoming points of obsessed fixation, even for a mad genius like Rick.

The only downside to the premiere was the announcement that fans of the show will have to wait until the summer to catch the rest of season 3. But with such a strong return, the wait will hopefully be worth it -- as long as Rick finds his Szechuan sauce, that is.