The choice was an understandable one, as dimension-hopping was something of a "get out of jail free" card that limited the show's stakes and emotional impact. Even before the show-shaking season 5 finale, these sorts of scenes acted as hints that Rick & Morty was already moving away from stories involving inter-dimensional travel and toward a more serialized plot. Rick & Morty’s “Vat of Acid Episode” (season 4, episode 8) infamously showed the gruesome consequences of dimension-hopping, while Rick & Morty's season 5 premiere "Mort Dinner Rick Andre" saw Rick’s portal gun finally fail him at an inopportune time. This shift away from completely random humor and toward setting up character development and more ambitious plots within episodes whose stories felt unconnected and improvised continued into Rick & Morty season 4, where even the goofiest episodes served as part of a larger story. To this end, Rick & Morty season 3’s other anthology episode “The Ricklantis Mixup” (season 3, episode 7) also served essentially the same function as an inter-dimensional cable episode, but the outing simultaneously secretly set up major story elements that paid off years later in Rick & Morty’s tragic season 5 finale. While "Morty’s Mind Blowers” was a silly, self-contained adventure, the revelation that Rick frequently wiped Morty’s mind of traumatic experiences to make his grandson a more willing worker was more character development than the show’s main cast got in both earlier inter-dimensional cable episodes combined. However, this was not the only reason that Rick & Morty season 3 replaced inter-dimensional cable with a new type of anthology. Perhaps because of how goofy this setup was, Rick & Morty appeared to largely abandon the show’s inter-dimensional cable episodes after season 2. However, the inter-dimensional cable episodes were much more laidback affairs that mostly relied on blatantly improvised short sketches. Usually, Rick and Morty’s inter-dimensional travel only occurs during dramatic adventures and acts as a last resort escape route.
However, the show’s anything-goes approach to cartoon comedy is never more obvious than in Rick & Morty’s inter-dimensional cable episodes.įeatured in the show’s first two seasons, Rick & Morty’s inter-dimensional cable episodes consist of the two title characters flipping through the channels of a television set picking up every dimension’s shows.
Rick & Morty has always had an anarchic, freewheeling sense of absurd humor.
#RICK AND MORTY EPISODE 2 6 SERIES#
It has been some time since Rick & Morty did an inter-dimensional cable episode, and it doesn’t seem like the series will revisit this format any time soon for numerous reasons.