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The Birth of Venus (1483-1485), Sandro Botticelli (Italy)

Rick and Morty has failed as a piece of media. Not because it didn’t have a good message, not because it espoused abhorrent views or failed at telling its story and developing its characters. It failed because it cultivated an audience that was fundamentally opposed to hearing what it had to say. If you’ve baked a cheesecake whose most vocal proponents are people with lactose intolerance who consume your product and then walk around farting loudly and shitting everywhere because of your cheesecake, you’ve failed as a baker. If you’ve written a show that subverts archetypes of bad ass loner rebels who are withdrawn alcoholics by making them canonically terrible people but your most public fans dress up as that character and stab other people, you’ve failed as a writer.

I DON’T think this is the fault of the writers - Rick literally has said multiple times that he’s terrible, that he’s reprehensible and that he shouldn’t be looked up to. The writers have done everything to make this point clear to the audience up to literally opening a season by having Rick talk directly into the camera and saying “I’m the villain, I’m the bad guy and if you knew me I would hate you and would abuse you until you hated me too and then I would destroy you. This does not make me enlightened or cool - it makes me pathetic, and if you look at me with anything short of animosity, disdain and pity, you need help and should call this mental health services line.” I’m not confident even this would work.

The audience has made Rick and Morty a failure and it has proven to me unequivocally that the archetypes the show works so hard to subvert are themselves unsubvertible. You cannot have a character who is a “compelling depressed man of tremendous power who is irreparably broken and only grows into a worse person as he finds new opportunities to disappoint those who value him” because the people who most need the sorts of stories such a character can impart stop paying attention after the word ‘power.’ The people that understand the message you’re relaying already know it.