Comments like this just exemplify that there’s no way to satisfy every fan. For me season 4 through 6 marked a massive drop off in quality where the show just meandered haphazardly through its established lore, using crudeness and gross out humor as a stand-in for actual writing. The Mulan sauce years, where it was embarrassing to even talk about having used to like the show. Not to discount the many talented people who worked their asses off to get those episodes to us, but having followed Harmon from Channel 101 through Community and Harmontown, it was obvious something was off. And it turned out something was. After Roiland was fired many came forward to talk about what an awful work environment he fostered, where he was constantly drunk and refused to write or even speak the lines as written, and wouldn’t even show up most days. Then there’s the abusive behavior…
In any case seasons 7 and 8 have maybe not been perfect but are absolutely a return to form and a massive improvement. It is funny to me there are fans of the show who aren’t actually fans of that form and prefer seasons 4-6. I will say the two episodes you called out from those seasons are standouts, I kind of hate both of them, but I see where you’re coming from. And likewise the two newer episodes you called out were kind of dumb, I can agree with that. But overall the two most recent seasons, I feel, have been a massive improvement over szechuan sauce and dragons and incest babies.
Szechuan sauce was season 3 though, which I also think is pretty bad, hence me referencing season 7 feeling like a return to those lamer episodes from season 3. All of the sauce stuff was long gone by S4
The dragons and incest is fair enough, but those are the worst episodes of their respective seasons. What’s left though is pretty much back to back bangers though.
I guess for me I just truly don’t care about the lore or any of that stuff, I liked how it was sidelined for standalone stories after S3 ended apart from the once-a-season space Beth cameo.
I didn’t care for the sauce stuff in S3 myself and I basically stopped watching for a long time because of the insufferable fandom.
I was also never a fan of the crude/gross out humour of S1-S3, especially all the jokes about rape and molesting like quite a few early in S1 (namely the episode with the giants in it) or the jokes where X is something that goes up someone’s butt like the very literal pilot episode.
I just like parodies, spoofs and satire and S4-S6 has some of the funniest sci-fi spoofs ever made, if ever irreverent applied to something as a descriptor then the episode with endless terminators sent back into the past to stop other terminators is it, or the dating app episode, the line where the dude says “love is as abundant as water, you know what isn’t? Water. That shit runs out.” is just so witty and the fact it follows through on it as the motivation for the aliens in that episode is just fantastic. Or the narrative train episode? Admittedly that one is so overwritten as a joke in and of itself it’s a real love it or hate it deal, but it is another great example of what happens when you put together that perfect writing room where everything just flows and bounces like the golden age of Simpsons S5-S8.
Or heck what about the vat of acid episode? The whole silent musical montage of the romance followed by the tragedy of the crash and the absurd gut punch of the remote button being pressed.
Absolute peak comedy, completely without crudeness or gross out humour which was a lot of early R&M.
I also hate saying this but the show unironically got a lot smarter after season 3 too, just from a recent rewatch there are still jokes that go over my head S4-S6, compared to S1-S3 which just feel very very simple in comparison, it was strange and nice to learn about art/lit stuff from rick and morty of all things.
The S7 total recall joke episode would be like a one-time gag in some other grander narrative in S4-S6, and iirc it feels that way because it quite literally was.
Except now that’s just the whole episode. It feels like someone in the writing room said “hey remember Total Recall?”. It’s like something out of S1 Futurama in terms of just how simple it is, and in this case the pandering to nostalgia feels really jarring, it feels like something R&M would do as a joke before like the 3DS gag from Season 2 (3?), except now it’s real.
It’s interesting to hear your perspective, but it does also seem to me like you’re misremembering some things slightly, because you and I both agree on the sauce, but you misattribute that to later seasons, whereas that was entirely a thing contained in the first episode of Season 3, and Season 4 didn’t come out until like years later due to the pandemic.
Thank you! I’m glad someone else sees what I sensed. R&M has the ability to balance the grim elements with humanity. It’s part of why it’s good, and the genesis of that copypasta meme in many ways.
They were definitely lost and meandering in those middle seasons. And it didn’t line up with my conceptions of Dan Harmon either. I’m interested in R&M because of Harmon, in spite of Roiland.
I do enjoy Solar Opposites, and the way they handled replacing Roiland was amazing. Unfortunately Middleditch, as funny and talented as he is, has also turned out to be a narcissistic POS and it has really put a taint on all the great works he’s been a part of over the years.
Comments like this just exemplify that there’s no way to satisfy every fan. For me season 4 through 6 marked a massive drop off in quality where the show just meandered haphazardly through its established lore, using crudeness and gross out humor as a stand-in for actual writing. The Mulan sauce years, where it was embarrassing to even talk about having used to like the show. Not to discount the many talented people who worked their asses off to get those episodes to us, but having followed Harmon from Channel 101 through Community and Harmontown, it was obvious something was off. And it turned out something was. After Roiland was fired many came forward to talk about what an awful work environment he fostered, where he was constantly drunk and refused to write or even speak the lines as written, and wouldn’t even show up most days. Then there’s the abusive behavior… In any case seasons 7 and 8 have maybe not been perfect but are absolutely a return to form and a massive improvement. It is funny to me there are fans of the show who aren’t actually fans of that form and prefer seasons 4-6. I will say the two episodes you called out from those seasons are standouts, I kind of hate both of them, but I see where you’re coming from. And likewise the two newer episodes you called out were kind of dumb, I can agree with that. But overall the two most recent seasons, I feel, have been a massive improvement over szechuan sauce and dragons and incest babies.
Szechuan sauce was season 3 though, which I also think is pretty bad, hence me referencing season 7 feeling like a return to those lamer episodes from season 3. All of the sauce stuff was long gone by S4
The dragons and incest is fair enough, but those are the worst episodes of their respective seasons. What’s left though is pretty much back to back bangers though.
I guess for me I just truly don’t care about the lore or any of that stuff, I liked how it was sidelined for standalone stories after S3 ended apart from the once-a-season space Beth cameo.
I didn’t care for the sauce stuff in S3 myself and I basically stopped watching for a long time because of the insufferable fandom.
I was also never a fan of the crude/gross out humour of S1-S3, especially all the jokes about rape and molesting like quite a few early in S1 (namely the episode with the giants in it) or the jokes where X is something that goes up someone’s butt like the very literal pilot episode.
I just like parodies, spoofs and satire and S4-S6 has some of the funniest sci-fi spoofs ever made, if ever irreverent applied to something as a descriptor then the episode with endless terminators sent back into the past to stop other terminators is it, or the dating app episode, the line where the dude says “love is as abundant as water, you know what isn’t? Water. That shit runs out.” is just so witty and the fact it follows through on it as the motivation for the aliens in that episode is just fantastic. Or the narrative train episode? Admittedly that one is so overwritten as a joke in and of itself it’s a real love it or hate it deal, but it is another great example of what happens when you put together that perfect writing room where everything just flows and bounces like the golden age of Simpsons S5-S8.
Or heck what about the vat of acid episode? The whole silent musical montage of the romance followed by the tragedy of the crash and the absurd gut punch of the remote button being pressed.
Absolute peak comedy, completely without crudeness or gross out humour which was a lot of early R&M.
I also hate saying this but the show unironically got a lot smarter after season 3 too, just from a recent rewatch there are still jokes that go over my head S4-S6, compared to S1-S3 which just feel very very simple in comparison, it was strange and nice to learn about art/lit stuff from rick and morty of all things.
The S7 total recall joke episode would be like a one-time gag in some other grander narrative in S4-S6, and iirc it feels that way because it quite literally was.
Except now that’s just the whole episode. It feels like someone in the writing room said “hey remember Total Recall?”. It’s like something out of S1 Futurama in terms of just how simple it is, and in this case the pandering to nostalgia feels really jarring, it feels like something R&M would do as a joke before like the 3DS gag from Season 2 (3?), except now it’s real.
It’s interesting to hear your perspective, but it does also seem to me like you’re misremembering some things slightly, because you and I both agree on the sauce, but you misattribute that to later seasons, whereas that was entirely a thing contained in the first episode of Season 3, and Season 4 didn’t come out until like years later due to the pandemic.
Thank you! I’m glad someone else sees what I sensed. R&M has the ability to balance the grim elements with humanity. It’s part of why it’s good, and the genesis of that copypasta meme in many ways.
They were definitely lost and meandering in those middle seasons. And it didn’t line up with my conceptions of Dan Harmon either. I’m interested in R&M because of Harmon, in spite of Roiland.
IMO solar opposites is the better show.
I do enjoy Solar Opposites, and the way they handled replacing Roiland was amazing. Unfortunately Middleditch, as funny and talented as he is, has also turned out to be a narcissistic POS and it has really put a taint on all the great works he’s been a part of over the years.