Rick and Morty: The Complete First Season (Blu-ray)

Rick Sanchez, a flask swigging, morally relativistic, quantum party animal and super-genius inventor, has returned after a lengthy absence to live with his daughter Beth, an equine surgeon, her insecure, unemployed husband Jerry Smith, their impressionable teenage daughter Summer, and their nervous, fretful adolescent son Morty. Rick has enlisted Morty to be his wing man and fellow adventurer in a series of inter-dimensional, trans-temporal, and routinely hair-raising capers.Belching, stammering, chin perpetually slathered with drool, Rick occupies himself crafting marvels in the family garage for his own amusement from household odds and ends and exotic minerals from other worlds, exposing himself and Morty to a googolplex of dangers, with warning advisories typically issued just after the nick of time."I know that new situations can be intimidating." Rick assures his grandson. "You're looking' around and it's all scary and different. But, you know, meeting them head on, charging right into them like a bull, that's how we grow as people. I'm no stranger to scary situations. I deal with them all the time. Now, if you stick with me, Morty, you're gonna be… Holy crap, Morty! Run! I've never seen that thing before in my life. I don't know what the hell it is. We gotta get out of here, Morty! It's gonna kill us. We're gonna die!"Rick is not merely the smartest man on earth. He is the smartest man in the universe. He has fashioned a handheld device to twist open portals to an infinity of parallel universes. In the infinity of timelines every possible Rick or Morty does or does not exist. Regardless where his portals lead him, Rick's wave function rarely collapses from uncertainty.He is impatient and unsparing. "There is no God, Summer." Rick coaches his granddaughter. "You gotta rip that bandaid off now. You'll thank me later."Rick invents a miniature robot with artificial intelligence to pass him the table butter. "What is my purpose?" the robot asks. "You pass butter," Rick says. "Oh, my God," the robot slumps in despair.When alien parasites attempt to populate the earth by assuming affable characters and implanting bogus fond memories of themselves in their human hosts, Rick must lock down the Smith house to stymie the confusing proliferation of invaders."Dad, why does our house have blast shields?" his daughter inquires in surprise."Trust me, Beth. You don't want to know how many answers that question has."Landing on a planet to refill the windshield wipers on his space traveling car, Rick informs Morty. "It's a purge planet. They're peaceful. And then, you know, they just purge."Morty: "Tha… that's horrible!"Rick: "Yeah. You wanna check it out?"Some of Rick's inventions run off the rails with catastrophic results. A love potion he gives Morty to help him seal a romance triggers a storm of rabid suitors for Morty's attention and Rick's concoction to offset the love portion "Cronenberg's" the entire human species into mantid monsters that decapitate their mates. Rick and Morty escape into a parallel reality where everything is identical except that they are dead and must bury their own bodies in the Smith's yard in order to effect their seamless substitution of themselves.In a subsequent episode, Morty implores his sister not to run away from home. He points to the back yard from Summer's bedroom. "That out there? That's my grave. On one of our adventures, Rick and I basically destroyed the whole world. So we bailed on that reality and we came to this one because it wasn't destroyed. And in this one we were dead. So we came here an… an… and we buried ourselves. And we took their place. And every morning, Summer, I eat breakfast twenty yards from my own rotting corpse!""So you're not my brother?""I'm better than your brother. I'm a version of your brother you can trust when he says 'don't run'. Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everyone is gonna die. Come watch TV."The animated "Rick and Morty" series (2013), created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, was introduced on the Adult Swim network (a prodigious cradle of invention for humorists working in video media). Roiland provides the voices of the title characters. The featured voice actors are Sarah Chalke, Chris Parnell, Kari Wahlgren, and Spencer Grammer, supported by a multiverse of regular voices and an impressive roster of guest voices including David Cross, Stephen Colbert, Tom Kenny, Keith David, Alan Tudyk, Ice-T, Dana Carvey, and others. Ryan Elder composed all the music, kicking off with a pulsating "Rick and Morty" theme reminiscent of "Doctor Who" that throbs like an accelerating heartbeat.Writers and story board artists drive the concepts and dialogue: Ryan Ridley, Tom Kauffman, Wade Randolph, Eric Acosta, and others too numerous to list."Rick and Morty" is a teeming comic thicket that bristles with sharp stabs at family values, formal education, sexual mores, species chauvinism, conventional science fiction tropes, and Panglossian optimism. Is this the best of all possible worlds? Holy crap! Let's hope not. Let's party!The pilot episode concludes with Rick's fervid lubricated rant: "It's just Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty and their adventures, Morty. Rick and Morty forever and forever a hundred years Rick and Morty. Some… things… me and Rick and Morty running' around and… Rick and Morty time… A- all day long forever… All a- a hundred days Rick and Morty! Forever a hundred times…"

amazing! gotta love R&M

Yes my name is Beth Smith, NO, it's not because I'm a Rick and Morty fan. That's really my name. lol. (For those who don't know, Beth Smith is Morty's mom.) Like with "Adventure Time", I was turned on to Rick and Morty by my 14 year old son. We're both fans of"Adventure Time", "Futurama", "Star Trek", etc. So when "Rick and Morty" first came on I wasn't sure what to think of it, but then as time went on, I realized I was hooked in yet another fandom.Like many other cartoon series geared toward adults or older teens, "Rick and Morty" references other pop culture which may or may not be vague to younger viewers. For example, an episode about Morty's sister working for an old man named Mr. Needful, which is an homage to Stephen King's "Needful Things". Episode four (M Night Shaym Aliens) has the best soundtrack of them all, when it keeps playing Jerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" in instrumental and the aliens that Rick and Morty encounter remind me of "Megamind". The cover art on the disc case (not the cardboard sleeve) even shows some creatures that look like they were inspired by "Futurama" and "Adventure Time". (We noted a turquoise alien that looked like Lumpy Space Princess. Of course there ARE "Adventure Time" ties here..as one of R&M's creators Justin Roiland voices Earl of Lemongrab in that series!)The series itself is spun off of a raunchier version called "The Adventures of Doc and Mharti" (these can be found on You Tube) ...which of course parodies "Back to the Future". (The series here explores alternate dimensions however.)But I want to give kudos to why the DVD is better than the episodic versions. Outside of no commercial breaks, TV can only let one get away with so much. Even though the word s**t can be said on primetime cable now, the f word and a few other derogatory words still cannot. (Only "South Park" got away with that.) Often when you purchase a DVD set of a TV series, the censored version is on the DVD too. Not so with "Rick and Morty"! The actual words can be heard, no bleeps.Those with sensitive ears might just want to overlook it, but honestly if you're watching something that airs on Adult Swim in the first place, you should have no room to complain about coarse language. :)The best reason of all of course is to binge watch "Rick and Morty" any time you want, and not have to wait on Adult Swim to air them. I haven't seen it often as of late. The only downside is that there are only eleven episodes in this box set, and it leaves you aching for more. So I hope they hurry up and air season 2 soon and not do what Cartoon Network/Adult Swim is notorious for doing is releasing subsequent seasons slowly and leave fans hanging for too long.