Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon has opened up about being unhappy with the length of each of the show’s first three seasons, and has expressed a desire to make the fourth one longer.
The series, which began as a weird parody of Back to the Future, where Doc Brown was (more overtly) an insane, perverted alcoholic, eventually evolved into one of the most complex entries into the entire catalogue of science-fiction television’s history. The show both casually and frequently examines an array of topics like philosophical nihilism, personal autonomy/free will, and quantum mechanics, all with a healthy dose of fart jokes.
Last year, Harmon had stated that, unlike the 10 episodes of seasons one and two, season three would have a whopping 14 episodes. But allegedly, it was the perfectionism of Harmon and Rick and Morty’s other co-creator, Justin Roiland, that got in the way. Thus, instead of 14 episodes, season three will have a total of… 10. The season finale will be this Sunday.
However, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Harmon claimed that he had not given up on a full, 14-episode season of Rick and Morty. The reason for this? Harmon states that he is trying to open his mind to stories that are “good enough,” rather than being the absolute picture of what he considers perfection. The particular episode he cites in this regard is Look Who’s Purging Now from season two, which was a last minute, rushed production when the team couldn’t figure out quite how to execute a two-part season finale. Harmon has said that the episode was funny enough to make it on the air, even though it wasn’t quite up to snuff with some of the other material of the season.
The concern that he will lose control of Rick and Morty the way he claims to have in his previous series, Community, lingers strong: “The nice healthy way to approach this is I want to prove it with the first 10 of season 4 — prove it to ourselves, to production, to the network — that it’s so easy that we’ll earn additional episodes. Because I never got this far [working on NBC’s] Community. I fell apart in season 3 of Community and got fired in season 4. Now I’m about to do season 4 of Rick and Morty and want to prove that I’ve grown.”
Either way, the likelihood that fans will be pleased with more Rick and Morty is high. Harmon might be better off worrying less about the number of episodes in a season, and just making sure that the ones that are there are of consistent quality.
What do you think? Would you prefer more “okay” episodes of Rick and Morty, or something more in-line with this season, where every episode seemed to be of about equal quality?
