Rick and Morty returned!

The first episode of the new - the sixth - the season reminded of what we fell in love with this animated series

On September 4, Cartoon Network began to broadcast the sixth season of a fantastic animated series for adults “Rick and Morty”. In Russia, it can only be seen illegally. The new series is called Solaricks, and the roll call with Solaris - the book of Stanislav Lem and its adaptation, shot by Andrei Tarkovsky - is not accidental: the heroes of the series will also have to figure out whether they are able to love loved ones if those “fake”. At the request of Medusa, journalist Anton Khitrov tells why Solaricks is a worthy continuation of the show.

A year ago, we left a brilliant scientist and his teenage grandson in a very difficult situation: lost in space at the last surviving module of the interstellar station, which in a fit of revenge destroyed the evil double of Morty . The uneven fifth season forced to worry about the scriptwriters of Dan Harmon and Justin Royland no less than the heroes: will they withstand the bar of the most inventive animated series for adults-or will the show turn into a catalog of optional sketches on the topic of pop culture? Judging by the premiere episode, witty the most important theme of the series, the project is still early to write off accounts.

Dreyfuya in open space without fuel and with a faulty portal gun , Rick Sanchez complains how trivial his suffering is: after all, the iron man Tony Stark had exactly the same problems at the beginning of the fourth “Avengers”. This first joke in the new season explains what is Rick and Morty exhaustively.

Marvel fans remember that the last picture of the Avengers constantly referred to the trilogy of Robert Zemeckis “Back to the Future” in order to clarify the rules of time travel. Rick saw the Avengers: the final, which means that films about the dock by Brown and Marty Makflay also exist in his universe (unless, of course, they showed the version of the Avengers, and not some alternative). It turns out that the title heroes of the series, conceived as a parody of the classic Sifai-Duet of the 1980s, had at least a chance to make sure of their own secondary.

As for Zemeckis, he also methodically borrowed from his predecessors and did not shy at all: it is enough to remember how, having hit the Wild West, nominally on the real one, but in fact, of course, to the one we know by the cinema, Marty berets in honor of the star of the Western Clint Eastwood. In turn, films that glorified Eastwood, such as “good, bad, evil” Sergio Leone are not classic Hollywood westerns, but European fantasies on the topic of the Wild West (film critics nicknamed this genre of spaghetti westerne).

In general, “Rick and Morty”, like any work of modern pop culture, is not even secondary, but at least quarterly processing. Moreover, this is not even the only project that made unoriginality with its main topic. But the only one that manages to work with her is so interesting.

📄 Dear readers! Now you can download the PDF version of any article "Medusa". The file can be sent in a messenger or by e -mail to your loved ones - especially those who do not know how to use VPN or who obviously does not have our application. And you can print and show those who do not use the Internet at all. Read more about this here .

For the sixth season, Showranners Harmon and Royland are exploring two related oppositions: the original is a copy and an ordinary - outstanding. The main characters, Smiths, to match the names - an unremarkable family from the American suburbs, typical characters of the sitcom. The exception is their patriarch, the scientist Rick Sanchez is a genius who can alone overthrow the galactic government and deceive death itself. That's just in the multi -sized he has countless doubles. And since Rick knows how to travel through parallel dimensions, he knows that he is not unique. Whatever happens to him, his relatives and even with his planet, it does not matter at all - after all, everything has endless copies in endless worlds. So, at least, the scientist himself argues.

In the final series of the fifth season, we found out that the real daughter of Rick died with his mother many years ago, and the heroine familiar to us is just her alternative version. We have long been hinted that the scientist made grief with the cynical alcoholic, but only now we brought a clue. The background of the character was quite banal, but if you think about it, it should be that that way. Indeed, given everything that we know about Rick, his tragedy is not in the loss of the family, but in the realization of how little means this loss in a multi -settlement scale.

At the same time, the series persistently proves to us: important and valuable does not always mean the only and unique. Say, under the hood of a flying saucer, Rick is hidden by a miniature universe, the whole purpose of which is to nourish its ship with energy. And somewhere in it is the same arrogant scientist who also created a mini-united one. So, even in this twice derivative of the universe, intelligent creatures with hopes and dreams live. Another example is the “family family”, synthetic copies of Smiths built by Rick to confuse possible enemies. Robots, created by a scientist in their image and likeness, naturally, began to make their own “tricks”-and so on the chain. As a result, scriptwriters make us sympathize with copies of copies.

In the debut episode of the sixth season, the Smith family learns the same way - not to make the difference between the “present” and “imaginary”. Due to the mistake of Rick, the heroes scatter the native dimensions: almost all of them are a surprise-from different worlds (and some, possibly, a clone). But in the end, this becomes unimportant for them - the general experience is more important than origin. So the new series summarizes the intermediate result of the entire series.

Harmon and Royland use the language of science fiction to think popular about their own craft. Can spectators love the characters, knowing that they are written off from other characters? Will their story from well -known details touched? Does a parody of a serious attitude deserve? Fans of Rick and Morty will answer all these questions yes. Let the series consists of only quotes, it should not be attributed to post-, but to metamodernism , because sincere feelings like attachment, whatever they are caused-in fact, its main value.

Anton Khitrov