At this point, the most pressing question about Rick And Morty is not if Beth is a clone or how they’ll top their excellent third season. It is, rather, whether or not the show can somehow transcend its reputation for fostering a fan base of insufferable, faux-intelligent, self-important “nerd culture” warriors, mobilized against all opponents—including, inevitably, the show’s female writing staff.
Not helping their case is the fact that Space Travel Brain Genius himself Elon Musk is geeking out about the show to an almost disconcerting degree on Twitter.
Shit yeah, bro (belches). And look, if you’re the social team at Adult Swim, you pretty much have to start riffing with him, since he’s a billionaire with 13 million followers, but they did and it did not go well. (Musk’s 280 characters didn’t help.)
There’s not a lot you can do here—the guy’s eagerly playing “yes and” with the show’s Twitter account, creating a cringe-inducing glimpse into the lives of the show’s writers, who must get pitched hilarious concepts straight from the unsent-drafts folder of I Fucking Love Science. But they’d already started engaging, and good brand-Twitter practices dictates that they must continue, no matter how unseemly.
At this point the conversation has clearly hit a dead-end, so Rick And Morty hit the eject button on it the only way they know how: dropping the f-bomb and roping in a bunch of other technocratic godheads, at which point Musk gracefully bows out.
If you love the show, this will all verify why; if you hate the show, this will all verify why. It may be a ratings success, but hopefully they can find a way to tone down their fans a little bit in the off-season.