{"id":1675289,"date":"2022-10-06T07:06:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T11:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1675289"},"modified":"2022-10-06T07:10:09","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T11:10:09","slug":"rick-and-morty-hits-its-season-six-oedipus-rex-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/rick-and-morty-hits-its-season-six-oedipus-rex-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rick And Morty\u2019 Hits Its Season Six \u2018Oedipus Rex\u2019 Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Frick-and-morty-hits-its-season-six-oedipus-rex-moment%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1675289&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>Over five-and-a-half seasons, even some of the biggest fans of \u201cRick and Morty\u201d have suggested that the show\u2019s writers may have an unhealthy fixation with one particular subject that nearly every human civilization considers extremely gross: incest. I thought we\u2019d gotten that out of the way this season in <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/09\/22\/the-latest-rick-and-morty-probes-our-modern-narcissism-problem\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">episode three<\/a>, when Beth entered a romantic relationship with her own clone. Yet here, again, in episode five (\u201cFinal DeSmithation\u201d), the topic rears its head once more.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose we should not be too surprised. Every societal taboo is on display everywhere, all the time in mass culture, including this one. Consider the widespread success of HBO\u2019s \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d which featured a pair of twins\u2019 secret affair with each other as a major plot point. Other characters in that drama had the decency to be grossed out by it, at least, while in the prequel series now running, \u201cHouse of the Dragon,\u201d the Targaryen family\u2019s mating habits go far beyond Habsburg-level inbreeding and are taken as normal by their subjects, even if other noble families are in no hurry to copy them.<\/p>\n<p>So, it\u2019s out there. And it can also serve as a simple shorthand for showing a character as weird or bad, just as many writers use the trope of a child in danger to ratchet up the tension and angst in a police drama.<\/p>\n<p>But as gross as that all is, it must be said that the \u201cRick and Morty\u201d writers handled it better this season than ever before. This episode, in a way, seems like a response to fan criticisms. \u201cYou think we joke about this thing too much? Well, now we\u2019re going to joke about it even harder!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In this episode, it kind of works.<\/p>\n<p>The family begins the show in an extremely normal setting: a Panda Express. As they all open their fortune cookies after the meal, everyone gets one of those banal expressions typically found inside the flavorless baked goods, things that barely constitute fortunes. All except Jerry, whose fortune reads \u201cyou will have sex with your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He is appropriately horrified and actually grows concerned that the fortune will somehow come true. The rest of the family roasts him mercilessly for this, noting that it\u2019s just a cookie and, however unusual the fortune, has no real power over his life. That, in itself, is not that crazy a plot \u2014 it\u2019s just \u201cOedipus Rex\u201d adapted for a setting 25 centuries later. Jerry, like Oedipus, immediately tried to defeat the prophecy by avoiding his mother at all costs.<\/p>\n<p>Rick \u2014 still believing the fortune to be nothing of great importance \u2014 spends some time with Jerry and a probability-detecting device to prove it. The results are the opposite of what he expected: Every test Rick runs shows a great probability of the bizarre fortune coming true. Meanwhile, Jerry\u2019s mom keeps calling his cell and Jerry freaks out even more.<\/p>\n<p>They go back to Panda Express to find out what\u2019s really going on and, after a bloody gunfight, discover that the employees there actually had nothing to do with it \u2014 the cookies are supplied by an outside contractor called \u201cFortune 500.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rick and Jerry sneak in and discover the source of the problem \u2014 a weird self-help lifestyle brand\/cult run by Jennith Padrow-Chunt, a woman and company based heavily on Gwyneth Paltrow and her \u201cGOOP\u201d enterprise. Having somehow gained control of a huge alien monster whose excrement can transform chaos into certainty, she charges millions for rich people to get fortunes that will actually make their fondest wishes come true.<\/p>\n<p>Weird fortunes like Jerry\u2019s gradually leaked into the world because the alien beast\u2019s caretaker wants to blow up the whole operation so he and it can flee and get married. He keeps sending out horrible fortunes so that someone \u2014 anyone \u2014 will come and investigate their source. (In this explanation, he implies that one of these fortunes caused the Covid-19 pandemic.)<\/p>\n<p>There follows a pretty fantastic action sequence, Rick fighting off all of the cult\u2019s guards with his crazy gadgets and guns while Jerry tries with increasing desperation to avoid his fate when his mother joins the adventure, brought there by Padrow-Chunt\u2019s minions. In the end, he avoids that fate better than Oedipus did, thanks to Rick\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n<p>The episode brought Rick and Jerry closer together. Jerry calls Rick his friend at the end, at which Rick recoils in horror. All the weirdness of the plot device somehow works here, maybe for the same reason it works in Sophocles: That horrible fortune is treated as something no one could sanely want and gives the characters a serious imperative to solve the problem. I cringed when the episode began, but the writers clearly did justice to a classic trope of literature, adding their usual humor and creativity along the way.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Kyle Sammin is a senior contributor to The Federalist and the co-host of the <a href=\"https:\/\/conservativeminds.fireside.fm\/\">Conservative Minds podcast<\/a> podcast. Follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KyleSammin\">@KyleSammin<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over five-and-a-half seasons, even some of the biggest fans of \u201cRick and Morty\u201d have suggested that the show\u2019s writers may have an unhealthy fixation with one particular subject that nearly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":1675292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1675292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}