Yeah, and what I find weird is that some people seem to think season 3 is the worst one so far.
They must be from the Doofus Rick dimension. :P
Reasoning I've heard for it is that people feel let down that Rick isn't showing the heart he seemed to show at the end of season 2.
Hmm. Possibly. He's not a emotional wreck like he was in season 2, but I guarantee you some sort of emotional breakdown is definitely going to happen to Rick this season.
And that Vindicators 3 is one of the worst episodes because they liked the idea of these characters and to see them thrown away, rather than becoming an actual Avenger's style team that comes in time and again in the show as regular characters is somehow a dissapointment.
Yeah, I would've liked them to stick around, too. In fact, that's what I was expecting. What I didn't expect was
Rick becomes so jealous of Morty admiring someone else that he set up an elaborate trap to impugn their character and inadvertently got most of them killed. It's not clear exactly how culpable he was, but imho, a couple charges of involuntary and/or intoxication manslaughter would be warranted at the very least.
And as an aside, Million Ants and Crocubot are my favorite characters. If you watch closely, whenever Million Ants is splattered with guts, Million Ants quickly absorbs it as nourishment.
Instead of the superhero parody I was expecting, I got a dark and cynical take on superheroes, even casting doubt on the idea of moral good at all. It was very different, but in a good way.
And it's not entirely clear who's in the right here. Vance's retort to Rick's moral nihilism, "I get the feeling...he kinda needs that to be the case" might have some merit to it. Perhaps Rick is attacking the concept of morality for self-serving reasons. Not just to maintain his status with Morty, but also to try to free himself of guilt for all the evil things he's done.
But I think that's the entire point of the show. It's not about satisfying character-archs and building towards what we expect. I'd classify this show as an anti-show because it goes exactly against that and it works hard to make us trust it, to tug at our heartstrings, and then punch us hard in the stomach when we least expect it.
It does zig-zag expectations and punches us in the gut when we expected a hug. And while we don't get satisfying character-archs
Rick never bemoans the fate of the denizens trapped in his car battery or regrets Cronenberging the world and abandoning 2/3s of his family. But we do get some nice character development. Rick is shown to care deeply about Morty. He also accepts Summer as a Morty substitute, tries to connect with Beth, and attempts to bury the hatchet with Jerry. Summer becomes more adventure-capable, sometimes surpassing even Morty. Morty, previously cowardly and idiotic, is showing signs of increasing courage and intelligence. He went from a simpleton with an unspecified mental condition to a decently intelligent adventurer who can handle some rick tech independently. He's also now a decent pilot and expert bomb defuser.
