I can't type much, after having downtime from keyboard based work my arms have felt so much better and right now one's cramping up a lot.
I'm just fleshing out some thoughts after hearing Justin Roiland of Rick and Morty fame has been accused of DV and other fairly serious offenses. It's a shitty thing to hear, but they don't seem as baseless as when everyone assumed his co-creator Dan Harmon was a pedophile for simulating sex with a toy baby. He nuked his entire Twitter account because of the James Gunn incident and it didn't quite save him. Harmon's also been very apologetic and open about an incident involving a previous female coworker who was upset he'd assumed he was likely blameless when the MeToo movement gained traction. He was entirely contrite, honest and humbled, the air was cleared, we moved on. As it should be. To me, it's the best case scenario when accusations do arise, some victims don't even want money they just want some fucking acknowledgement of the crime and a sincere apology.
Justin's denying everything and plead not guilty to all charges. Assumptions are flying around. And sadly, with how simultaneously sick of and in love with I am with Rick and Morty, if this put a bullet in the remainder of the 70 episodes slated, I wouldn't be upset. I'm already worried this is just too much for Dan to pull off successfully given he shoulders much of the writing, especially when any writer's block he has suffered has been fodder for an entire episode. It's always been evident Justin is someone who needs reining in with his ridiculous improv. Him being the actual voice of the show keeps him safe, but Dan is the heart and the real voice of so much of this, I see so little of Justin in this as a creation. It was like his idea, but Dan fleshed it out. Justin's fans hate Dan, Dan's fans are far too kind to Justin, for the most part. But they won't let him off any hooks either.
I'm inclined to believe Justin has done something unacceptable that's been framed as DV. He's a horrible drunk and he has many personal issues that clearly need addressing. That he does his work drunk is remarkable. Meanwhile, he's sold NFTs and an actual painting. He has a certain talent but I feel like R&M wouldn't be what it is without Dan. Being a Harmontown fan means you have a bigger backstage pass to the show, if you're puzzled by jokes about urban disses and mannequin legs, then you don't know Dan and you've never heard an episode of Harmontown. Justin brought up an incident from his past involving his cousin that was left-field, I don't doubt the guy has unresolved trauma and has addictions to cope with it. Dan's had to kind of curtail his immature comments, it's become a kind of father/son dynamic even with the small age gap. I lost tolerance for watching Justin's VR games because the Morty voice is insufferable for long periods, plus I genuinely don't find his aimless improv that funny, I think it's easier to hand off the Interdimensional Cable episodes to him so he can annoy the animators with off the wall concepts.
Harmon did really discredit his depression, however. I'm going over that episode and Harmon's goading him a lot, honestly I don't think Dan today would agree with this, they were both going through unhealthy phases and probably fed into each other's BS as toxic friendships and booze can do. He owns up to being the too afraid to be dead but wants to die club of which I am also a member. He admits to not seeking therapy and jokes about blowing his brains out. There's so much self-deprecating which covers so many comic's depressive episodes. Justin was very vulnerable. Dan possibly being autistic in his queries as to whether therapy helps you better with social interactions. Justin's actually pretty stoned too, and that's about the time he owns up to the cousin incident. Given everyone's aware of the heavy reliance on incest jokes in Rick and Morty, that's clearly another means of coping with this. Bearing in mind, Dan also has owned up to his affection for incest porn. Justin's admission is so blithely given, the audience laps it up, it seems so hilarious in the delivery, I don't even know if anyone was affected by it personally, considering sibling abuse is so often looked over. Harmon accuses Justin of being boring in his delivery, Justin's trying to tie it into the guest's history. I don't know if it was brave given he excused so much of it by his cousin being good looking. So, do you give him leeway now he's being arrested for DV? You can't really. The guest says Justin turned out "okay" and it's very clear he didn't. Dan adds a disclaimer to anyone contemplating suicide to get help, as he always did. This was 2015. We still hadn't learnt to mentally process this like adults, I suppose. Because, newsflash, none of us are healthy adults.
I do like Rick and Morty, I like to think of it existing outside of the fan base + the abundance of mainstream attention + the references in other media + ubiquitous merchandise. I think some of the jokes land differently when they pertain to Harmon's peccadilloes for lack of a better word, which really does lend to my bafflement that this show has so many fans who aren't remotely aware of Harmontown. At least with Community, it was clearer by the Harmontown audience response who was close to both, I can't see the millions of R&M fans being Harmontown fans too. Heck, I don't even expect Cassie Steele (Manny from Degrassi) to be 100% aware of Harmontown either, or if she'd ever have been a guest on the show the way Spencer Grammar was. (I'd have loved it if she was). I don't expect its current Gen Z fanbase to be even remotely interested in the inner-workings of the Gen Xer who helped make the show. I can see across generations for being the child of boomers while having Gen X friends/family and a spouse, I get all the complaints but Gen Z would not be cool with Harmon, they've never been okay with people like that. They definitely won't be okay with Justin if any of this is true.
I just wanted to add here I kind of got in a near-argument over Chevy Chase being involved in Community, and I tried to make a neutral comment that the pacing just died when Pierce was in the scene. The OP decided I was attacking Chase's integrity as an actor who wouldn't slow down production the way Dan did. I had to clarify my comment was about the scenes on the TV that we saw, not the onset behavior. The episode would be travelling along at breakneck speed, then Pierce comes in and it's all falling flat unless he's not the main person in the scene. Pay attention to how often he's not given lines. They let the guy lie on the floor and it took a hot minute to get to the gag. I think he's in a wheelchair or lying in bed for most of some episode. The funniest episode he's in is the one he's not in and his lawyer is delivering his lines via letters to the others after he dies.
Dan could've handled Chase's BS better, but Chase sees no reason, to this day, to fix his problems. Meanwhile, Dan has for the most part. I just watched a Community crack video (wasn't as fun as my Degrassi Cracks but it was fun), and nothing Chase did raised much of a giggle from me. Maybe one or two things. Meanwhile, Troy's predominantly featured, and everything he does is hilarious. He was objectively fucking funnier than Pierce, yet people in the subreddit for Community seem to defend some of Chase's crap more than Dan's. I said they had a clash of egos that went badly. It doesn't detract from Chase behaving like a narcissistic menace entirely on his own. What else could Dan do against that specifically other than fire the guy? I thought Chase was funny in the 90s, he could work with that pacing but not as an old, crotchety piece of shit, he lost that tenacity (and the coke). I'm pretty much over us defending old white guy behaviour on the basis of them being old and not a piece of shit. People were just laughing to be polite. Apparently he got roasted to shit and lost the plot, he has no respect in the industry yet you're supposed to bow to him like some living god because he demands it? No. Donald Glover was funnier than him. Case closed. Go to bed.
Someone said Harmontown ruined Rick and Morty because Dan's all over the writing. Yeah, fucker. That was entirely my point about the Szechuan sauce/pickle Rick fans being such idiots, I could swear they never sat down and listened to a single episode of the podcast where you got the inside gags. How can you possibly be that in love when you're missing out on the level of fan interaction Harmon had during the show that seeped into Rick and Morty. I don't remember there being the same crossover with Community, since it seemed to be less "his" if that makes sense. When a rejected joke for another script wound up in Rick and Morty, I got the joke the network didn't and it fit better within Rick and Morty. There was nothing wrong with it, it made fucking sense. I felt like the network people saying "we didn't get it" was a fault on their part, not Dan's. He explained it well enough. It pissed me off since it's a clear indication of networks deciding what audiences will and will not understand, if they don't, nobody will. Bullshit. He was kind to them but it was like the Friends writers checking in with their live audience if they got a really fucking obvious joke. That completely broke my attitude towards the show being clever and funny, it's aged so poorly in terms of characters and jokes, I can't stand watching it. South Park was right if you end up a writer for the show friends, you've lost your sense of humour. And do you want Justin's voice in there now? It's embarrassing he still has showrunner status despite being fired, and he didn't give it a voice anyway, unless that was just to riff stupid shit that wasn't that funny.
